By Freddie Cocker

“Think before you speak Freddie”.

It has been a saying that has followed me my entire life. I was even given a joke award at the final assembly at the school I attended for sixth form college (16-18), which contained words of a similar effect.

This very unfiltered nature has been a part of me for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, when all children are extremely unfiltered, I stood out more than others.

This, and many other traits always made me feel different from my peers from an early age, and I could never understand why.

Now, at 30 years old, I finally have an answer. I have been diagnosed with autism. Before I dive into the journey I undertook to get me to this place, let me take you back a few steps to what autism actually is and when these traits began to emerge in me.

History lesson

The term autism was initially coined in 1943 by Austrian-American psychiatrist and physician Leo Kanner, who described it as ‘early infantile autism’, when he was studying children exhibiting the traits now associated with it.

Then, in 1944, another Austrian physician called Hans Asperger (a very controversial figure in autism circles) published an account of children with many similarities to Kanner’s autism but who had abilities, including grammatical language, in the average or superior range.

This theory was introduced to the field of autism research in the 1980s by the British psychiatrist Dr Lorna Wing, a co-founder of the National Autistic Society. Dr Wing pioneered the idea that autism is a spectrum condition and did so with reference to Hans Asperger’s much earlier work, which noted marked differences between autistic children. Hence, the term ‘Aspergers Syndrome’ was coined.

For the reasons behind Asperger’s chequered past, including his descriptions of some autistic children as ‘autistic psychopaths’ in 1938, Aspergers is largely no longer used to describe autism by society and medical professionals.

He also joined several organisations affiliated with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP0), although not the Nazi party itself, publicly legitimised ‘race hygiene’ policies, including forced sterilizations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated with the ‘child euthanasia programme’, which led to dozens of children being sent to Nazi clinics, where they were murdered.

Humorous red flags

Throughout my life, I have told stories I can now laugh about but at the time, either generated stress in people around me or intense anxiety and stress in myself.

The first example was when I was in nursery (aged 3-4 years old) and our class was taken on a school trip to a local farm. My memory of this is hazy but I ended up getting separated from my class and the teachers lost me, a very stressful event for any teacher, especially for children as young as I was.

Thankfully, I was found safely, with another school I had walked off with, likely without realising none of these children were my classmates. This overfamiliarity with people carried on into my adolescence and adulthood.

Another funny story came from a mutual friend who, when I met them for the first time in our local pub in my early 20s, said to me years later that I went up to them and their friends and started talking to them like I’d known them for years. I imagine they were quite taken aback by this but for me, I was just being friendly and wanted to make them feel comfortable.

The second red flag was when my nursery teachers pointed out to my parents that I was an incredibly loud child, even compared to my peers.

I had very small ears (something I used to think was a factor, plus ‘middle child syndrome’) and my teachers recommended that they test my hearing for possible deafness.

My ears were subsequently tested and no issues were found. They just said I was really loud! In the last year, I have learned that extreme loudness and a failure to control volume for different settings, especially when hyperactive can be a symptom of either ADHD or autism.

Throughout my adolescence, I was told to ‘tone it down’ or reduce my volume by figures of authority. It was one which used to cause frustration, anxiety and shame in me as most of the time, I could not control it, I was simply being myself. I never asked to be loud and struggling to manage it only made me hyper self-aware of it when it was frequently and consistently pointed out in a group setting.

I frequently joke that even my whisper can be heard on the other side of a room and when I used to act in various school productions or outside of school, I was the only child never to be told not to ‘trail off’ when delivering lines. This is something that most non-professional child actors do but one which I never had to deal with.

Not-so-fine motor skills

I also struggled hugely with fine motor skills and life skills other children reached more quickly. I couldn’t tie a pair of shoelaces until I was about 10/11 years old. I had to have shoes with Velcro for a long time and the short period I was playing football on Saturday mornings, my dad would tie my boots for me before I played. The anxiety of them coming loose and having to reveal I did not know how to do it probably caused some significant anxiety at the time too.

