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  I am readying myself for a return to work after just over a week off and I am feeling a quiet sense of dread. Unfortunately one of the realisations I have had along my autism journey is that the vocation I have chosen probably isn't for me. The thing I hear the most is that I am in fact really good at my job (social care worker working with adults with intellectual disabilities in a residential setting) and I don't dispute this fact. I am good at it and I am passionate about it and in many ways my autistic traits are a big part of what makes me good at what I do but at the same time these traits are also my downfall in this line work.  I am incredibly empathetic. This has been excellent in terms of relating to those I support and anticipating their needs. It allows me to put myself in another persons shoes with ease and allows me to build connections where others might struggle. In every job I have had in this field I have built really strong relationships with those I have s

  For some reason I felt compelled to write about a corner of my past that hasn't been part of my blog before. a heads up to anyone who might be upset by this topic I will be delving into emotional abuse so feel free to stop reading now if you don't feel able to carry on. When I was in my late 20's I met a guy on a night out. He was a few years younger than me and honestly looking back threw up a couple of red flags early but I didn't trust my own intuition plus I was only a few months away from finishing college and planned to move to Edinburgh in a few months so it wasn't like it was going to be anything more than a brief fling. However as time went on I became more infatuated with him, there was an intensity there and he seemed sweet but damaged. Like a perfect modern fairytale I thought I would be the one to fix him. somehow plans changed and he was going to follow me over to Edinburgh, get a job there and we were going to live happily ever after. at this point

  Ever since I have had the realisation that I am autistic I have been crying out for just the tiniest bit of accomodation. I am finding despite the fact I talk about my experiences quite openly, the allistic people in my life can't quite grasp how being autistic might make my experience of the world any different. Despite the fact that the road to self discovery took me 41 years, I have always been autistic. I have always processed the world differently and struggled with certain aspects of day to day life. I just hid it a little better. That process in itself is exhausting. So the aha moment was a little like someone put on a light when I had been busy squinting into the darkness and I do really wish I had made this discovery a bit earlier in my life but it is what it is. Everything makes more sense now but things are also a lot harder. The initial discovery period is an absolute trip. I am so much more aware of the way being out in the world affects me and I am also not making a

  As long as I can remember I have been someone very quick to cry. It is said that as a small child I cried so frequently that it was of note if a whole day went by without me crying over something and often I was teased about this fact and it was enough to prompt tears. Being someone who cries very easily is largely quite inconvenient. It would probably be easier at this point to list things that don't make me cry because it would definitely be shorter than the list of things that do. This list is not exhaustive but things I have noticed make me cry include ; any sort of emotional video or advert or tv show or book, anyone crying near me, any form of confrontation, if I am very stressed, If I am feeling angry, if I am feeling sad, criticism particularly when it is not offset by anything positive, someone saying oh you're not going to cry are you. This has led to moments of great embarrassment such as the many times I have cried in work or in public or just at moments where I w

 The beauty of not realising you are autistic until later in life is that you go through most of your life with the vague sense that something is off but not knowing quite what. I felt weird growing up and lots of things in different areas of my life were a struggle but I wasn't open with people about how I was experiencing the world so I genuinely didn't know if other people were having the same experience and just hiding it better. Also there have been many moments where I share something I was certain was a universal experience but it elicits a reaction that quickly lets me know this assumption was wrong and it's best not to share these thoughts just in case. Initially upon discovering I was autistic I made all of the obvious connections. The sensory issues, the being overly empathetic, the issues around eye contact, the social misunderstanding, the awkwardness of small talk and so on. These things had always existed for me and Autism was merely the coherent explanation

  To say I have been overdue a holiday is understating things. I have been edging towards burnout and a break has been badly needed. I had some time off over the summer but it ended up not being much of a rest for a number of reasons part of which was the fact that I was on the cusp of realising I was autistic but not quite there yet. So I was experiencing a lot of issues other autistic people face but I didn't have the vocabulary or context for what I was going through and this had a knock on effect in other areas of my life. Looking at those months with hindsight it is blatantly obvious what was going on. And so I planned a break so I could unwind, relax and maybe just restart my brain as though it was a tired old computer. I gave myself a long weekend to do regular things and then five days in Wexford because apparently I am like an ailing victorian woman who has been prescribed sea air and rest. I set off Monday in torrential rain, a rain so heavy the road disappeared. Not my i

