Published on 12, July, 2020
Hey all
I'm staying anonymous until I feel a bit more comfortable; hope that's ok and doesn't make people skim past me.
Early 2023 saw me as the picture of privilege (from the outside anyway); stable middle-class upbringing, nothing diverse about me to speak of. I've done well in my career and, heading towards 40, was pushing for a leadership position in the firm I work for which required some interviews and some deep personal reflections.
Long story short, I failed. Got some 'interesting' feedback about eye contact in the interview / answering questions directly, without taking the opportunity to use it to spin into a self-praise story etc. and it rang some bells as it's a story I'd heard before.
Having had some informal chats about what could be 'wrong' with me, I finally reached out for support and got diagnosed in summer. The process was great (if a little intense) and I found it all really interesting, and I came away armed not only with a piece of paper but with permission to be me - just needed to find out who that was.
Another go at the promotion, this time armed with better knowledge about me - and with the company aware and understanding about my diagnosis - I got it.
Trouble is, I saw the role I was pushing for as one that asking for help would undermine my case for getting it in the first place, so most of 2023 was just "getting on with it" and pretending that everything was doing fine - only it wasn't, my mental health was taking hit after hit and it culminated in me getting signed off work.
I was signed off with what the GP called "anxiety" but I feel "burnout" is a way better description - I just couldn't do it anymore; I had the skill and experience, but just not the motivation or the energy, I was done.
Fast forward to now, and I'm heading back to work having reflected on my year - I'm determined not to let it get on top of me again, and going to try and be more honest / let the mask slip a bit / ask for help when I need it.
But I've been masking for 40 years, and liken it to learning to walk again; I know what my end goal is, and each of the steps (no pun intended but now I've written it I'm keeping it), but putting it all together an getting it right seems enormous and fraught with challenge.
Any tips for this "40 and Autie"??
Well, congratulations on your diagnosis and thank you for sharing your story because there really is so much in there.
Sounds to me like you are slowly learning to unmask. It is a slow process after a life time of trying to live and judge yourself by neurotypical standards. We all mask to different degrees and in different ways and different contexts, you'll figure out yours gradually and make conscious - and therefore your choice - that which you've engrained over the years with so much exhausting effort. There is no magic way to do this. You'll just start to notice stuff.
What I find so heartening about your story is that you are illustrating that the diagnosis is really the most important intervention we can have. You can't negotiate the world around you until you know why you relate to it the way you do and know that this is different to others. It also heartens me that your employer seems to have been open minded enough to want to see the world just a little through your eyes and credit you for what you can bring. Just shows with the right attitude from others, life can be better.
Congratulations on your promotion also.
Thanks Dawn - oddly, I'm not actually that bothered by the promotion; I'm currently working out what 'happy' is for me and trying to achieve that rather than pursue the 'glory' of being promoted. But that's a big step for someone who was struggling along in the dark 12 months ago, so I'm also quite proud of me.
I agree with you on some aspects of the importance of diagnosis - it's certainly enabled me to ask what people mean in meetings when I suspect that everyone else just 'gets it', which has helped me considerably.
The flip side is that I think I subconsciously expected a diagnosis to be a silver bullet that would solve everything and it wasn't; it was just a first step in a journey. In the short term, it actually made some things worse; I saw traits and their impact everywhere and, thanks to the post diagnosis grief of what my life would have been like if I'd been diagnosed 30 years earlier, my productivity took a hit rather than a boost.
On balance, I'm still better off for the diagnosis and that will keep getting better as I learn more about me and unmask etc., but I guess it's not always plain sailing.
Oh yeah! I get all of that. We all go through a phase of wondering what if we had known at age X or X? But in the end we do know now.
Silver bullet - it is and it isn't. None of the rest of that journey to happiness can even begin without it. Certainly I found that the understanding of the things I had been through kicked in almost immediately, but how to use that knowledge to improve life forward takes much longer to assimilate, experiment with and shape.
You will get there. Have a very *happy* 2024
Thanks Dawn, and you're absolutely right - I've long suspected my diagnosis but having it confirmed has made a number of things easier, including the ability to accept that I can't do X or Y as good as someone else, or understand as quickly, which essentially gives me permission to give myself a break, which was 100% needed!