Along with my autism diagnosis, I received another diagnosis: depression. I don’t remember when I started my personal battle with depression. It always seemed to be there – like those memory balls on Inside Out tinged with the color of emotion. Most of my memories are tinged with blue. It was a constant companion. Since…
As an autistic person, I hate the question, “How are you doing?” When I say that I hate the question, think Grinch-loathes-Whoville-and-Christmas level hate. Seriously, it’s a horrible question. Why haven’t neurotypicals figured this out yet? As most autistics do, I learned about the insanity of this question the hard way. People may ask this…
We all know that interrupting someone is rude. Our parents taught us that. Our teachers taught us that. It’s frustrating to be engrossed in a task or conversation and be interrupted. Just about anyone, neurotypical or neurodivergent, is irritated on some level. I envy the person that can pick up a conversation with, “Now where…
Is LinkedIn promoting its polling feature? I must have missed the memo. All I see as I scroll through LinkedIn these days are polls. Polls about leadership and jobs and benefits. Polls about inclusion and interviews and, well, it turns out you can make a poll about any topic. Just scroll through your LinkedIn feed;…
Just like most things in our society, we’ve structured the employment process around neurotypical social skills. Unfortunately, autistic social skills do not align with these expectations. It’s disheartening to read in Forbes that “a staggering 50-75% of the 5.6 million autistic adults in the U.S. are unemployed or underemployed.” As an autistic, I know how…
My gynecologist said it first. But she was not the last. Everyone I discuss my diagnosis with has a similar response: “You don’t look autistic.” What do people expect to see when they look at an autistic person? Autism is so integral to who I am that their disbelief is hurtful. I was diagnosed with…
Humans have fluid identities. The names or labels we use influence how we see ourselves and our place in the world. We build our experiences, emotions, and communities around those labels. As new labels are added to our lives, we reevaluate our identities to incorporate our new understanding. This process happens after an autism spectrum…
Many late diagnosed Aspie women have come to believe the negative views of others and internalized it. We’ve grown up plagued by rejection. To help us pick up on the nuances of conversation and relationships, we’ve developed mental scripts: a set of “how to be normal” instructions that we’ve accumulated throughout our lives. This…
Jane texted back and declined my lunch invitation because she would be out of town again. Following other weekend options, she claimed she would be out of town every weekend for the next month. Funny, considering that she was out of town the last three times, I asked her to meet up with me. Once I…
I learned early on in my life that I am never right. I am always wrong. Always acting wrong, always dressing wrong, always saying the wrong things, just always wrong. I have Asperger’s Syndrome as known as high-functioning autism. While I always knew that something was different about me, it wasn’t until last year, at…