I do not have an autism diagnosis. I want to be upfront about that. But I am someone who, about thirteen years ago, broke down in tears in front of a close friend because I genuinely believed I might be autistic, and had been carrying that thought for a long time without knowing what to do with it.
I was in my early twenties. And I felt like an alien. Not in a quirky, romanticised way. In a deeply disorienting, isolating way, like everyone around me had access to a social instruction manual that I had somehow not been given. This was true in school. It was true at work. It was true in the rugby club. It was true in spaces that, by all external accounts, I should have felt comfortable in.
Over the years, I have collected a running mental archive of things people have said about me. Some of it kind. Some of it not. All of it still very much living rent-free in my head:
You're so confident.
You're too direct.
You make friends everywhere you go.
You share too much.
You create a really safe environment.
You make people feel uncomfortable.
You have so much patience.
You seem moody and unapproachable.
You're so resilient.
You’re too emotional.
The same person. Same brain. Same nervous system. Completely contradictory assessments.
I have spent a significant amount of my life trying to reconcile these observations, trying to figure out which version of me is the 'real' one, and which is the performance. And the truth I have landed on, slowly and somewhat painfully, is that they are all real.
They are all me.
And the reason they look contradictory from the outside is that what you are seeing depends enormously on context, on whether I have had enough sleep, enough quiet, enough time alone, enough to eat, and on whether the environment I am in is one that demands constant masking, constant performance, constant output.
Masking is a term used widely in autistic communities to describe the conscious or unconscious process of suppressing natural behaviours and performing social expectations instead. Scripting conversations in advance. Mirroring other people's body language. Monitoring your tone, your volume, your eye contact, your facial expressions, all simultaneously, all the time, all while also trying to follow what is actually being said.
I will not claim to know the full weight of what many autistic people experience in this regard. But I can say that something in this description has always felt personally recognisable. The social scanning that happens below the surface. The exhaustion that follows what should have been a perfectly enjoyable evening. The way I can be 'on' in a room full of people and then need several hours of near-complete silence to feel like myself again.
The Jekyll and Hyde framing I used to use about myself, and that others used about me, implies something sinister. Something broken. As if the version of me who is quiet, withdrawn, or blunt after a long week is a failure of character rather than a physiological response to depletion. That framing is not only unhelpful; it is not true.
Here is why I think this story belongs on an EDI blog and not just a personal one: the expectation of constant performance is not neutral. It disproportionately harms people who are already spending cognitive and emotional resources managing identities that the default culture does not accommodate.
Autistic employees, neurodivergent employees more broadly, are often held to neurotypical standards of communication, presentation, and social engagement, and then assessed against those standards in ways that compound disadvantage.
Directness is misread as rudeness.
Stimming is described as unprofessional.
Needing clear instructions rather than reading between the lines is treated as a lack of initiative.
Preference for written communication over open-plan brainstorming is labelled as 'not a team player'.
These are differences that a well-designed, genuinely inclusive workplace can accommodate and thrive because of. But only if we are willing to examine our assumptions about what 'normal' professionalism looks like, and who set those standards in the first place.
Awareness is a starting point. Knowing that autism exists, knowing broadly what it looks like is important. But awareness without action tends to produce sympathy rather than change. And in workplaces, sympathy is not the same as inclusion.
Acceptance goes further. Acceptance says: you do not need to perform neurotypicality to belong here. Appreciation goes further still: your way of thinking, processing, problem-solving, and engaging is genuinely valued.
What does that look like in practice? It looks like flexible communication norms. Clear, written information as standard rather than an afterthought. Meetings with agendas sent in advance. Quiet spaces. Processes for requesting adjustments without having to disclose a diagnosis. Managers trained in neurodiversity awareness who do not default to 'you just need to push through it.'
These changes do not require a massive overhaul. They require intention, attention, and a willingness to ask the people most affected what they need and then act on the answer.
Thirteen years on from that tearful conversation, I have a lot more language for my experience than I did then. I also have a lot more compassion for my younger self, the one who spent years trying to figure out why she felt like she was on the wrong frequency, and whether there was something fundamentally wrong with her.
There was not. There is not. And if you are somewhere in that experience right now, whether you have a diagnosis, are seeking one, or are just trying to make sense of a brain that doesn't seem to operate quite like everyone else's, please know that you are not broken. You are navigating a world that was not designed with you in mind. That is the world's failing, not yours.
Autism Acceptance Month is a good time to remember that. And then to do something about it.