Building on this, I distinctly remember playing a football match for my primary school in Year 6 and I had to ask my headteacher who was our coach for the game to tie the laces of my boots. I deliberately waited until all the other boys had left our school hall to get on the minibus to ask him. He asked me: ‘do you know how to tie your laces Freddie?’ and I had to sheepishly tell him that I didn’t. Even at that age, I felt a huge amount of shame and embarrassment in this moment, even though he did not shame me for it, to his credit.

There were other skills I also struggled with. I didn’t know how to swim until I was around 11 years old. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until I was around 13/14 years old.

I loved music as a child and an adult (I’ll get to obsessions shortly) and wanted to learn how to play an instrument. I picked the trumpet and tried to learn for about a year or so. Unfortunately, that didn’t go well either.

It wasn’t helped by an impatient, oaf of a teacher but my brain struggled to remember the notes and perform it at the same time. It felt like my brain could only process playing one note at a time instead of playing all of them together in a continuous flow. I even struggled to actually blow the trumpet itself! I gave up shortly after and never tried another instrument again (probably for the best).

Outside of those skills, I’ve always been absolutely awful at anything to do with DIY as an adult, arts and crafts in primary school and design technology in secondary school. I was embarrassingly awful at art in school too.

It also took me a very long time to learn the process of how to make my bed. Even things like wrapping a jacket around my waist and tying it at 30-years-old can be a struggle at times.

This dyspraxia extends to sports. I am obsessed with most sports but the only sport I was ever barely decent enough to be in a team for, was cricket. I loved football but I was never good enough to be in any sort of team above 10/11 years old, which I had a huge amount of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and FOBLO (Fear of Being Left Out) as a result at that age, especially when my now friendship group have so many fond memories of playing in the same team together.

Factor in the fact that among young boys in the 2000s, being good at football gave you a huge advantage socially, not just being in the school team but popularity with the opposite sex and provided a bulwark against character traits which might make you vulnerable to bullying, for example if you were very quiet or shy, into subjects like drama and dance or were openly gay or had effeminate mannerisms.

I would always get frustrated at why my body refused to listen to my brain and what I was trying to make it do, then feel shame at not being good enough compared to my peers. That shame extended socially as not being good at football put an additional target on your back if you weren’t. It also gave you nowhere to hide if you already had a few targets on it, like I did.

Even with the only sport I was good at (excluding pool which I’m pretty good at), cricket, I had to work far harder than other kids to attain even a basic level of hand-eye coordination.

No filter

Initially, it took me longer than other children to speak fluently and the health visitor asked my mum if she was concerned at my late development, which could be another red flag looking back.

However, when I did, I never stopped. Coming back to the start of this piece, an extreme lack of filters became commonplace for me then and now to a smaller degree.

All young children tend to have zero filter because they haven’t developed them yet but I seemed especially prone to this. My mum told me that when I went round someone’s house, I commented very loudly; “WOW, your garden is really small!”. I probably didn’t intend it to be rude, my brain was just responding to what was in front of it, but the comment would have likely caused offence to that adult if they didn’t know I was autistic.

If I had to describe what this lack of filter is as an adult, imagine speaking to someone fairly normally and then, 20 minutes later, realising something accidentally offensive you had said as a joke or a passing comment without realising. I describe it as the Harry Potter meme of Hagrid in the first film, The Philosopher’s Stone, who frequently blurted out Hogwarts secrets, only to say moments later, ‘I SHOULD NOT HAVE SAID THAT!’ This is my brain ALL.THE.TIME.

As a highly sensitive and kind child, when this happened and I knew that I had accidentally offended someone, put my foot in it socially or even put myself in danger physically, this caused me huge anxiety, adrenaline to rush through my body without my consent, meltdowns and stress. I desperately had the feeling of wanting to turn back time to before the mistake happened.

No amount of breathing technique or meditation would solve it. Closure was the only way and a lot of the time that never came.

A former boss once described me as ‘extremely talented, but a bit rough around the edges’. When I heard it, I presumed he was referring to my youthfulness when describing my rough edges. Now I realise it was likely my undiagnosed autism at the time. At 30 years old, I’m far better at managing this tap on and off, although I’m still not perfect as I’m sure many people would agree.

One positive of this unfiltered behaviour is being able to ask podcast guests very deep and open questions as an interviewer where others might hesitate or feel uncomfortable doing so. As a result, I like to think I have better conversations.

