Which job sectors do people work in ?

I've previously worked as a laboratory assistant (enjoyed it, but was only for maternity leave cover for 3 months), then as a medical technician, but since starting a family have only managed shift work. I've been a bakers assistant, school dinner lady, and was a night carer in a care home for people with dementia, but am now a domestic.I don't like where I am all that much, morale is generally low and staff turnover high, but I'm managing.

I've thought of looking for work caring for people with disabilities, but ironically now I am self diagnosed with Asperger's I'm more worried about job interviews than I used to be when I was living in ignorance. Everything I look at expects good communication skills and teamwork.

Would it be worth mentioning at interview, especially as it isn't official, or would it count against me? If you don't mind me asking, did you find it challenging to get the job you have now, and do you find autism to be a plus or a minus? (Not just at interview, but in the job itself.)

I currently don't have a diagnosis (hence my forum name) and it's only since the start of May that I've seriously considered that I may be on the spectrum. Information gathering at this point and considering self funding a private assessment. I think that I fit a more subtle presentation of ASC and as a woman (from what I've read in this forum) it sounds as though I'd need to strongly argue my case to be referred on the NHS, let alone be assessed by someone experienced and sensitive enough to detect a more subtle (and female) presentation. 

A quick Google of the local authority uncovers no clear diagnostic pathway for (non-learning disabled) adults with suspected ASC, only a document dated 2011 stating that there is a clear need for one (!). 

I've had my current job for over 8 years and it's been the best one I've had to date. I've had quite a few 'false starts' career-wise, and a lot of time spent feeling lost. I've been bullied in previous jobs and a little bit at the start of this one too, but have found my (skillset) niche which makes me valuable (ha, ha!). 

I don't interview well and experience high levels of performance anxiety. This is an area I need to work on. A disastrous interview at the start of May actually triggered me to join this forum and start info gathering for a referral. 

There's a lot of social contact in my current role, noise & it's a busy environment. Lots of interruptions, loud conversations and complaining - much of it from other staff. All of this is very tiring. I've worked out that if I spend a bit of time chatting with service users (adults with learning disabilities) I can re-energise a bit. They tend to be more transparent and direct in their communication, more present in the moment than other staff so I think this may be why. Listening to music and spending lunch by myself also helps.

The job is very interesting and I've never been bored. My self-esteem and sense of capability have developed a lot in the past 8 years and I have a sense of purpose and direction. This compensates for the other bits, though I wish I had more energy for myself in the evenings and didn't use the majority of my weekend to recuperate. 

Yes, this was really lovely to read, the same as seekeraftertruths comment. It’s really great that you’ve recognised you’re on the spectrum and I know that you’ll figure this out, like you have done so far. It may take some time and maybe a bit of trial and error. I agree with your decision to pay for an assessment. I had a really great experience with the nhs assessment process but I know that, that isn’t the case for anybody and I feel sure you’ll get a much more thorough assessment and conclusion by going private and it would be great if the assessor is also able to work with you to devise a plan so you get to spend your weekends and free time doing something more pleasurable than recovering. However, I have no doubt that you’ll suss this out and there is some fabulous support out there for people like us. I’m currently working with autism plus and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, it’s really helping. It’s such a huge help to work with somebody who not only understands me (as far as anybody can) but who also understands autism because she can see things that I can’t and it’s enabling me to create a plan to get things how I want them. Best of luck but you won’t need it. What I ought to say, is, we’ve got your back and there really is lots of help out there and sometimes, with just a bit of support, we can move mountains and you’re moving them already, thanks for sharing your experience. 

Hi Possibly Autistic, I started to answer this question and it was going on forever! Lol! Longer than usual ~ and I’m not even sure I was even answering your question!!! And even now, I’ve gone on forever again!!!! Gggrrrrrggghhhhh 

Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to read it. I know I can go on and on because I don’t know how to answer questions any other way. Anyway, here’s my answer to only the second part of the question. I gave up on trying to answer the first part. 

I think the second part of the question is easier for me to answer. 

The AP totally understands me and actually, she understands me better than I understand myself at times, because of her knowledge of autism and because she can see things that I can’t see, which is expanding my awareness of myself, others and how I interact/communicate with the world, so this is proving highly beneficial. 

