Autistic Assemble: Valid and Autism - With Jennifer

In today's episode I am joined with Jennifer who is Autistic who was diagnosed April 2022 last year the assessment was in February so between a feel months but must of felt like a eternity. We discover similarities between our diagnosis although the 8 year gap between diagnosis's, we both found it accept to accept the diagnosis at first as soon as we found the Autistic community that's when we did start to accept being Autistic.  We talk about range of different things, we find we are sensory and get really irritated by certain noises, soft noises that it wouldn't impact every person, we talk about eye contact and following on reading a book with a class at school that was really hard for us without loosing concentration.  Jennifer points out the expectance when during a conversation people expect us to answer a conversation topic what we are talking about straight away without thought! couldn't agree more! so response can't focus on reality! which links into process speed.  We move on to talk about sarcasm and masking how both of us have experienced this. So much discussed in today's episode and a first podcast appearance for Jennifer! great advise from Jennifer: "Don't feel pressured to feel any particular way to be autistic and all opinions and thought's of being valid, within diagnosis of all forms, self diagnosis too!"  Thank you again Jennifer, you was awesome!