Control

I am an admittedly massive control freak and perfectionist in life and at the heart of the previously mentioned meltdowns was likely the feeling of losing control of the situation and not being able to control the other person’s reactions or emotions towards me. I did not know how to turn this proverbial tap off.

When discussing autism in her latest book ‘Coming of Age’, (shameless plug: I am also interviewed in it!) Dr Lucy Foulkes describes one autism trait as an ‘intolerance of uncertainty’ and this certainly chimed with me. I hate spontaneity when I’m not in control of it and it can cause anxiety. I can plan surprises for others and be spontaneous but only when I’m in control of it, which is fairly ironic.

This uncertainty even extends to trivial things, for example if I am playing a role-playing video game and am presented with a choice where neither option fits a binary outcome of good or bad, I will look online for the spoilers to find out the consequences of both and then choose, to avoid choice guilt and then not be able to replay the decision. The Witcher 3 is a fantastic example of these types of games where the choices you make are neither 100% good or bad.

Furthermore, strong emotions like anger or sadness I used to find very overwhelming, this likely could be an element of control too as I was not in control of my emotions and this upset me more than a child without autism would feel.

‘Your lack of patience is disturbing’

I’m slightly tweaking an iconic line from Star Wars villain Darth Vader to demonstrate this next trait. For any non-Star Wars fans, in Episode IV, ‘A New Hope’ he says; “your lack of faith is disturbing’ to an impertinent Imperial officer, force-choaking him at the same time.

Patience is a virtue, and it’s one I have rarely had. When I was in my mid-20s, another former boss of mine commented that I would get extremely frustrated whilst at my desk, either at people not responding to emails as quickly as I wanted them to or things generally not going my way.

Usually, my lack of patience manifests now in my extremely old and misbehaving laptop or people who owe me money not paying me back immediately. This has caused equal amounts of comedy and frustration in my friends and family depending on who you speak to. In my defence, I always pay every single debt I’ve ever owed with lightning speed; A) to avoid any accusations of hypocrisy and B) because it puts me back in control and owing someone money means I am not in full control of my life.

I can also be very impatient when people don’t or act at the same speed as I do. One example of this was when I was inexplicably placed in the bottom set for English in Year 5 in primary school.

I had to read in a group with these children who were miles behind my reading skills. We would all take turns to read one page in a book. Where it would take me 30-45 seconds to read a page, they would sometimes take anywhere between 2-8 minutes, and I would be screaming internally as to why they couldn’t do it at my speed.

Thankfully, the school saw the light and moved me back to top set in Year 6 where we were all at the same level and reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

Turn taking

Social cues are things that autistic children find a lot harder to spot and develop.

Due to the autism and ADHD traits, interrupting people is something I did a lot as a child, teenager and well into my early professional career. Turn-taking in conversations is something socialised into children naturally or taught and I definitely struggled with this.

I had to learn over time on my own to reign in my hyperactivity to allow a natural back-and-forth conversation with people. At the time, I didn’t see these interruptions as rude but as part of a natural conversation and I didn’t care if people interrupted me either. This was yet another experience where I had to learn that not everyone’s brains work the same way as mine.

Literal thinking

When I was a child, teenager and to a certain extent, a young adult, I took things very literally.

One hilarious example of this was when I was in Year 6 and a girl asked me if I knew what a period was. I replied if it was a period of time, which all the girls around her found hilarious (it accidentally was to be fair).

In hindsight, she was likely trying to catch me out and embarrass me but that childlike innocence persisted more in me than other kids, increasing my vulnerability to be bullied. With the amount of low-hanging fruit I had at various points (autism, funny surname, unfashionable football team, victim mentality, being overweight etc), I might as well have had a sticker on my forehead saying, ‘BULLY ME’!

Another example is when someone asks me a simple question like ‘how’s your day going?’ Most of the time, a question like this is just pleasantries and most people probably have little to no interest in how your day’s actually been. For me, I have had to learn to deliberately hold myself back in my responses over the years, so I don’t brain-splurge on whoever it is I’m talking to.

