The Working Girl With Autism
What happened when I tried to fit in
I’ve had a rocky career trajectory. Learning the common traits and differences that come with being neurodivergent has finally shed some light on why I’ve had so many jobs and so little success.
I’ve learned to name the roadblocks I’ve put up and the checkpoints I’ve encountered, and it’s profoundly liberating.
I was diagnosed with ADHD and autism a year ago, at the age of 57. I am uncertain if I have autism or am a Highly Sensitive Person, as I feel the descriptors overlap closely, especially for women.
I’ve worked blue-collar and white-collar jobs, over 90 of them in my life, and I kept running into the same walls. After so much failure and so many stops and starts, I didn’t understand what was wrong until learning about neurodivergent communication patterns and how these intersect with being female and undiagnosed.
At the source of my difficulty was a pattern of emotional dysregulation, common in people with untreated, undiagnosed ADHD. I practice a kind of covert co-dependency because I tend to unconsciously use people as a substitute for the emotional regulation I lack.
This has meant using jobs as a substitute for emotional stability.