I see things that many other people don’t see but I also don’t see somethings that I really do need to see, if I’m going to live a harmonious life in this current nt set up, so she is able to point things out to me that I don’t see. That’s not always easy, as I really don’t see them, but because I trust her and feel safe with her, I know she’s acting for my good so I accept what she’s saying, then allow myself time to process what she says and somehow or another, I seem to be able to come to an understanding of it. This doesn’t mean I will automatically remember it the next time but by talking to her, she is able to point out times when I didn’t remember, which brings it more to my attention and next time, I might be more aware of it, even if it’s after the situation but this way, I’m building up a new helpful mind pattern that will help me in the long run - as well as helping me with little strategies, such as, getting a second set of clothes ready, that I like to wear, for when I need to change the current ones, to lessen the stress or discomfort of changing my clothes. I haven’t started this yet as I currently have mostly dirty clothes, but it’s in the plan! Lol! 

I think I may be going on and on again so I apologise if I am. I’ll try to wrap it up but if you can ask the questions again but more specifically, maybe I’ll be able to answer without going on and on, I don’t know, probably not? 

She also helps to keep me grounded which is really important to me and she gives me tips to keep me there. For example, I eat a raw food diet but eating this way gives you so much energy and takes your health to the next level (it’s also the best solution for my so called eating ‘disorder’) but eating chips (and potatoes are one of my favourite foods) helps keep me more grounded as I don’t have a plan yet as to what to do with all this energy. So as I told her this yesterday, she told me to EAT CHIPS EVERY DAY. I never thought of that!!!!!  

It might sound crazy, but just because I know eating chips helps to ground me, I didn’t think that oh, I ought to eat chips every day then, that’l help! It took her pointing it out to me. And last night, when I really did not want to eat but I was feeling light headed and not too good, I remembered her words and despite not really wanting to, I went and cut some potatoes up, made them into chips in the oven and ate them with some salad. 

It was amazing (to me) how great I felt from eating the food. It was a struggle to start with but towards the end of eating it all, I was even enjoying it. If we hadn’t had that conversation, I doubt I would have eaten last night and I wouldn’t have felt better. It’s like her words acted like a life raft and pulled me home to safety and now I’ve had that experience, it has reinforced my commitment to getting this thing sorted. It’s like recovery periods, feeling like s**t and feeling exhausted, had become such a big part of my life, I had considered them normal and hadn’t considered that it might not have to be that way if I understood why it was like that. 

She’s also like my number one champion. She points out how well I’m doing and she helps me to understand how my mind works, not only from my perspective but from other perspectives as well and getting these other perspectives, is really helpful to me. 

There are so many ways that I could list in how she’s helped me so far, in only three weeks, but  I know the actual reason why this partnership is working so well, but it seems that when I tell people the real reason, they can’t comprehend it and I’m starting to realise why - because not everybody thinks like me, lol! I’m a slow learner sometimes! So I’m sorry if none of this makes sense to you, I can only share my experience, and I’ll keep the most ‘my world’ stuff, to myself. 

But what I will say, is that without actually realising what I was doing, I’ve built up around me, a really solid support network which meets all of my needs. I find it pretty astonishing because I’ve never had this before or rather I never really understood what a ‘support network’ was or what it really meant.  I was a Lone Ranger so I’m still processing this new set up. But it’s like I’ve now got several places, where I can go to be with several people, for several reasons, where I am just as comfortable as I am when I’m at home, alone. I’ve had full on meltdowns in some of these places, I’ve cried, been hyper, I’ve rambled on and on because in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a talker, lol. I’ve done some really weird behaviour and I’ve freaked out and not been able to go to any of these places for periods of time. But as I look around, I realise, that they are my support network now, they’re part of my new life. I’ve got everything I could ever need and I just need to work out how it all fits together to give me the exact life I  am creating, where I get all of my needs met, have an enjoyable life and I have the income to enable me to live exactly how I want. (So it’s a joint effort, including the support and value I receive from this group). 

None of these people in my life now, are ever going to leave me (unless they die or something). The only way they won’t be in my life is if I stop all contact, which is what I usually do but because I’ve bulit this circle up around me and my needs (and not my masking needs) I don’t want to end it. 