As a comparison, if you were to ask someone on the severe end of the autism spectrum this question, you may receive a five-minute answer with a diarised list of things that they reel off uninterrupted. As the listener, you may think this person is incredibly intense and want to exit the conversation very quickly but for them, it is a simple failure to understand social cues and they have taken that question extremely literally.

Their brain has likely processed the question as ‘right, I’ll tell this person everything I have done today because that is what they have asked’, not knowing this is a question that is asked as part of polite etiquette and requires a short answer so the conversation can go into a normal to-and-fro structure.

As a result of this trait, I was quite gullible as a kid and probably quite trusting – another vulnerability to bullying.

Fail to prepare and prepare to fail

As a child and an adult, I have to prepare meticulously for any activity, for work or pleasure.

Lateness is one of my biggest pet peeves so when friends at university would say ‘come to our house for pre-drinks at 8pm’, that is the time I would show up. My brain would say: ‘they’ve told me 8pm so I should arrive then. Why would I show up late? That’s rude!’. It took me a long time to realise that this was a social norm and that the rule is to turn up ‘fashionably late’ in the UK i.e. 30 minutes – 1 hour later than the time specified.

I did this so much and so consistently at university that I became known as the only person who would turn up to a party five minutes early. Again, the way my brain processed it was: ‘well, if I’m early, I’ve got more time to get drunk and talk to people and enjoy myself’.

Rushing is one of my biggest stress and anxiety triggers, so if I have a train ticket that is booked for a specific time, I will leave loads of time to get there in case of any delays. I often get to the train station 20-30 minutes before it leaves, so I can find out which platform to go to and prepare so I can relax when I’m on the train first.

I also like sorting out birthday and Christmas presents for people well in advance. The first year I lived on my own outside of university in 2021, I had to buy and wrap all my Christmas presents myself. So, I decided to get all of them bought, paid for and wrapped by mid-November so I could relax for the next 1.5 months.

Family members also tend to get frustrated with me when I ask for birthday lists 2-3 months in advance as well. My brain says: ‘if I get this sorted and out of the way early, why is that a bad thing? If I sort it early, I don’t have to worry about it’ But I have slowly realised that not everyone’s brain works the same, highly organised way mine does.

In addition, excluding two essays in my first year which I wrote in one night and finished at 4am (I vowed never to do this again afterwards), I always completed my university work miles ahead of time. I wrote both my dissertations in my final year (8,000 words each) a month ahead of the deadline so I could spend the final month editing them to within an inch of their life.

The way I researched the topics and prepared for these essays was also probably a red flag looking back.

It started off normally enough. I would take out all the books related to the essay question I chose. However, then, I would write out in pen the entire section of every book that was relevant (sometimes this could be 10-11 pages). Then, I would highlight the sections I could quote directly and reference into the essay. Then, I would organise these papers and label them based on what part of the essay they related to and place them all around my room. As I completed each part of my essay, I would pile up the papers and my room would get tidier and tidier. Just a small red flag, right?!

Obsession is nine tenths of the law

A common autism trait is an obsession over a number of interests and hobbies, and I can certainly attest to that. Football, sports more widely, music and anime television shows I have high levels of obsession with. Equally, other interests like Star Wars, Marvel/DC and comic book culture, the theatre, children’s television shows from the 1990s and 2000s, non-fiction books and politics hold a strong intensity for me as well. Essentially, any topic I have a strong interest in I can fixate on. These are known as ‘special interests’ in autism circles.

Going back to the controversial Hans Aspergers, he described children with these interests as ‘little professors’, because of their ability to talk about their favourite subject in great detail, which I can definitely relate to.

I could easily talk non-stop about music for days with someone and never get bored or tired of it. When I discover a new music genre I like for example, I will listen to as many of the artists in that scene as possible, going from the start of their discography to the end, buying albums, going to gigs and even buying books on the history of the genre itself. I’ve done that for Reggaeton, Disco and Country to name a few.

My music knowledge is so encyclopaedic and my memory recall of artists, albums and songs so quick that a friend at university once nicknamed me ‘The Human Jukebox’ in a conversation. It feels fairly apt and it’s stayed with me ever since!

