A Story For Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month, and I want to share a personal story surrounding the time after learning about my condition, the effects it had on relationships, and how autistic people often end up being mischaracterized when they start to set healthy boundaries. I’ve been going through a lot in 2025 and had to face some difficult truths. A major part of what happened to me wasn’t just emotional loss, it was a deliberate invalidation of my autistic traits and needs.

It's been about a year since I realized that my initial ADHD diagnosis was far from the end of that story, and I got diagnosed with autism shortly after. Having both at the same time often feels contradictory, but it's actually quite common, and it finally explained why some things in my life turned out to be so confusing.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family environment, and mental health was largely ignored or “dealt with” by frequenting the local taverns. Emotional matters at home were approached or rather avoided in a similar fashion, and there was always some kind of tension. It's not a great environment for a hyperactive/-perceptive/-sensitive child who wanted to discover everything there is to know about the world. Not knowing that I'm neurodivergent didn't help either.

When I was about seven years old, alone in my room, and somehow disheartened by another tense situation, I was overcome by an eerie feeling of profound disconnection. I felt like I was completely on my own. Back then, I couldn't describe it yet, but there seemed to be an invisible barrier that kept me separated from everyone else. I wasn't antisocial, quite the opposite, actually. My inner world was just running on a different frequency, and arbitrary societal rules didn't make any sense because nobody could explain them to me. At the same time, most people didn’t understand my perspective, and I was lacking the resources and guidance to figure out what was wrong with me.

Now I know that this feeling wasn't an illusion, but rooted in very real circumstances autistic people regularly have to face. ¹ As a designer, I would call it being “non-standard”. It can go both ways, good or bad, but it rarely hits the baseline. With autism, you experience a world that is much less filtered, highly detailed, and just raw. It can be a blessing in some situations, but there's nothing romantic about all the daily challenges when navigating environments that are fundamentally misaligned with our needs. Autism is a social disability.

The Cycle of Misunderstanding

Early on, I learned to cope with the demands of life by camouflaging and masking. Unfortunately, I got really good at it, which made the version of me I presented highly situation-dependent, while I could never truly be myself. It has become so automatic that I’m only now discovering which parts were actually me, and it takes conscious effort to break these habits. I didn’t expect that the process of unmasking would be that challenging, and I definitely never expected the hostility it triggers in some people when I’m simply trying to become my authentic self.

Given my upbringing, I always had a hard time identifying who actually wanted me to succeed, and who only stuck around to exploit me. If you carry trauma, and the lingering fear of being used for somebody else’s gains, you often end up making exactly the wrong decisions when it comes to letting people into your life.

Over the last year, I was hit with constant reminders of how deeply ableism is rooted in our society. During this time, I didn’t just lose alleged “friends”. I also had to accept the fact that my long-term partner was only another person who stayed to benefit from my dedication, and then dropped me the moment I actually needed support. The full story is more layered, since my ex is also struggling with her own mental health and a profoundly ingrained avoidant attachment style. But at the core, it feels like a daunting reflection of societal trends. In some circles, it’s becoming increasingly normalized to just take the easy way out of any situation while ignoring all consequences. I was misconstrued in every conceivable way, and my autistic needs were presented as character flaws. It’s not the first time that a group of allistic people colluded against me. From the outside, it seems passive, but it’s emotional violence that creates lasting damage.

The victims of such careless actions are usually the ones who care, and autistic people care deeply. We are quite literally wired for empathy ², while we’re often being painted as bad people for expressing ourselves in other ways, and having different needs. My experience over the last months of my relationship was littered with gaslighting, constant invalidation of my boundaries, and straight up discrimination from multiple angles. It’s really difficult to express what relational abuse at this level feels like, especially since it ended with a sudden discard and no explanation. There was no intention of parting on good terms, and just immediate, permanent refusal of any further contact. When emotionally avoidant individuals don’t want to face their own issues, it’s often easier for them to weaponize someone else’s socially weaker position, create an oblivious echo chamber around that narrative, and frame their own abuse as a “healing journey.”

Some would say that “time heals all wounds,” but autistic individuals are more likely to develop PTSD after experiencing these kinds of events, and they usually present more severe symptoms. ³ Our minds simply require predictability and reason. When we ask questions, it’s not a petty habit or the need for control, but an essential tool to clarify and feel safe. Unpredictable situations are not just a minor inconvenience, but mentally and physically exhausting. Our brains usually keep running at full speed until the issue is resolved, and if there is no solution, we eventually break down from the stress, only to repeat the cycle.

At the end of 2025, I entered one of the darkest places I could imagine. A five-year relationship was erased in the blink of an eye, when I was already in a vulnerable place. The process of unmasking had collided with burnout, depression, and the painful work of sorting through related trauma. Not to mention the professional uncertainty of being self-employed at a time when I was no longer in a state to properly focus on work. None of this had been easy on the relationship leading up to that, of course, but I will never understand how a trusted person who kept reassuring me would suddenly decide that this is the moment to literally run away without ever looking back. It was by far the most emotionally damaging event of my life, and the months after were basically one continuous mental spiral of despair and confusion that completely paralyzed me. What makes autistic minds special in some ways can also turn them into a prison, and the potential consequences become painfully obvious if you look at the statistics surrounding autism. ⁴

We Need Better Systems

I’m not going to sugar-coat the fact that I’m still in a volatile place after everything that happened, and resources are generally very limited. Medication and therapy can only do so much, but relational aspects can’t just be engineered at will. For people like myself, with virtually no family ties and limited social anchoring, the options eventually boil down to just pushing through. That means scraping up every bit of energy that’s left to create new structures from scratch, and hoping that they would somehow break me out of this mental cage again.

That’s where general awareness becomes immensely relevant. We can’t always pull ourselves up by the bootstraps again. That doesn’t just apply to autistic or neurodivergent people, but all minority groups, and beyond that, pretty much any situation where obvious solutions are being ignored. There’s always the option of having a sincere dialogue instead of normalizing preoccupied and harmful behavior that creates additional barriers. Things could be so much easier if honesty wasn’t treated as a threat.

When I was at my worst, I often stumbled upon something another person in a similar situation had to say, and it always helped me to feel less alone in all of this. I hope this story will also find the right people, and offer a little comfort. Let’s normalize that some conversations are uncomfortable, but necessary.

I added some references that explain these aspects in more depth, along with some resources below. If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading, and feel free to reach out.

References

1. Autism, Human Connection and the ‘Double Empathy’ Problem

2. Autistic People's Experience of Empathy and the Autistic Empathy Deficit Narrative

3. The Hidden Link Between PTSD and Autism: How Trauma Can Affect Autistic Traits

4. Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors in People on the Autism Spectrum

   
   

Resources

Autism Screening Tests

Reddit r/autism

Synaptic growth, synesthesia & savant abilities