This is me stepping into a life which includes other people. I am still a lone warrior in many ways, but I know that nothing in this world works independent of everything else and I do want to be a part of this world and enjoy it (otherwise I’d be living in a cave by now!), but it has to be on my terms. I wouldn’t be able to achieve that aim without support. I really could not do it alone and I don’t think anybody else can. Even though I ‘appeared’ to have a ‘good’ life, from the outside looking in, that was the best I got when I tried to do it alone. 

These people are helping me learn to be me in this world and they’re helping me to achieve my hopes and dreams of what is the perfect life for me. I still have some shadows from my old mindset of the survivor and masker, of how I think my life ‘should’ look, but they’re fading. I’m creating my life around my little world without fearing the judgement of others and while doing my best to bring love and light into the lives of everyone I meet, which requires me to have an understanding and consideration of other people’s perspectives, and for me to be happy in my life, and it turns out, I couldn’t do that alone. 

So it’s currently a work in progress but I know where I’m going and I’m slowly getting used to having a support network. It’s still very weird and my first tendency is to run away but I’m sticking with it and I really am creating the life of my dreams, even if that’s not apparent to everybody else. 

Appearances only ever show a small fraction of what’s really going on. We know that, as autistic people. People look at our behaviour etc and come up with what they think is going on but as we know, they are often, only scratching the surface, at best and at worst, they’re getting it completely wrong. 

I used to have what most people would consider a ‘good’ job with more money than I could spend and they would consider my life to be a ‘good’ life. They saw me as a free spirit, someone who travels the world doing just what she wants.  However, it was based on masking and with everything I do in life, I gave this mission my best. I got good at it. Only to find I was having these frequent ‘burnouts’. I would be tired after work and at the weekends and even if I did go and do other things, such as yoga etc, it started to feel like I was somehow trapped in the wrong ‘time’. It’s like things happened too quickly. Things would suddenly come at me and I hadn’t even processed what I was doing last week. It’s like my mind was always a couple of days in front, without me realising it, which made me think I was always late! I realised I had always felt like this, I had simply got good at masking it, even to myself. 

To cut a long story short, I came to a place where I realised, I had to build my life from the ground up, build a solid foundation, but most of all, because of my obsessive nature etc, I had to build my working life around what I will call my ‘main’ life. I love my work and I’m passionate about it, it is related to one of my long term special interests. So there was a danger, that I would put all my efforts into my work and have little left over for other things. 

But what other things did I seriously like doing anyway? I didn’t know, because I have lived for 50 years simply trying to fit myself into a system not designed for me. So before I got my work life in order, I had to get my life in order, to build a solid foundation built around me and the things that I like doing. 

This has taken an extended period of self imposed isolation and the help and support of others. Solitude is my sanctuary and from where I work things out and from this place, of zero, I’m building my new life up around me. It turns out, that what I really love to do, is to stay in my bedroom, all day long, to play on my computer game or research Henry Ford or one of my other latest obsessions. To eat or drink and get dressed etc only when I absolutely have to and never to have to deal with the so called ‘real’ world or at least as little as possible! I want to be forever a teenage boy who doesn’t want to leave his room, unless I find a mission to get obsessed about ;) 

However, I’m not going to earn a living or enjoy some of the other fruits of life if I simply do that all day. I can’t, apparently, be an Edith Blyton character for all my life, living in an Enid Blyton world. So my AP worker is helping me to figure out a plan to put all the pieces together, in a way that works for everybody, without ever compromising myself or anybody else, and I get the life I’ve always dreamed of. 

It’s a whole new world and I’m taking my time (the man made time) because afterall, time doesn’t exist in my world, beyond now! 

