Over the past year or so, I’ve engaged with many LinkedIn posts on topics surrounding life with autism and the struggles I encounter regularly. I’ve combined these snippets into a series of blog posts covering different topics. I will post these here over the next several weeks, and I hope that they can help at least one person feel less alone or help at least one person better understand what it’s like to be autistic.

Some of the topics will include:

• Diminishing yourself and your autistic traits to make non-autistic people more comfortable: What this might look like, why we do it, and the effects it has on mental and physical health.
• Autistic anxiety: What it is, what it looks like, how it’s different from other forms of anxiety, and the very real consequences it can have on your quality of life.
• The cost of being autistic: The monetary cost. Being autistic can be expensive, and there are lots of things that I need to spend money on that neurotypical people may not.
• Autistic meltdowns: What they are, what they might look like, what mine looked like as a child, and what they were mistaken for growing up.
• Sensory overload: This includes loud noises or bright lights and the judgments you receive for not being able to do as much or push yourself as far as others, such as being called lazy or unmotivated.
• “Too sensitive”: Why I hate this phrase, how it’s been used against me, and why I continue to have strong emotions about people using it today, even if they “don’t mean it that way.”
• Alexithymia: How much of a problem it is in everyday life. Not just inconvenient but flat-out dangerous.

Some of these topics will be heavy; honestly, most of them will be. I will probably say some things about my childhood that will upset some people still in my life. All I can say is it’s not about you.

This isn’t me pushing blame and looking for pity or apologies. This is me stating the reality of what my life has been like. I’m hoping that it can help some people feel more seen, help other people gain more perspective, and maybe even change the way some people think or approach others.