Aug 9, 2026 · 54 min · 12 segments
Felicia M. L. Davis and Nancy Wainscott join Nadja to talk about their book Autism, Not Attitude and why so many women get misdiagnosed before finally landing on autism and/or ADHD. Felicia, an…
Felicia M. L. DavisGuest
Nancy WainscottGuestNadiaHostYeah, thank you for sharing this.
You mentioned also in the book, right, giving hope is something that you both strive for achieving with this book.
And in the beginning, Felicia, you said, you know, you're very successful in your career, right? As an autistic person, that is also outside of the norm of the statistic.
Would you like to talk a little bit about that and the struggle autistic people face, especially in the work setting?
And this is definitely not a reflection on anybody else for where they are in their journey.
You know, I was lucky that I got to work from home, as I put it, before it was cool.
It's part of why I had no idea how good I was at my job, because I wasn't sitting in an office with 10, 20, 50 other people doing the same thing.
So I was going strictly off of one data point, and that was whatever my leader told me.
So if my leader said, hey, you're doing great, you're hitting the marks, to me, that was all that mattered.
I did not realize until years later that I was blowing everybody else out of the water by a landslide.
And there is something to say when you don't have all of the other pressures that a lot of people face.
Every time I would travel into our corporate office, you know, because I would have to take an airplane to get there because it's several states away, I struggled.
I struggled with the noises of somebody on the other side of that cubicle.
I struggled with the vibrations from the air conditioner or other things in the building that would make the entire building vibrate.
I would struggle with somebody's cologne or perfume or whatever they made heated up for lunch, lotions.
There were many things in a physical environment that that were so overstimulating, I couldn't succeed.
But by the time I had to face those, I was already in a leadership role and I wasn't tied to my desk.
Yeah, thank you for sharing this.
You mentioned also in the book, right, giving hope is something that you both strive for achieving with this book.
And in the beginning, Felicia, you said, you know, you're very successful in your career, right? As an autistic person, that is also outside of the norm of the statistic.
Would you like to talk a little bit about that and the struggle autistic people face, especially in the work setting?
And this is definitely not a reflection on anybody else for where they are in their journey.
You know, I was lucky that I got to work from home, as I put it, before it was cool.
It's part of why I had no idea how good I was at my job, because I wasn't sitting in an office with 10, 20, 50 other people doing the same thing.
So I was going strictly off of one data point, and that was whatever my leader told me.
So if my leader said, hey, you're doing great, you're hitting the marks, to me, that was all that mattered.
I did not realize until years later that I was blowing everybody else out of the water by a landslide.
And there is something to say when you don't have all of the other pressures that a lot of people face.
Every time I would travel into our corporate office, you know, because I would have to take an airplane to get there because it's several states away, I struggled.
I struggled with the noises of somebody on the other side of that cubicle.
I struggled with the vibrations from the air conditioner or other things in the building that would make the entire building vibrate.
I would struggle with somebody's cologne or perfume or whatever they made heated up for lunch, lotions.
There were many things in a physical environment that that were so overstimulating, I couldn't succeed.
But by the time I had to face those, I was already in a leadership role and I wasn't tied to my desk.
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