School is an artificial environment in which society has decided that children should be able to function. It’s loud, crowded, and unpredictable, and students with a neuropsychiatric diagnosis are often bullied. Refusing to go doesn’t appear all that strange. Why would anyone want to be part of such a setting?

Yet the autistic woman is not masking with the intention of being deceitful. Her true self is invisible even to her own person. She is masking to fit in, and doing so unconsciously. Often, she doesn’t even understand that she has been camouflaging herself until she gets her diagnosis. Before that, she thinks her struggle is everyone else’s, too. At

Among these traits: not enjoying talk about feelings and relationships, preferring to sit alone in one’s room and immerse oneself in one’s own interests, having a hard time grasping subtext, and not being able to sugar-coat one’s words.

A computer might be amazing at doing calculations, says Jonna Bornemark, but it has no judgement. Yet the capacity for judgement exists in every human being. It’s a hidden bank of knowledge that we have forgotten how to tap into. We have instead come to equate judgement with subjective opinion, which may vary from individual to individual.

For a person with autism, the world is so unmanageable and the experience of a lack of control so overwhelming that they often cling to the minor aspects of their lives that they can control. Their food intake is one of them.

It’s not possible to understand people’s unhappiness, exhaustion, and mental illness without analysing social developments and the reality they face in their everyday lives. There have always been autistic individuals, but the diagnosis only arises in the encounter with the world around them. The more streamlined society becomes, the more

The autist must find her place in the world, where she can turn her diagnosis into something positive and play to her strengths. In my work as a radio producer, I can use my sensitivity to sound and ability to pick up on details. I hear every poor edit and shift in volume. But wearing my noise-cancelling headphones on the crowded metro on my way to

Social interaction pays no heed to the autist’s compass, especially not in the media industry. You can’t draw on your strengths if these conflict with the expectations of neurotypicals. Most conspicuous will be the aspects that are perceived as negative, like withdrawing, offering criticism that is too harsh, and avoiding big groups.

I have always known that I’m autistic. And yet I haven’t had a clue.