Going deeper, one of the reasons I loved anime so much as a child and still as an adult was because the characters expressed emotions in a hyperbolically obvious and comical way, thus I was able to tell what emotion the characters felt very easily. Anyone who’s watched popular 90s/00s anime’s like Pokémon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh or Card Captors Sakura will know what I’m talking about here.

My brain often fails to understand how someone who shares the same interest as me would not have the same intensity of interest and knowledge on it that I do and I am usually disappointed when I realise.

Quietening the brain

One of the mixed autism/ADHD traits I have is around my ability to focus and concentrate.  The only time my brain is totally quiet is when I am: listening to loud music on my iPod, at a gig listening to live music with or without earplugs, listening to a podcast, reading a book I’m heavily enjoying or watching a film at the cinema or a show at the theatre.

The rest of my time, my brain is extremely loud and struggles to turn off. It can be very exhausting.

My friends often joke that I struggle to talk to people and direct myself when walking in a group without music or a podcast to quieten my brain. I lose all sense of direction and even start to veer into them, like a rogue shopping trolley or pram with a malfunctioning wheel.

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’

Change is not something I’ve dealt with well throughout my life. When I was younger, I didn’t like holidays and the change in my routine. When we would go to the beach together as a family, when we were about to leave, I would ask ‘are we going home now?’, not understanding that a holiday lasted for longer than a day and was supposed to be an enjoyable break!

Any change to my routine is not something I like but over time, I have managed to cope by adapting to change very quickly. It is the anticipation and preparation for change I still struggle with.

Food

Since an early age, I’ve also had an up and down relationship with food. As a child, I was extremely fussy with my food. Initially. I thought this was related to other factors, but I now realise that it was a combination of those other factors but also autism. I didn’t like different foods touching on my plate, I only ate specific foods all the time, even going as far as specific brands of specific foods only!

It was likely a nightmare for parents of friends when I went round their houses, and it also added to the shame and embarrassment I felt when I had to be catered to in this way. Group outings or trips away filled me with dread at having to try and conceal this behaviour.

Today, I still eat the same lunch every day, with minor variation and I joke that I have the same 12-13 meals on rotation. This is likely a combination of comfort meals and also autism.

Friend or foe?

When it comes to friendships, I struggled to discern the level of friendship I had with people. Was someone a friend, an acquaintance, a good friend or a close friend? I have worked that out now at 30 but particularly during university, when I finally made friends and was popular for the first time in my life, people I thought were close friends didn’t keep in touch with me after university or vice-versa. Initially I found that upsetting and was confused as to why it happened. I always treated everyone the same way but didn’t have that treatment mirrored back to me.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve had a good ear. I can pick up other people’s voices, mannerisms and behaviours and mirror them myself. I often do this to comedic effect and is one reason I am a self-confessed amateur mimic. I grew up on Alistair McGowan’s ‘The Big Impression’ show on BBC One between 1999-2004 and later, Kayvan Novak’s ‘Fonejacker’ on E4 and ‘Facejacker’ on Channel 4 respectively.

I often wondered why I had this ability to mimic others fairly (but not always!) accurately. My friends will tell you I can quote stand-up comedians famous routines or bits, film quotes and scenes, (usually Lord of The Rings, Dodgeball or Star Wars) and TV shows (usually The Simpsons or Futurama) so accurately I could recite entire scenes in my sleep.

Most of the time I do this to make people laugh but sometimes I realise I do it almost like a verbal safety blanket or vocal stim. I tended to do this far more in childhood as I had far less control over this tick, much to the annoyance of my peers, another vulnerability I exposed myself to bullying with.

I have now realised that one reason behind this could be something called echolalia. Also known as echophrasia, it refers to non-voluntary repetition of another individual’s speech.

You would often find this manifest in toddlers, who repeat phrases and words of the adults around them without them being aware they are doing it. A comedic example of this would be in the film ‘Meet The Fockers’ where Ben Stiller’s character, Greg Focker accidentally says the word asshole in front of Little Jack who then repeats it as his very first word.

I am now gaining understanding that, whilst echolalia commonly resolves itself in children after the age of three, it can persist in autistic children through adolescence and into adulthood, which explains how this part of my brain works.

