I am an Associate Professor at a well-regarded Australian university. I am also autistic, having been diagnosed at age 60 after suspecting I was autistic for a few years (mostly following the diagnostic process for my younger daughter, as is often the case for late-diagnosed parents!). My motivation for writing this blog post is to describe, to more than just my family and therapists, the effects on my mental health and professional performance during life as an autistic person, and particularly following my late autism diagnosis. Some readers may have had a similarly late awakening to their own neurodivergence, and I hope they find some encouragement and connection here.

Making sense of my past

Knowing now that I’m autistic makes sense of many aspects of my childhood and teen years. I was the hyperlexic, shy kid in kindergarten, reading (not just looking at the pictures!) in the book corner while my peers were, healthily and age-appropriately, tearing around outside.

I experienced frequent bullying all through my school years. Sometimes my peers picked on my physical characteristics, but in retrospect my response was typical of autistic children – shame and shutdown – another difference which further encouraged the bullies. It’s very likely that these negative experiences left me even less confident with people. A contributing factor in my teenage years was changing high schools a couple of times. The second school was the worst in terms of bullying, and by the third and final school my masking skills were better (far from perfect though), so I was able to reinvent myself. Looking back at old photos, some autistic traits were still apparent – forced smiles, lack of eye contact, or my choice of familiar and comfortable rather than fashionable clothes, for example.

I have always had difficulty making and keeping friends (compared with my peers); during much of my early teenage years, I spent a lot of time alone and was content with my own company. I still don’t have a good understanding of what it takes to initiate and maintain friendships, but my occasional feelings of loneliness suggest that I actually do value relationships. At some time in my late teens, I was surprised to learn that I could be more authentic and emotionally honest with my friends. I felt like I had discovered another world which previously had been hidden to me. It took decades for me to internalise this lesson, a process which is ongoing (with much backsliding) on my part.

There were probably positive aspects of being autistic too; with the known overlap between autism and giftedness, I was sometimes the primary school kid who students would get help from instead of the teacher. Being the classroom ‘brain box’ was probably not a plus for developing neurotypical-style peer relationships, though.

Maintaining “special interests” is a common and perhaps stereotypical characteristic of autistic people. For me, an enduring special interest which continues to this day is guitar playing – on being given an awful old guitar by an aunt, eleven-year-old me would play for hours. Talent didn’t equate to recognition; this was not caused so much by anxiety about playing in public, but because getting opportunities to play meant interacting and negotiating with others, sometimes in the context of a band. Looking back, I was seldom completely comfortable with the relational parts of being in a band. Playing improvisationally, in private, is still a source of emotional regulation and comfort to me; when I don’t play, I experience feelings akin to withdrawal. Playing music (or just listening to it) is my safe space; in the outside world it’s probably a maladaptive coping mechanism since, to cope with the rest of life, I need to dissociate partially or completely from reality.

The neurodivergent academic

Hyperlexia, good pattern recognition, excellent retention of facts, hyperfocus, special interests, and so on are all recognised as traits of autistic people. The same traits can also be positive attributes for people working in academia, and I think they have been ongoing strengths which have helped me develop scientific expertise, think deeply, creatively and logically, and to write fluently. 

In contrast, I habitually overestimate my ability to collaborate. I think my scientific ideas are good, even excellent, but when I think about what’s required in terms of conversations or meetings with other stakeholders, I get anxious, ruminate, and start a cycle of procrastination. Some might call it imposter syndrome. Maybe it’s a Dunning–Kruger effect, as I don’t have a good grasp of what’s required in the collaborative relationship, so I overestimate my abilities. Or perhaps it’s simply confirmation bias with lashings of anxiety. Ironically, I underestimate my talents for things that I can actually do well; colleagues tell me that I’m a good committee Chair, despite my misgivings about such roles. They don’t see the personal cost of masking my autism to play the role of competent, efficient academic in a leadership role. Some of these costs have been personal crises, bouts of mental exhaustion during which I have been unable to work for several days, or pulling out of leadership roles that I was proud of filling.

I also don’t understand work politics – when saying this, I am comparing myself with colleagues who naturally seemed to understand workplace power plays and hidden agendas. It’s also possible that my avoidance of people in general, and conversational awkwardness, meant that the information about work politics just didn’t make its way to me. Either way, office politics remain a mystery. 

Often I feel as though everyone in my workplace is an adult – except for me. I tell myself, in the context of teaching undergraduates, that it’s a plus that I remain young at heart… but students may wonder, and staff may despair, at my constant preference for t-shirts and often shorts. The shorts can be justified by my strong sensory aversion to feeling hot (sensory issues are common for autistic people), but there is also my feeling of not being grown-up enough, plus my rejection of clothing ‘norms’ as being illogical and pointless.

