‘Try and be like everyone else and that makes you unhappy’

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“My autism journey started at primary school. I’m 35 now and live in Hertfordshire but grew up in the East End of London. You can imagine what it was like then: lots of playing out in the streets and making friends.

However, I always felt like I was the one left out because I was either too intense for people or the things I wanted to do – and the way I wanted to do them – didn’t make sense to people. I couldn’t understand why people would get annoyed at certain things. It accumulated to a point where you feel very left out and alone.

On top of that, kids are mean. They’re just naturally mean. It’s not intentional – you’re either part of something or not. So there was a lot of bullying and a lot of separatism. It was just very difficult growing up and that continued all the way up… until now really.

Because I find it difficult to relate to people on an emotional level and those people are emotionally-led, rather than logically-led, or led in a way that your emotions are pushed to the background to make sense of whatever was happening, in my eyes, it becomes a very difficult way to interact.

So you try and be like everyone else, which is where the masking comes in – camouflaging, or compensating is a conscious or unconscious suppression of natural autistic responses – and that makes you unhappy. It’s quite a vicious circle.

I’ve got scars on my body from where I was stabbed. At one point in my first secondary school the bullying was so bad that kids were waiting for me outside my house after school. I had to be escorted by a teacher due to dangerous situations where kids would be waiting for me.

After all of the various instances of violence and bullying, the head of year just suggested to my mother that I never come back to school and find a new one. I was 13 at the time and spent a year out of school, just going to the library every day. I went there between 9am and midday every day and then spent the afternoon in an arcade, spending my lunch money and having a good time.

It meant I was learning about the stuff I was interested in.

I finally got into another school, which was the one school everyone goes to when they’ve been kicked out of another one. So I was surrounded by ASBO kids who didn’t understand me. Thankfully, they had a recording studio and I found something I could become hyper-focused on: sound engineering and music.

went to have CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy] and other meetings with the psychiatrists for a year. I was in a really good place to be. But it genuinely disgusts me that it takes help outside the NHS to get to that stage when 1 in 100 people in the UK are on the spectrum. Or we have to be referred by a doctor who thinks there might be something wrong. There’s no diagnosis or tests in place for people to just make sure that their mental health is good and they get the help they need if they may feel different to help diagnose and help discover the right path.

Getting the diagnosis, outside of my family, has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’ve lived all around the world – in Japan, in the US – I’ve worked for Disney and Nintendo, I’ve worked on cruise ships. And when the diagnosis came along it put everything into perspective: all my thoughts about how things should work, how the world should work, how interacting with people should work, all made sense. It’s just the way my brain is wired.

I focus less on the emotional aspect of things, which is very difficult for my wife. If I’m feeling annoyed, I’ll just walk away from the situation so I work out why I’m feeling annoyed and process it. It’s very difficult for people to understand if they’re in an emotional argument.

But because I’ve had that diagnosis and help now, as selfish as it sounds, I know those are the things I need to do to function in a healthy relationship. The diagnosis changed my life. CBT and therapy has helped me put things in order.

Has it helped me process all the bad things that happened in my childhood? Yes and no. The way I process past traumas is by using them to guide my interactions with people or by not thinking about them at all. They are done and I don’t need them. Or so I thought. Having had the therapy and having had to relive those situations had devastating effects on my mental health, simply because that trauma that I never processed before was pulled back to the forefront of my mind and I had to deal with it now in a way that’s meant to be healthy for everyone else, but not for me. The tools I learnt and have learnt through since and having had the help to address them have helped me identify the emotions involved and I have found a way to deal with them that has helped me grow.

That being said, the only way I feel analysing my childhood now would be about passing it on to the next generation: my son. I know now when I’m going to have a meltdown, when I need to be away from people. What always made it difficult is back then in the BAME communities I found personally, mental health isn’t really talked about because it’s seen as shameful. Children and parents are stigmatised or blamed for things beyond their control.

I now talk very openly about my mental health and experiences because if people don’t have someone who is actually doing that and saying ‘yes I’ve had these issues’, you’re not going to change it. We need to see examples of both the positive and negative to be able to progress in a healthy way and make a difference so that hopefully others need not feel the pain we have experienced.”

I find that I'm very miserable if I try to be like everybody else. If I were to try to be like everybody else, my mind would be very dark. I would be angry, cynical and depressed. I would be saying snarky, little comments about how young people can express themselves however they wish.

I always found it easier to sleep rough when I was a kid. I know it was dangerous and bad things happened but at least there wasn't abuse from people who were supposed to care about me or even paid to care about me.

I was one of them kids who was always in other people's houses so I did get a taste of how different other households functioned.

I did want to have a family like every one else had though.

No I agree. I wasn't ready for motherhood and I thought I had to be like some kind of super woman type thing. I had a breakdown as a result of that.

My daughter has high functioning autism but I didn't know that back then so to me she was just a really demanding child. She's 30 years old now.

I mean you put everything into being a parent to be honest. I'm a far better person for having my daughter in my life that I would be if I had never had her but it is the hardest job in the world to be a parent. Especially if you haven't had a good experience with your own parents.

You could write a little book. Survival guide for new and expectant mothers.

I tell everyone to travel the world before they get tied down with kids and men and jobs and houses. People just seem to waste their lives away and then before they know it they are tied down and can't do anything unless they have kids hanging around their necks and are upto their eyeballs in dirty nappies and debt.