Our work together is about working out a plan to harmonise my world with the current set up (outside world) and that will involve give and take on both sides but without compromising anybody. It’s possible. I have reluctantly agreed, although I’m still working on changing it, that I call into the job centre every couple of weeks or so to see my work coach. But I don’t ever have to even have the phrase ‘looking for work’ mentioned to me, ever, because they understand where I’m at and what I’m working towards and that phrase, just freaks me out. People told me I had to ‘play the game’ to get the money, but I couldn’t. I’m not asking that the system bends to do things ‘my’ way, that would be the same as what I’m protesting against. I simply ask them to take my needs into consideration which means they do have to start to think and work a little differently and they have to learn to understand me, and me them. And it is only me that can tell them what it’s like for me. I can’t leave them to guess or figure it out for themselves, because look at the mess the experts made of that, when trying to figure out autism! The best they could come up with, after years of research, is that it’s the ‘hidden’ disorder and that it’s ‘mysterious’!!!

So I discovered that it’s better not to leave these things to chance, because chances are, if we don’t tell them what life is like for us and what our goals and aspirations are, they won’t know and their conclusions about us are often something negative, such as we’re lazy. My support worker (it actually worked in the end) said it was like I was acting like a spoilt child refusing to eat. My second support worker, the AP, said that’s how it looks to somebody who doesn’t understand autism, they have no other frame of reference for the behaviour. But it prompted me to explain to her (first one) what it (eating) was like for me, in my own words and in my own way, and it turns out, I described an eating disorder, highly connected to autism, and in that instant of awareness, (when I found out about the disorder), I solved my issues with food and eating. It isn’t an eating ‘disorder’, it’s simply my sensitivity to food which means I simply need to be mindful of what I eat and it’s reaction in my body. But they call it a disorder, so people start to get treated for the symptoms, like I was, but that doesn’t  work because it’s not treating the problem, the real cause, so we get nowhere. 

Probably the best thing that ever happened to me, after realising I needed help, even if it didn’t fit into any category, was to simply come out and tell my job centre coach, a bit of what my life was actually like. About what goes off in my head. She just looked at me and stared. And said, ‘you need help’. I couldn’t believe it. She said you don’t need a job, you need help. And she was on it and within a week, I had my very first support worker, post diagnosis. She works for the same authority that I worked for, I used to liase with her team and did some thoroughly enjoyable joint working with them. I valued their team highly but never in a million years did I ever think I would be a client, a service user!!! Lol! And even though I look nothing like any of their other clients, I’m just the same as them because I’m getting the help I need. There’s no shame in that. None at all. I’ve lived in countries where they tie people up when they have dementia, to keep them safe, because they have no other choice. I feel privileged and super grateful that I live in a society that will help me, a successful and very good at my job professional, with my needs. It makes me want to give back to this society. Despite the appearance of it being a harsh place to live, there is so much good out there and if you focus on the good, the bad disappears. And not just in the mind, but outside of the mind too, because there is nothing in the physical world, that the senses can behold, that did not first start out as an idea in the mind. It all starts in the mind which doesn’t mean we ignore what our senses perceive. We base our whole life on the mantra of going to give. So if we come upon someone who is in need of help and who wants help, we will do what we can to help them. If we can’t help them because of our own difficulties, then we will be focused on our difficulties and the other person’s won’t exist to us anyway. 

But when we no longer have any difficulties, we are always ready and able to help all that we come into contact with. 

That might sound like a busy job, if you believe the social media hype, but if you look around, most people don’t actually want help, they simply want support to remain in their sufferings or their current life. So it’s not as big a task as you might at first think. To be going around always going to give, because few people, if you genuinely want to help, will want your gifts and it’s not a gift if you give it to somebody who doesn’t want it. 

With practice, it becomes clear to you (most of the time or at least some of the time) who wants your help or who is in the shady bit of not being sure or whatever or who is in the bit where they absolutely do not need or want your help and you begin to use your power of discernment as to where you put your energy. Spend it where you feel best and if you can help someone along the way, do it. But live for you, is what I say and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to be received with a lot of good, solid and extremely helpful support, since I began to accept myself and come out and say, this is who I am, please help me. I didn’t know I could get help with that, I thought I had to hide it. 

Former Member Can you say a bit more about the new strategies that you are using and what AP is doing that really helps? (If you don't mind).  

Former Member Can you say a bit more about the new strategies that you are using and what AP is doing that really helps? (If you don't mind).  

Hi Possibly Autistic, I started to answer this question and it was going on forever! Lol! Longer than usual ~ and I’m not even sure I was even answering your question!!! And even now, I’ve gone on forever again!!!! Gggrrrrrggghhhhh 

Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to read it. I know I can go on and on because I don’t know how to answer questions any other way. Anyway, here’s my answer to only the second part of the question. I gave up on trying to answer the first part. 

