🙌

My office is in a building full of psychologists and I chat to a few of them regularly. Mentioned to one of them that I'm positive I'm autistic, and she asked why I though that, so I told her, and she chuckled and went, yeah, sounds about right. But also said no point in diagnosis unless problematic

or causing issues at home, which it's not really. My wife was the one who spotted it, and she knows the quirks of it at this stage. Doesn't bother me one jot, always been the way I am and I don't really deal with people, but mask well when I have to, so not going to get the diagnosis (also 42).

I was masking all my life so was at burn out constantly, always feeling low and tired. I thought I was depressed. So now I take time to recharge, don't mask as much, sleep when I need to and feel much better. All my relationships have improved as has work.

This makes me happy. I’ve no idea if I mask, I’m still learning, but I know I’m constantly excessively exhausted

Hopefully you get to grips with it to the point you know how best to manage yourself. I'm still learning every day

I think I benefit greatly from not actually having to mask 99% of the time since I’m a business of 1, and do most comms via email. Don’t have to mask around my wife, so it’s essentially very rare social occasions where I can manage ok for a few hours (though I’ll eventually disappear into my phone)

Not sure I could manage masking all the time at all. That would be so draining to have to deal with