I originally wrote this piece in response to a message I received from an anonymous follower who was questioning whether they might be autistic. I hope that by sharing my story I can help others who are in the same boat.
Admittedly I didn’t really know very much about autism until I was 20, when I found out my much younger cousin had been diagnosed. As I work with children, it was a bit of a wake up call to do some research and inform myself about it, particularly because I realised it would be relevant to my career. I did a little bit of reading and then carried on with my life for a few weeks without giving it a second thought. Then I stumbled across a documentary called “Are You Autistic?” on the TV one evening and it resonated with me so much that I was compelled to go back and read over everything one more time, and I started to question my whole life up until that point.
Suddenly it felt like everything just made sense; my constant struggle to make friends, not understanding why I got called rude for stating facts, my perfectionism, getting compared to Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, my hypersensitivity to light, being a fussy eater, the meltdowns I would have every time I went to a disco or any kind of party, my persistent love for Disney movies and children’s toys that followed me all the way through school and into adulthood, my obsession with and motivation to learn German, my acute sense of hearing and ability to mimic accents, my social anxiety and poor eye contact, the drop in my academic results as the curriculum stopped being engaging (I went from placing near the top of every gifted and extension class in primary school to “failing” high school with an ATAR of 59), all the problems I’d had working as an au pair in Germany, and months later, the fact I got fired from my job for no good reason.
I kept quiet about all this for almost a year before I finally ended up talking to my family about it, afraid I’d be offending my parents by implying they’d somehow completely overlooked what I could only see as a glaringly obvious developmental disorder. I had a massive depressive episode after coming back from having been in Germany for my birthday and then immediately quitting the new job I’d had for two weeks. Many tears and three psychologists later, I finally got my official diagnosis in August 2019 at the age of 21. I have never felt so relieved and validated in my life as I did on the car ride home from that appointment.
Since then my mental health has slowly been on the mend. I’ve been in regular cognitive behavioural therapy, connected with like minded people, stopped feeling guilty for struggling to pretend to be someone I’m not, and I’ve held down a job which I love for over two years. I don’t know where I’d be without this diagnosis.
language o’clock 