I think the second part of the question is easier for me to answer. 

The AP totally understands me and actually, she understands me better than I understand myself at times, because of her knowledge of autism and because she can see things that I can’t see, which is expanding my awareness of myself, others and how I interact/communicate with the world, so this is proving highly beneficial. 

I see things that many other people don’t see but I also don’t see somethings that I really do need to see, if I’m going to live a harmonious life in this current nt set up, so she is able to point things out to me that I don’t see. That’s not always easy, as I really don’t see them, but because I trust her and feel safe with her, I know she’s acting for my good so I accept what she’s saying, then allow myself time to process what she says and somehow or another, I seem to be able to come to an understanding of it. This doesn’t mean I will automatically remember it the next time but by talking to her, she is able to point out times when I didn’t remember, which brings it more to my attention and next time, I might be more aware of it, even if it’s after the situation but this way, I’m building up a new helpful mind pattern that will help me in the long run - as well as helping me with little strategies, such as, getting a second set of clothes ready, that I like to wear, for when I need to change the current ones, to lessen the stress or discomfort of changing my clothes. I haven’t started this yet as I currently have mostly dirty clothes, but it’s in the plan! Lol! 

I think I may be going on and on again so I apologise if I am. I’ll try to wrap it up but if you can ask the questions again but more specifically, maybe I’ll be able to answer without going on and on, I don’t know, probably not? 

She also helps to keep me grounded which is really important to me and she gives me tips to keep me there. For example, I eat a raw food diet but eating this way gives you so much energy and takes your health to the next level (it’s also the best solution for my so called eating ‘disorder’) but eating chips (and potatoes are one of my favourite foods) helps keep me more grounded as I don’t have a plan yet as to what to do with all this energy. So as I told her this yesterday, she told me to EAT CHIPS EVERY DAY. I never thought of that!!!!!  

It might sound crazy, but just because I know eating chips helps to ground me, I didn’t think that oh, I ought to eat chips every day then, that’l help! It took her pointing it out to me. And last night, when I really did not want to eat but I was feeling light headed and not too good, I remembered her words and despite not really wanting to, I went and cut some potatoes up, made them into chips in the oven and ate them with some salad. 

It was amazing (to me) how great I felt from eating the food. It was a struggle to start with but towards the end of eating it all, I was even enjoying it. If we hadn’t had that conversation, I doubt I would have eaten last night and I wouldn’t have felt better. It’s like her words acted like a life raft and pulled me home to safety and now I’ve had that experience, it has reinforced my commitment to getting this thing sorted. It’s like recovery periods, feeling like s**t and feeling exhausted, had become such a big part of my life, I had considered them normal and hadn’t considered that it might not have to be that way if I understood why it was like that. 

She’s also like my number one champion. She points out how well I’m doing and she helps me to understand how my mind works, not only from my perspective but from other perspectives as well and getting these other perspectives, is really helpful to me. 

There are so many ways that I could list in how she’s helped me so far, in only three weeks, but  I know the actual reason why this partnership is working so well, but it seems that when I tell people the real reason, they can’t comprehend it and I’m starting to realise why - because not everybody thinks like me, lol! I’m a slow learner sometimes! So I’m sorry if none of this makes sense to you, I can only share my experience, and I’ll keep the most ‘my world’ stuff, to myself. 

But what I will say, is that without actually realising what I was doing, I’ve built up around me, a really solid support network which meets all of my needs. I find it pretty astonishing because I’ve never had this before or rather I never really understood what a ‘support network’ was or what it really meant.  I was a Lone Ranger so I’m still processing this new set up. But it’s like I’ve now got several places, where I can go to be with several people, for several reasons, where I am just as comfortable as I am when I’m at home, alone. I’ve had full on meltdowns in some of these places, I’ve cried, been hyper, I’ve rambled on and on because in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a talker, lol. I’ve done some really weird behaviour and I’ve freaked out and not been able to go to any of these places for periods of time. But as I look around, I realise, that they are my support network now, they’re part of my new life. I’ve got everything I could ever need and I just need to work out how it all fits together to give me the exact life I  am creating, where I get all of my needs met, have an enjoyable life and I have the income to enable me to live exactly how I want. (So it’s a joint effort, including the support and value I receive from this group). 

