My Story
I am a late-diagnosed Autistic man with ADHD and Persistent Demand Avoidance. Before I knew this truth, I assumed I was “weird”. I didn’t need to assume it, people let me know.
Every time I didn’t understand an unwritten social rule, or didn’t get other people’s weird hints because they were scared to say what was on their mind, or any time I expected total honesty from dishonest people, I realised they were running on a different operating system.
This first understanding led me to believe my life would be pain after pain the longer I lived by “be yourself” and “Treat others how you want to be treated”, because that advice always backfired. So I stopped being real…
People didn’t want to be treated how I did and they didn’t want me to be myself because I was “too much”, “too intense”, ““too random” and told “Can you please just act normal for ten minutes?” when I wanted to talk about things that were actually important or interesting.
As a teenager, I blamed myself for everything and saw myself as the problem. Before I knew I was Autistic, I set myself on the misguided mission of “becoming whole” by mastering human interaction, charisma, and persuasion through extensive exposure therapy and testing socio-psychological concepts in the real world, both socially and professionally.
I defied my therapist by getting the most neurotypical job in world to accelerate the process: Sales.
Knowingly doing this is yourself is considered to be masochistic heresy today, but I didn't know who I was. This was applied and unconscious autistic masking, not sociopathy. Every time I burned out, I came back to “Patch” the software in my mind with updated information and tried again.
I got my diagnosis, ignored it like it wasn’t real, and continued consuming everything I could about social cues, body language, psychology, sales, sociology, and situational etiquette. I needed total control. A lot of information I studied and applied was proven by trial to be nonsense, or only applicable to neurotypicals. But I held onto what actually works.
Half a decade into my journey of trial and error, I achieved superficial success in all areas, particularly in the sales career and dating, but discovered something more valuable:
I was deeply unhappy.
I wasn’t being real.
The quest for “perfection” led me to mask so hard I was no longer able to tell who the real me was. I suffered a breakdown and severe burnout, which led me to embrace a path towards completion by accepting the truth I had been suppressing all these years: that I am in fact diagnosed Autistic and it’s time to be myself.
At first it felt like failure or admitting defeat. I held onto internalised ableism and felt shame when I wanted to tell people my diagnosis. But I slowly accepted myself. This process removed the last remnants of internalised ableism and bigotry in me, because I understood the parallel of code-switching, hiding identity, and that denying who you are doesn’t change who you are.
The final, lifechanging step was when I realised that by leaning into my neurodivergent difference, and being kind to myself, rather than running away from and “fixing” my mind, I could actually use the difference to compete in the world in ways unimaginable before, unlock new levels of connection with people, achieve more professional success, and become whole for real.
This ‘lean into advantages’ line of thinking attracts criticism within the Autistic community, as it was taken too far in the past by organisations who didn’t understand the Autistic lived experience. They believed with enough effort we could “get over it” and all become super-powered savants.
All this accomplished was heaping more shame and blame onto us for not being good enough.
I would like to make it clear that is not what I am about. I share a collection of wisdom and tools hard won from Autistic lived experience in the trenches of office politics, self identity, sales psychology, and becoming who I am.
With the tips in my blogs and books, and the correct perspective of working with my wiring instead of against it, I am finally at a place where I am truly playing to win, fulfilled, comfortable, confident and happy in my skin.
My goal is to help you do this too without the suffering it cost me to achieve it. To help you find and honour your very real and overlooked neurodivergent edge in both the professional setting and in life. To find the courage to Reject Limitation and Become More.
Thanks for reading
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