  You might have seen the blog post title and eagerly clicked on it hoping for some helpful tips and tricks to master small talk. Let me stop you right there because spoiler alert I'm autistic so I know less about how to tread these waters than the average person. I was in fact being funny with my blog title, a sarcasm if you will.  I have always known that small talk was not my forte. It has always felt awkward, uncomfortable and just unnecessary. Other people seem to manage just fine while I struggled either seeming silent and shy or else I said the wrong thing or forgot to ask the right follow up questions. It was as though everyone was performing this social dance but no one had bothered to show me the steps.  When I discovered I was autistic it was a little light bulb moment and I realised not only was there a clear reason for the way I felt around small talk but there was a whole tribe of neurodivergent people who felt the exact same way. This was actually incredibly reassuri

  So I am on this journey of discovery post autism realization. I am figuring out ways in which being autistic has impacted my life and how I can best navigate the world within an autistic brain. Let me tell you a lot of if has been really exhausting. I am figuring out how best to accommodate myself and having bursts of frustration at the ways in which being autistic has made my life harder. now don't get me wrong, the struggle was always there, I just didn't know why and couldn't understand why I could not manage things that other people were doing with apparent ease. I genuinely wondered if we were all struggling but there was some secret pact to never speak of it to anyone or if it was just me. I have been delving into the murky world of unmasking which is tricky because in order to drop the mask you have to first work out which traits you have been suppressing and then also at what specific times and places is it safe to allow the mask to drop. Part of this process is p

  A key component to getting to adulthood as an undiagnosed autistic is masking. For the uninitiated this the process of hiding your autistic traits so that you can get by in a society built for neurotypical people. This is usually done as an unconscious process in childhood and onwards. you display a behaviour and are told repeatedly that it is not appropriate or weird and you learn to bury that deep inside until most of your life is a sort of a performance. Obviously this serves a purpose because autistic people would struggle to hold down jobs (this is already something a large proportion of the autistic population have difficulty with), maintain friendships and relationships if they were to go around with their fully unmasked selves on display for everyone to see.  The downside to this of course is that this is completely exhausting. It is a facade you must maintain and the unspoken message is that the world is not really prepared for you to be your autistic self. The other thing t

  As well as discovering that I am autistic, I have been mulling over the idea that I might be dyspraxic. I had a general idea what dyspraxia was but hadn't really looked the criteria in any detail to see is this a label that would fit my lived experience. For those of you unfamiliar it is a disorder that affects movement and coordination. Now for the evidence, lest anyone think I am in the habit of looking up complicated things and saying that I have them for fun. I can tell you there are lots of different reasons I have suspected dyspraxia for a number of years. for starters coordination. I am terribly, disastrously uncoordinated. I remember hating team sports in school and the urge to duck when someone throws a ball to me is still very much in play. I have noticed in the years I have been doing Crossfit that the movements I struggle most with are the ones that require coordination. For example I look hilarious attempting to do a jumping jack. Another thing is driving. While I am

  I have spent the last week feeling as though I am underwate r. My brain is not working as it should, everything feels slower and sluggish. There is a disconnect between me and the world and its almost as if I am watching life rather than experiencing it.  I have been chalking this up as my body's response to sensory overload and assumed I had entered into some form of shutdown to cope with the too much of everything like a computer going into standby mode. I seem to be going through a phase right now of being super honest with people rather than going through the complicated mental gymnastics that seem to be involved in neurotypical conversation. I am sure this is probably not appreciated by everyone I talk to but honestly I have bigger things to worry about right now. This however led to a very frank conversation with someone yesterday about what I was experiencing on a cognitive level as well as physically. It was rather difficult to clearly articulate my experience because lat

  I have always joked that I am a bit of an acquired taste as I don't immediately click with everyone I meet and if someone instantly dislikes me I can usually tell. I am pretty good at getting a read on people. I now know that part of that is because when you're autistic, even when masking well, you can seem a bit off to some people. A bit of the uncanny valley effect, something not so neurotypical in the atmosphere. I am currently reevaluating my life through an autistic lens and things are clicking a way they never did before. So many of my so called quirks are really just facets of my autism. I know there have been many times where I have told someone about how I spent my free time and gotten a slightly odd look , that feeling that I haven't quite said the right thing but not getting too worked up about it because so long as I enjoy it then does it really matter if it appeals to the average person. Today for example I spent two hours walking on a beach collecting sea gl

