My only authority to write about autism is through the lens of my lived experience as a late-diagnosed autistic woman.

When I was growing up in Birmingham, UK in the 1970s and 80s, no one had heard of autism. Over the next 30 years it slipped into my awareness, but only as something that occurred in boys, usually accompanied by learning disabilities and very obvious social and communication difficulties including a lack of empathy.

I worked as a researcher in the social policy field for over 25 years during which time I interviewed and facilitated discussion groups with many autistic adults and young people (almost always male), and usually about the kinds of state-funded support they were receiving. I enjoyed this kind of work, but never did it prompt me to think that I too, could be autistic. I had performed well at school and university, I had lived independently and paid my own way for many years.

Hearing that two HSP friends who I saw as being very similar to me had received autism diagnoses promoted me to take some of the online tests available, basically to rule it out. To my surprise (or complete shock, if I’m being honest) I scored very highly in all of them, and I decided to get assessed by someone who specialised in late diagnosis of autism in women.

Along the way, I discovered the concept of high masking. I had unknowingly learned to hide my autism by covering up and suppressing a great deal of myself, as well as learning to mimic many neurotypical ways of behaving. I did this to appear normal and acceptable to those around me at home, at school, at university, in the workplace and socially. I had been trying to be someone I was not, almost everywhere, and almost all of the time.

I now define myself as an autistic HSP because I meet the criteria for both the HSP trait and the autistic spectrum, and because it feels right for me to recognise and value both of these core aspects of myself.