Autistic Civil Servant

27/07/2026

Autistic people seem to be natures bullying targets - there's something about us that makes others want to pick on us. Not to say we can't be bullies ourselves either. It's part of the mental health load of

We autistics may well try to rationalise bullying as something that we “deserve”. My autistic absolutist brain looks for logic in everything. If I’ve failed or been rejected it was my f…

20/07/2026

Your manager puts a meeting in your diary - there's no indication what it's about. Do you immediately assume it's something bad? If you're autistic I bet you do.

Sometimes a manager will put a meeting in your diary – they won’t say what it’s about – the meeting title will just be 1:2:1 (meaning “one-to-one” – signal…

13/07/2026

There's a tendency to infantilise disabled people - to treat us like children. When it happens at work, sometimes it not only doesn't help, it can actively prevent us performing.

I’ve written about how attempts by neurotypical people to support autistic people can fail because of lack of understanding about how are brains are different. There are some specific ways th…

06/07/2026

People aren't logical, and that's just a fact. But for we autistics others' illogic can be almost unbearable. If the answer is clear, why do you need to talk about it? I don't know, but I've noticed that you do...

A pitfall I’ve often fallen into at work is assuming that because something is true it doesn’t need to be advocated for. Or indeed that the facts are always a winning argument. It doesn…

29/06/2026

My autistic thought processes are different. Do you really want to understand, or are you just hoping I'll turn out to be more like you?

A big part of being truly inclusive is accepting that some people really do think completely differently to how you do. I have to accept that every day because I have an unusual brain. A nice reaso…

22/06/2026

As an autistic, "people" is my second language, and like many second-language speakers, I sometimes get the words wrong. And I didn't mean the harm I caused.

Making conversation for me as an autistic person is a stressful and tiring thing. I save brain energy by using sequences of remarks that have worked before: “scripts”. As an example, th…

15/06/2026

There's lots of argument about autism diagnosis - whether people need it, what counts as a diagnosis. But lets look at what it can really mean to an autistic person.

08/06/2026

A lot of autistics rely on the web (happy birthday Tim Berners-Lee!) but telling us off for it doesn't help.

Neurotypical people can see spending less time online as some kind of “detox” or as a virtuous thing. I’m a Christian and it’s by no means unknown for my friends to decide t…

01/06/2026

All the world has an opinion on autistic children, so here's a few thoughts from an autistic adult about what might have helped me.

I got my autism diagnosis when I was already well on in my career but throughout my life from age 8 or so, I knew I was different and a bit weird. I wasn’t naturally all that likeable to othe…

25/05/2026

In order to be heard, I need to communicate in a way that works for you, but what if my autistic communication is naturally different?

If you have something people desperately need to know about, you probably tell them, don’t you? It’s a natural human instinct to want to share news, good or bad, as well as gossip and i…