Just for the record, I keep a guitar and fidget toys in my office, and some (silent) fidget toys come to classes or meetings with me. Both are helpful in controlling emotional or sensory dysregulation, a common consequence of simply being autistic in a predominantly neurotypical work environment.

Autism and Mental Health

If you read even a little about autism online, you soon find out that autistic people often have co-occurring mental health conditions, sometimes ominously called “co-morbidities”. The most common co-occurring conditions are anxiety and depression, both of which I have experienced my whole life. My depression was recognized in my late teens, when my grandmother thought there may have been a physical health issue and paid my way to see some specialists. The conclusion of the specialists’ testing was that there was nothing physically wrong, but that I was “a bit sad”. More formal diagnoses of depression came later, along with multiple therapists over the years. Therapy would have been much more effective had the psychologists known I was autistic, but awareness of neurodivergence was uncommon back then, and authentically neuro-affirming therapists are still hard to find. In the three decades or so since my first depression diagnosis I have met only two therapists who I thought “got me” in terms of autism and neurodivergence. If you find someone like this, nurture the relationship; it may prove to be therapeutic gold.

Depression lives alongside its evil twin, anxiety, even in neurotypical people. Together, they pack a devastating punch. It’s too common for me, some mornings, to be paralysed by anxiety and indecision to the point where I can hardly move let alone function as a purported senior academic; and this situation can persist all day – or longer. At such times, even on reflection, it’s impossible to know if my anxiety is intrinsic to autism or exists independently from it. Much of my life, including my job, involves interpersonal relationships which I struggle to understand. The resulting anxiety, about future interactions or mental re-runs of previous conversations, can be exhausting; it’s also highly demotivating, and another trigger for feeling stuck and unable to focus on what I need to do. My anxiety is by no means restricted to work, and often it’s my difficulties negotiating family relationships that leave me panicky and overwhelmed. Right now, I feel really tired. The constant struggle to perform while negotiating depression, anxiety, confusion about interpersonal relationships, and self-doubt is taking its toll, and retirement is becoming an obsessively attractive option. 

Diagnosis and (re)creation of identity

I think that it may be helpful for students that I teach to know that I’m neurodivergent, maybe even specifically that I’m autistic. In classes where I have shared this personal information, I’ve received positive comments from students through my university’s formal feedback process. Given what we know about the prevalence of neurodivergence in the general population, it’s highly likely that some of the students I teach are also diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and/or other neurodivergent thinking patterns. For me, I’m wondering if I need to pretend so much anymore. Perhaps I can be content that I’m not a high-flying academic, and that I’m at my best in class with students or totally engrossed in writing code for data analysis.

A late diagnosis of autism is commonly described to cause ‘relief and grief’ in the diagnosed adult. This was certainly true for me: relief at having an explanation for my relational difficulties and other weird or nerdy qualities, but grief that I had gone so long without knowing, that I had much catching up to do, and even, to be honest, grief about the autistic label itself. Before being diagnosed as autistic, however, there was an idea by American academic and writer Parker Palmer which I found very helpful. In Palmer’s book The Courage to Teach, he argues that we can be most effective as teachers if we are true to our authentic selves. Once I had eventually digested this idea, I think my self-acceptance, and effectiveness as a teacher, improved significantly; I no longer felt compelled to be like someone else. Similar thinking has been helpful for me in my process of self (re)discovery after my autism diagnosis; being autistic has always been part of me and I have succeeded as a teaching academic, realisations which help with the self-doubt and anxiety that are my near-constant companions.

Conclusion

Unlike the autistic experiences portrayed by the fictional Sheldon or the Good Doctor, being autistic can be hard. Labels like ‘high functioning autistic’, ASD Level 1, or ‘low support needs’ hide the reality that daily interactions which may seem trivial to neurotypical people may be exhausting for autistic or other neurodivergent individuals. Our brains function in different ways, especially where interpersonal relationships are involved, so academic workplaces and working life take a toll beyond the expected high workloads and pressure to publish and win research funding. Autistic people are also more likely to experience anxiety and depression, another factor that affects our ability to cope in academia. We are all, me especially, still learning about what academic careers are like for autistic people. My hope is that, step by step, awareness will increase.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement 

No Artificial Intelligence tools or technologies were used in developing and writing this blog.

Biography

Andrew grew up in New Zealand, completing his schooling, Bachelor and Master degrees there, getting married, and completing his PhD, all in chemistry or related disciplines. He and his wife moved to Perth in the mid-1990s when Andrew started as a lecturer at The University of Western Australia, and later had two daughters. Professionally, Andrew is an environmental science specialist with an interest in soil and water pollution and other geochemical topics. He also teaches data analysis and can spend hours solving coding problems. His personal interests mostly involve music, reading, and nature. He has no social media worth sharing but can be found on GitHub.