I very much experience all of those things you mentioned, especially the masking and hearing hypersensitivity, but I guess I thought these were "normal" experiences... or more accurately, I never considered that not everyone might not experience life like that. Doesn't everyone get really bothered by noises sometimes? Isn't everyone putting out a lot of effort to interact with others well? I don't know. I am regarded as friendly, and having good social skills, but that took tons of practice and study. For example, people mention that I make great eye contact, am confident, and a good listener. But I never made eye contact with others until I was 15, when I read about the importance of it in a book, and suddenly realized it was a thing other people did. I started trying it out, but find it hard to guess how much is appropriate... and doing it too much apparently seems like I'm very confident, but actually I just don't know what to do exactly.

I'm late 30s, and my son was recently diagnosed with autism after having a lot of conflicts at school, and getting kicked out of a lot of schools. I didn't expect this because he seems "normal" to me.

Any advice on next steps? Is it worth learning more about this or doing anything about it, and if so, what?