The Ugly Side of My High-Functioning Autism

We are not the problem.

Bryan Dijkhuizen
Mind Cafe
Published in
4 min readJul 18, 2022

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Image by Artem Mihailov via Unsplash

Life isn’t easy.

Especially if the world around you was designed for people that are opposite of what you are. Most people don’t know how to handle uncomfortable situations.

Autistic people might seem like they’re all fine in social situations because they’ve taught themselves the skill called masking, but they’re not — especially autistic women are suffering from our overly social society.

In my life, I’ve dealt with this too.

It’s not always fun being the quiet kid and it’s not shyness, know that there is a difference between shy people and autistic people. It’s a broad spectrum and introversion is somewhere in between.

Image created by Author (Bryan Dijkhuizen) using Canva

You can see that I’ve put myself in the middle of this graph. I’m in between being extraverted, around people I trust, and introverted around the rest of the world.

On the other side of the graph, you can see the “Autism spectrum”. Again, I’ve put myself in the middle of it because of the fact that I’m not your typical autistic boy that they love to portray in documentaries.

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Bryan Dijkhuizen
Mind Cafe

Writing about the life of a neurodivergent creative in a neurotypical world. — https://bryandijkh.substack.com/