None of these people in my life now, are ever going to leave me (unless they die or something). The only way they won’t be in my life is if I stop all contact, which is what I usually do but because I’ve bulit this circle up around me and my needs (and not my masking needs) I don’t want to end it. 

This is me stepping into a life which includes other people. I am still a lone warrior in many ways, but I know that nothing in this world works independent of everything else and I do want to be a part of this world and enjoy it (otherwise I’d be living in a cave by now!), but it has to be on my terms. I wouldn’t be able to achieve that aim without support. I really could not do it alone and I don’t think anybody else can. Even though I ‘appeared’ to have a ‘good’ life, from the outside looking in, that was the best I got when I tried to do it alone. 

These people are helping me learn to be me in this world and they’re helping me to achieve my hopes and dreams of what is the perfect life for me. I still have some shadows from my old mindset of the survivor and masker, of how I think my life ‘should’ look, but they’re fading. I’m creating my life around my little world without fearing the judgement of others and while doing my best to bring love and light into the lives of everyone I meet, which requires me to have an understanding and consideration of other people’s perspectives, and for me to be happy in my life, and it turns out, I couldn’t do that alone. 

So it’s currently a work in progress but I know where I’m going and I’m slowly getting used to having a support network. It’s still very weird and my first tendency is to run away but I’m sticking with it and I really am creating the life of my dreams, even if that’s not apparent to everybody else. 

Appearances only ever show a small fraction of what’s really going on. We know that, as autistic people. People look at our behaviour etc and come up with what they think is going on but as we know, they are often, only scratching the surface, at best and at worst, they’re getting it completely wrong. 

I used to have what most people would consider a ‘good’ job with more money than I could spend and they would consider my life to be a ‘good’ life. They saw me as a free spirit, someone who travels the world doing just what she wants.  However, it was based on masking and with everything I do in life, I gave this mission my best. I got good at it. Only to find I was having these frequent ‘burnouts’. I would be tired after work and at the weekends and even if I did go and do other things, such as yoga etc, it started to feel like I was somehow trapped in the wrong ‘time’. It’s like things happened too quickly. Things would suddenly come at me and I hadn’t even processed what I was doing last week. It’s like my mind was always a couple of days in front, without me realising it, which made me think I was always late! I realised I had always felt like this, I had simply got good at masking it, even to myself. 

To cut a long story short, I came to a place where I realised, I had to build my life from the ground up, build a solid foundation, but most of all, because of my obsessive nature etc, I had to build my working life around what I will call my ‘main’ life. I love my work and I’m passionate about it, it is related to one of my long term special interests. So there was a danger, that I would put all my efforts into my work and have little left over for other things. 

But what other things did I seriously like doing anyway? I didn’t know, because I have lived for 50 years simply trying to fit myself into a system not designed for me. So before I got my work life in order, I had to get my life in order, to build a solid foundation built around me and the things that I like doing. 

This has taken an extended period of self imposed isolation and the help and support of others. Solitude is my sanctuary and from where I work things out and from this place, of zero, I’m building my new life up around me. It turns out, that what I really love to do, is to stay in my bedroom, all day long, to play on my computer game or research Henry Ford or one of my other latest obsessions. To eat or drink and get dressed etc only when I absolutely have to and never to have to deal with the so called ‘real’ world or at least as little as possible! I want to be forever a teenage boy who doesn’t want to leave his room, unless I find a mission to get obsessed about ;) 

However, I’m not going to earn a living or enjoy some of the other fruits of life if I simply do that all day. I can’t, apparently, be an Edith Blyton character for all my life, living in an Enid Blyton world. So my AP worker is helping me to figure out a plan to put all the pieces together, in a way that works for everybody, without ever compromising myself or anybody else, and I get the life I’ve always dreamed of. 

It’s a whole new world and I’m taking my time (the man made time) because afterall, time doesn’t exist in my world, beyond now! 