Similarly, on nights out, weddings and social events, I will know the lyrics to the vast majority of songs played by the DJs, oftentimes 100% word-for-word, which baffles the people around me who have met me for the first time. This ability extended to the way I memorised lines when I acted in school productions. If I repeated them over and over again in my head and again out loud, I could commit them 100% to memory and never fluff a line.

This is because I am a ‘word-fact thinker’. According to author, academic and animal behaviourist, Temple Grandin, in her book ‘The Autistic Brain’, Grandin outlines the traits associated with word-fact thinkers saying; “you’ll know who these word-fact thinkers are because they’ll tell you. They’ll recite all the dialogue from a movie. They’ll rattle off endless statistics about baseball. They’ll calmly recall all the important dates in the history of the Iberian Peninsula. Their math skills will be only average, they won’t bother with the Legos and building blocks, and they won’t be all that interested in drawing. In fact, there might well be little point in forcing them to sit through art class.” When I read this, it felt like I was reading my own life repeated back to me.

In addition, Grandin’s advice for how to support a word-fact autistic thinker also mirrors my life. She says: “one way to help this kind of thinker learn to engage with the world is to encourage writing. Give them assignments. Let them post on the Internet (word-fact thinkers tend to have strong opinions, in my experience…)”. – Remind you of anyone? Reading this, it’s a miraculous stroke of good luck that I fell into a communications career as it involves writing on a daily basis.

Accidental coping strategies

Whilst unaware of my own autism, over the years I’ve developed some accidental coping strategies that have helped me manage it and mask it too.

For example, whenever I need to concentrate at work, I stick headphones in (sometimes nothing is playing) and can hyper-focus very quickly. I have always been a highly productive person and hyper focusing is a powerful tool for that.

I need to be constantly busy to avoid boredom, which is a killer for my general wellbeing.

Having a regular, structured routine is also key and one I stick to religiously.

Finding activities that quieten my brain is very important and booking them months in advance gives me a busy calendar and things I can look forward to. These are mostly gigs which I love more than any other activity but also includes solo cinema trips, football matches, live comedy and the theatre on occasion.

When it comes to fine motor skills, any task I have to do I remember it as a system, so once I’ve done it right once, I can store that process and repeat it every time after that.

In my professional and personal life, I must consciously slow down my speech when doing public speaking. If I don’t do this, my brain feels like I must rush through it to deliver it in the time allotted and not waffle. I will then end up peppering it with filler words like ‘erm’, which I hate doing. Actively slowing down my brain makes my public speaking better and allows the audience to take in what I’m saying.

I also go against the grain of the stereotype that autistic people struggle to have empathy for others. This stereotype comes from those who are severely autistic and struggle to perceive that other people’s brains work differently to theirs. However, as I have mentioned previously, despite at times fitting this stereotype in some areas, this is not the case for everyone.

I have always had a good level of empathy for others and have obviously developed this hugely through the work I have done with Vent, interviewing over 340 guests on The Just Checking In Podcast and becoming a qualified Mental Health First Aider in 2019.

The first diagnosis

Despite all these red flags, I never thought it was autism. Like my own initial understanding of mental health and mental illness, I saw autism as only manifesting in an extreme way. I thought autism only existed in the kids I saw at school who colloquially would be labelled as ‘autistic as fuck’.

These were the children who had a teaching assistant with them all the time, would sometimes be in separate classes to the rest of our year group and most of them (sadly, not all) would be socially ‘off limits’ to bullies.

I was always very kind to these kids and treated them just like everyone else as much as possible in the dog-eat-dog environment of a rough, state comprehensive in a then-deprived area of Essex. It was partly my innate nature but looking back, perhaps subconsciously I saw a part of myself in those who were obviously autistic as well? Who knows.

For some reason, I thought autism was something your brain could literally feel or be cognisant of, not simply as part of how your brain works.

In December 2023, I thought I should go and see my GP to ask on the off chance if I may have autism. I didn’t desire a diagnosis and I had delayed booking an appointment because I was reluctant to be labelled if I did, or be treated differently by people as a result. I hate labels, victimhood culture, identity politics and I am no longer a victim, after spending years healing from my childhood trauma and come out of that mindset.

