ASDKings.com

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 bl...

I’ll never be one of them. I’ll never be normal. I can wear the skin of normal, talk normal, walk normal and even… in short bursts… think normal (I assume) but in my bones I will always be who I am. And when I look towards the people who are what I am, I still don’t get the feeling I’m really allowed to feel like one of them.

Autistic adults are frequently misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, or personality disorders when clinicians fail to recognize masking strategies or atypical presentations, leading to prolonged denial and suffering. Camouflaging or masking autism is strongly associated with depression , self-criticism, and even suicidal risk , particularly in those diagnosed later in life. My Near-Fatal Mistake At 21 years old, I left the office of one of Europe’s leading experts in the field of autism with a piece of paper in my hand and a hole in my chest. Late-diagnosed Autism. It's a weird feeling. A piece of paper that minimises your entire life experience into one word, telling you who you are. How could it possibly know you better than you know yourself? It can't be right. I wasn't ready to face the truth. It had to be a mistake. I'd only spoken to the "qualified expert" for 20 minutes. He doesn't know me. Sure I have quirks and issues, but I'm not autistic. I...

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” -widely attributed to Einstein This quote often gets tossed around to help people on the spectrum cope. Don’t let this quote fade away after a moment of feeling superficially vindicated, because believe it or not, this goes so much deeper than we realise. The Big ‘D’ In ASD Stands For Disorder In the years after owning up to my late diagnosis, after years of denial, accepting it, growing into it, learning what it means, and finally realising I’d prefer to be this way than being neurotypical, something hit me like a tonne of bricks… the fact that this gift is considered a disorder at all pisses me off.  Disorder? How does the word disorderly describe the most systematic, pattern-driven, hyper focussed, intellectually driven group of people on earth?  It doesn’t. Disorderly describes irrational, emotions-first, unpredictable people. Disorderl...