Our work together is about working out a plan to harmonise my world with the current set up (outside world) and that will involve give and take on both sides but without compromising anybody. It’s possible. I have reluctantly agreed, although I’m still working on changing it, that I call into the job centre every couple of weeks or so to see my work coach. But I don’t ever have to even have the phrase ‘looking for work’ mentioned to me, ever, because they understand where I’m at and what I’m working towards and that phrase, just freaks me out. People told me I had to ‘play the game’ to get the money, but I couldn’t. I’m not asking that the system bends to do things ‘my’ way, that would be the same as what I’m protesting against. I simply ask them to take my needs into consideration which means they do have to start to think and work a little differently and they have to learn to understand me, and me them. And it is only me that can tell them what it’s like for me. I can’t leave them to guess or figure it out for themselves, because look at the mess the experts made of that, when trying to figure out autism! The best they could come up with, after years of research, is that it’s the ‘hidden’ disorder and that it’s ‘mysterious’!!!

So I discovered that it’s better not to leave these things to chance, because chances are, if we don’t tell them what life is like for us and what our goals and aspirations are, they won’t know and their conclusions about us are often something negative, such as we’re lazy. My support worker (it actually worked in the end) said it was like I was acting like a spoilt child refusing to eat. My second support worker, the AP, said that’s how it looks to somebody who doesn’t understand autism, they have no other frame of reference for the behaviour. But it prompted me to explain to her (first one) what it (eating) was like for me, in my own words and in my own way, and it turns out, I described an eating disorder, highly connected to autism, and in that instant of awareness, (when I found out about the disorder), I solved my issues with food and eating. It isn’t an eating ‘disorder’, it’s simply my sensitivity to food which means I simply need to be mindful of what I eat and it’s reaction in my body. But they call it a disorder, so people start to get treated for the symptoms, like I was, but that doesn’t  work because it’s not treating the problem, the real cause, so we get nowhere. 

Probably the best thing that ever happened to me, after realising I needed help, even if it didn’t fit into any category, was to simply come out and tell my job centre coach, a bit of what my life was actually like. About what goes off in my head. She just looked at me and stared. And said, ‘you need help’. I couldn’t believe it. She said you don’t need a job, you need help. And she was on it and within a week, I had my very first support worker, post diagnosis. She works for the same authority that I worked for, I used to liase with her team and did some thoroughly enjoyable joint working with them. I valued their team highly but never in a million years did I ever think I would be a client, a service user!!! Lol! And even though I look nothing like any of their other clients, I’m just the same as them because I’m getting the help I need. There’s no shame in that. None at all. I’ve lived in countries where they tie people up when they have dementia, to keep them safe, because they have no other choice. I feel privileged and super grateful that I live in a society that will help me, a successful and very good at my job professional, with my needs. It makes me want to give back to this society. Despite the appearance of it being a harsh place to live, there is so much good out there and if you focus on the good, the bad disappears. And not just in the mind, but outside of the mind too, because there is nothing in the physical world, that the senses can behold, that did not first start out as an idea in the mind. It all starts in the mind which doesn’t mean we ignore what our senses perceive. We base our whole life on the mantra of going to give. So if we come upon someone who is in need of help and who wants help, we will do what we can to help them. If we can’t help them because of our own difficulties, then we will be focused on our difficulties and the other person’s won’t exist to us anyway. 

But when we no longer have any difficulties, we are always ready and able to help all that we come into contact with. 

That might sound like a busy job, if you believe the social media hype, but if you look around, most people don’t actually want help, they simply want support to remain in their sufferings or their current life. So it’s not as big a task as you might at first think. To be going around always going to give, because few people, if you genuinely want to help, will want your gifts and it’s not a gift if you give it to somebody who doesn’t want it. 

With practice, it becomes clear to you (most of the time or at least some of the time) who wants your help or who is in the shady bit of not being sure or whatever or who is in the bit where they absolutely do not need or want your help and you begin to use your power of discernment as to where you put your energy. Spend it where you feel best and if you can help someone along the way, do it. But live for you, is what I say and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised to be received with a lot of good, solid and extremely helpful support, since I began to accept myself and come out and say, this is who I am, please help me. I didn’t know I could get help with that, I thought I had to hide it.