Despite that, I wanted clarity. I said to my GP that I think I may have autism but I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t seeking a diagnosis but I indicated that I would like to get assessed. The GP then asked me a series of questions and I answered yes to every single one. She suspected I had ‘low to mild autism’.

When I came out of the GP’s office, I suddenly had a whole range of emotions: anger that this wasn’t picked up by anyone sooner, sadness at how the childhood version of me who was dealing with relentless bullying, trauma and pain for nine consecutive years whilst also completely unaware he also had autism, and finally happiness that I was finally on the path to getting clarity for explaining all of these stories in my life. Suddenly, things were starting to make sense.

I now started to realise why some teachers in secondary school and sixth-form college absolutely loved me, whilst others in the former disliked me to the point of unprofessionalism. I never actively challenged a teachers’ authority, but I loved piping up in class and probably enjoyed interrupting teachers a lot with questions or general banter.

Some teachers could handle that. A few probably loved the fact a student was actively participating in their classroom when the rest of their class was silent. Others were likely a bit insecure and couldn’t handle a student consistently doing that to them.

I then began to ruminate on what my life would have been like if I had a diagnosis in my teenage years or even earlier. Would I have been bullied less? Would I have developed better coping strategies? Would I have received better support from everyone rather than having to deal with everything on my own? The answer to all of those questions sadly is no and I don’t think much would have changed. If anything, if people had found out I had autism, I likely would have got bullied even more, which could have finished me off.

Unfortunately, after that appointment, I never heard anything apart from a short phone call and I decided to go privately, which I am grateful that I was in the financial position to do so.

The second diagnosis

Despite the fact that my GP essentially diagnosed me, I am very aware of the responsibility I hold in the mental health space, and I am against self-diagnosing where possible.

I had two assessments for autism and in July 2024, I was diagnosed with autism. It is also highly likely that I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) as well, as I have lots of mixed traits but I will be getting a separate assessment for ADHD next year once I can afford it.

Unpopular opinions

Now that I am ‘officially’ diagnosed with autism, I can state a lot of the opinions in the conversation around autism that I have been wanting to do for a while but did not feel comfortable doing so until I was diagnosed.

The first is my intense dislike of the term ‘neurodiversity’. Neurodiversity as a term was first coined by Australian sociologist Judy Singer in 1997.

Neurodiversity is an umbrella term used to describe a range of neurological conditions, which includes: autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, Meares Irlen syndrome, hyperlexia, Tourette’s syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and synaesthesia.

I have many problems with this term which I will now outline. The first is that this term covers a ridiculously wide range of different conditions, most of which I don’t have and don’t have anything in common with.

I can of course, empathise with and feel deep compassion for anyone who is dyslexic for example, but my brain can’t comprehend the issues of reading and writing it can cause someone. I was top set in almost all of my classes in primary and secondary school (excluding science which I was horrendous in).

Furthermore, a condition like Tourette’s is one of the most stigmatised neurological conditions in the world.

It causes people to have ‘ticks’, which can be physical like convulsions, but also verbal ticks, which cause the person to say the most horrific things without their consent. This can make them social hermits or pariahs in their own community, be subject to bullying and have high levels of shame. If we follow the neurodiversity definition, I am the same as someone with Tourette’s, which I would never put myself in the same bracket as.

The second reason is how, in my opinion, neurodiversity is an example of something called a ‘euphemism treadmill’. This was covered in journalists Jesse Singal and Katy Herzog in an episode of their podcast ‘Blocked and Reported’.

The phrase itself was coined by Stephen Pinker in his 2003 book ‘The Blank Slate’. The euphemism treadmill explains how words that are used to replace offensive terms over time become offensive themselves. This is what I feel about neurodiversity.

When people use ‘neurodiversity’, everyone feels comfortable with it. It’s fluffy and safe. However, whenever I’ve used autism to describe being assessed or diagnosed in recent months, most people don’t know how to respond or give me a blank face like I’ve just told them the earth is flat. If I say it in a group setting, some people collectively pull back. The atmosphere changes and I can visibly sense people feeling uncomfortable.

