Living With Autism | Health Update
48As many of my regular viewers know, I was diagnosed as autistic when I was 14. Since then, I have defied my assessor's claims that I would struggle to hold down a job, maintain a romantic relationship or live independently. 20 years later, I am nearly ten years into a design career, am married to my partner of 16 years, we have two kids and we have a mortgage.
Despite those successes, a lot of long-standing issues have been coming home to roost, leading to poor mental health since January of this year. In short, my training and support 20 years ago reinforced some really harmful self-perceptions, namely that I am always the problem, I am abnormal and I need to change to benefit everyone else around me. I was firmly told it was not socially acceptable to be autistic, so I had to do everything I could to appear to be "normal".
As a result, I have been over-extending myself and putting in an unsustainable amount of effort and energy into masking for the past 20 years and now I'm paying for it, big time. My mind and body are rebelling and saying, "No. We're not doing this anymore." That's had a massive impact on every aspect of my life, including this YouTube channel.
In this unscripted video, I talk about where I'm at, what support I'm getting and what my next steps are so that I can live with my autism, instead of constantly fighting against it.