Autism in Women Is Misunderstood
The description of hers matches my experience pretty closely as a boy in the 1990s. The feeling that something is deeply wrong with you (logically based in being bullied in multiple different schools) and that you&#x27;re terribly different, and seeing &gt;10 psychiatric professionals and having 20 different diagnoses can become a life-defining struggle (and this is for the kids with resources). Its very hard to re-integrate into society, and the comorbidity of depression and anxiety from pretty logical reasoning can make it harder and harder to peel the onion to get at the core of the problem.<p>This girl had supportive parents all the way through, and made it into and eventually graduated Cambridge, and I&#x27;ll bet the classes were the easy part. Too many aren&#x27;t so lucky.<p>I&#x27;ll also be willing to bet that the reseach they&#x27;ve made on women applies to men as well. This quote in general:<p>&gt; Particularly interesting is the unpublished observation that in girls with autism, the social brain seems to communicate with the prefrontal cortex, a brain region that normally engages in reason and planning, and is known to burn through energy. It may be that women with autism keep their social brain engaged, but mediate it through the prefrontal cortex—in a sense, intellectualizing social interactions that would be intuitive for other women.<p>This is exactly it for me. It costs energy to be social, because it really is just like doing math all day. I know the rules, and have done very well in high communication jobs, but its draining in a way that isn&#x27;t for others.