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  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 incredibl...

  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 othe...