  As I sit writing this I am wondering is not a good time for curating my thoughts on this topic. My brain feels like I left it in the sun too long and it melted a bit. I have just had a day where I felt as though I was navigating underwater for the day and that's because yesterday was emotionally sort of a rough day but still I got up today and dragged myself to work. I doubted that I could be autistic because I didn't feel I had ever experienced a meltdown. I had heard them talked about in whispers within the autism community online but as it turns out I actually didn't have a clue what they actually looked like but the mental image I had in my head did not match any experience that I had. As I went deeper down the rabbit hole of all things autistic I realised that I was prone to not only meltdowns but shut downs too. I will explain more about shut downs in a moment. I think part of the issue is that while I had heard people talk about meltdowns I had never really delved

  So I can't blog about my experience being autistic and not talk about the importance of alone time. As someone with autism it's not that I want to spend a certain amount of time alone but that I need it in order to function. I've always valued time alone and would find myself getting overwhelmed if I had too much time in company. I chalked it up to being an introvert but I was aware on some level that other people found my desire for large amounts of alone time to be a bit weird. I remember several years ago planning a little holiday for myself, some books, time by the sea and my phone for taking photos and I was very excited about the prospect. I have had several such solo breaks and they have been very relaxing and enjoyable. I mentioned this planned holiday in passing to a colleague and she immediately wanted to know how big a group I was travelling with and when I said I was going alone, she reacted with abject horror. I could tell she felt very sorry for me 'havi

  I wanted to take a minute to talk about overstimulation, something familiar to anyone who is neurospicy/ neurodivergent. Initially I had wanted to write this post after work last night but working all weekend had left me too exhausted and over stimulated to write a coherent post and the irony of being too overstimulated to talk about over stimulation is not lost on me. Like many other aspects of being autistic this is something that I experienced before I knew I was autistic. I Just didn't have the vocabulary or context to make sense of it. I think the best metaphor I can come up with to explain the difference between how you experience your autistic traits before and after you realise it is in fact autism is this. I had a blocked ear for about a year. I had an infection in that ear and after it cleared I had wax build up. It was mildly uncomfortable and I could still hear but sound was muffled from that ear and then I finally got around to getting my ears syringed and when my ea

  When I first began exploring the possibility I could be autistic, one of the things or that threw me as I didn't seem to have any special interests or at least none that presented the way I had been led to believe special interests did. This is one of the many ways the big focus on autism as it presents in young boys, is doing everyone who does not fit that category a huge disservice. It is a big part of the reason so many of us fall through the cracks. we are missing all the signs because we haven't been told what to look for.  I started to uncover more about this side of myself when I did my deep dive, this involved reading up on autistic women, listening to autistic voices ( if this sounds like scientific research I will have you know it mostly involved watching tik toks) and teasing it out in therapy. I discovered this, special interests among autistic women often present a little differently than they do in men and also they can have layers. So you can have a strong or i

If I was to give someone one piece of advice before exploring if they too are on the neurospicy side, thinking they may be autistic or have Adhd or similar, I would say make sure you are in a good headspace because it's a lot. The reality is that I have always been autistic and it just took me 41 years to put the pieces together. I would like to chalk this up to the lack of research on how autism presents in women and my amazing masking skills (so good I even fooled myself into thinking I was just a bit weird) and not me being a bit dim for not following the breadcrumbs back to the very obvious conclusion. The thing is you will have a lot of could I be autistic, maybe I am, those traits sure sound like me and oh wait no that one doesn't so I guess I'm not, clearly I'm just quirky and also need to lie in a dark room for a few hours after socialising. Its hard to accurately impart a tone within a blog post so I will just clarify that I was being a little tongue in cheek.

 So I, at the age of 41, have come to the realization that I am autistic.  Growing up I always had a feeling something about me was a little bit off. I never quite fit in and I wasn't sure why. It was like everyone had been given a book of rules of how to exist in society but no one had thought to hand me a copy. Looking back with hindsight the signs were there. I was a super sensitive kid, a sensitivity I have not lost in adulthood, I cried very easily and felt every emotion very deeply. I was a picky eater and very particular about the textures of different food. I was very sensitive to light and noise and the feel of different fabrics. I was never a hugger. all of these things are as true about me now as they were when I was younger. I am socially awkward, I don't make friends that easily and will joke I am an acquired taste. Eye contact is something I have to actively work on and small talk feels like torture.  I thrive on alone time, I am incredibly sensitive to the moods