This week is Neurodiversity Celebration week.
When I reflect on it, it was the heightened amount of messaging on social media that made me start researching around my own neurodivergency. This has culminated in me believing I’m Autistic.
So if you wanted an example of why these diversity weeks can be important, here’s a living, breathing example for you.
I’ve regularly had conversations where I’ve noticed I was different.
It’s been hard to put words to this, and whenever I’ve talked about being different to other people they have always tried to reassure me – we are all different in some way, right?
I never thought of myself as demonstrating signs of autism. My understanding was that autism were for those with very exaggerated traits. Even when I saw some resonance with certain common behaviours, I thought of autistic people as showing little regard to emotion, whereas I knew myself as highly emotional and sensitive.
Yet I read an article which highlighted that many traits of autism vary a lot – non-stereotypical autism shows up as being highly empathetic and sensitive, as well as being existential or spiritual beings. These signs of non-stereotypical behaviours are more common for women, ethnic minority and queer/gender non-confirming folk too.
So am I Autistic? Most probably.