Remarkable Replay: What Did I Do Wrong?

Jamie, welcome to the show.

I appreciate your being here to talk about your book, What Did I Do Wrong? Let's start with, how did you find out you're autistic, and what led you to a diagnosis?

My discovery that I'm autistic was kind of a strange process.

I remember back in 2007, 2008, I was sitting in an office, an office I used to work at, and somebody came to my desk, and I think they told me a joke or something, and I didn't understand it, and I just sort of looked at them, and they sort of looked at me, and it was this very awkward moment of, like, you know, when someone smiles and the smile starts to fall away from their face? But then, and then it just looks really strange.

They kinda have this look on their face where it's like, "Oh, you didn't understand my joke." I got really frustrated with myself because I couldn't understand what happened, and I took it literally, and I was like, I think I, I put into the Google search results, "Why do I take everything literally?" Of course, this was a long time ago, so the defunct term now is Asperger's Syndrome, and that's what came up.

And I was like, "What's this?" So I started looking at it, and I had seen it before, one time on the cover of a magazine.

Somebody had talked about their experience, and I said, "Oh, okay.

This is, this seems like me." And I went down this really long rabbit hole, and, and so many things made sense.

So many things made sense to me that never made sense before.

And I said, "Well," I said, "Well, let me continue looking into this." And I got on a, a forum, an online forum, and I started looking at that, and I started looking at other people's experiences and, uh, you know, talking about my own experiences.

And I'm like, "Oh my God, this is, this is it this whole time." And, and back in, I'm in my late 20s at that point, and I said, "I know.

I know this is it." And then I did some, you know, I bought some books.

I did some more research, and after about six months of research, I started telling people, um, in my family and my friends, I said, "I think this is what it is," and my family immediately dismissed me and said, "That's impossible." So they had a very different view.

I had this idea in my head that, like, now that I knew what was going on-

Mm-hmm

...

I could explain it to people, and they'd understand, and all I got was, "No."

Then in 2014, you experienced autistic burnout, which then led you to your diagnosis.

I didn't know at the time I was in autistic burnout.

I mean, I didn't even know what that was.

So I was lucky that I had a therapist who was very understanding, and she diagnosed me.

Again, now a defunct term, but she diagnosed me with Asperger's, and okay, now it's changed in the DSM to ASD 1 or something like that.

So I was officially diagnosed in 2015.

I kinda went on from there, and for a long time I identified with that term, but now I don't use that and just autistic.

And so that's how I found out, but I didn't start doing the Articulate Autistic thing until about four years ago.