The way I can compare it to is when some people have felt embarrassed to say my own surname out loud in public settings. No, it’s not ‘COKER’ or ‘CROCKER’, its Cocker. It’s my name, don’t be embarrassed on my behalf, I have to live with it!

It’s the same thing with autism. If someone has it and they know it, just say it. Cloaking it in neurodiversity language just frustrates me and creates a new and different stigma for it.

The question I want answered is: why are there two different reactions to two different words, which essentially mean the same thing?

One reason could be perhaps because the term autism is still associated with the severe end of the spectrum that people don’t want to use that term and therefore be associated with those traits or create that perception in their loved ones. If that’s the case, have we made any progress at all then?

To put it simply, I do not view myself as ‘neurodiverse’ or a neurodivergent person. I do not ‘suffer from being neurodivergent’ either. I am simply a person, a person who happens to have autism.

I am not part of an oppressed group, nor do I belong to a monolithic group of people who have the same experiences or views, just because they have the same neurological condition, or even a completely different one. I am not a victim.

As my close friend Claudia, who also has autism, says: “When you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met ONE autistic person!”

My life experience and someone with Tourette’s, OCD or dyslexia are completely different. If it was up to me, I would move away from the term neurodiversity altogether and go back to a universalistic but compassionate approach towards autism and be explicit about using it.

So, if someone you know calls themselves neurodivergent, then that is their choice and is absolutely fine for you to refer to them as it.

However, please don’t presume this is the case for everyone and call someone who has a condition like autism or ADHD, neurodiverse without their consent. From speaking to a lot of people privately who have these conditions too, I can safely say at the very least that there is not a consensus on the term’s usage!

Is everyone really ‘on the spectrum’?

One turn of phrase that also irks me in the mainstream conversation about autism is ‘everyone’s on the spectrum’. This phrase has its origins with academic psychologist and brother of iconic comedian and actor, Sasha Baron-Cohen, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen.

In 2001, Professor Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge introduced the autism-spectrum quotient questionnaire (AQ test), which tens of thousands of people have now taken online to discover if they fall on the autism spectrum.

On the one hand, the AQ test stimulated conversation amongst the wider public about the traits associated with autism and awareness about whether themselves, their friends or family might exhibit traits they had not previously recognised. This is obviously a positive.

However, for me personally, I find it quite patronising. According to the National Autistic Society, there are currently 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK. I would classify all of these people as ‘on the spectrum’, the autism spectrum specifically.

In addition, according to the NHS England website, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence estimates the global prevalence of ADHD in children to be around 5%, and in adults in the UK at 3% – 4%.

Someone who forgets things from time-to-time or has intrusive thoughts we all can have occasionally I don’t view as being on the spectrum. I find the phrase ‘everyone’s on the spectrum’ similar to someone saying, ‘I’m a bit ADHD’ or ‘I’m a bit Bipolar’ and perhaps most stigmatising, ‘I’m a bit OCD’. I haven’t found this development helpful for societal understanding of these terms and I don’t think the phrase is appropriate in 2024 anymore.

Furthermore, it’s important that there is some gatekeeping around conditions like autism. I get incredibly frustrated at internet memes that claim something incredibly trivial is somehow directly linked to autism, ADHD or OCD. This casual expanding of a mental health category is damaging to the conversation, could fuel social contagions and self-diagnoses and increase the already massively oversubscribed waiting lists. If everyone believes they’re ‘a bit autistic’ or ‘a bit ADHD’, then to amend a quote from the villain Syndrome in the Pixar film The Incredibles, “if everyone’s autistic, no one will be”.

A recent BBC News investigation found that there is an astonishing eight-year backlog on the NHS for people seeking an ADHD diagnosis, with 196,000 adults on the waiting list. I would be interested to know the percentage of these adults who fit the diagnostic criteria and who doesn’t.

The world is thinking autistically

The world has become a lot more informed on conditions like autism, ADHD and OCD in the last ten years. However, one unfortunate phenomenon in the last 10-12 years is how the world is increasingly behaving in a more autistic way, and that’s not a good thing in my opinion.

What I mean by this is that the polarisation of the West and the way politics and political issues are discussed has created widespread binary thinking. One red flag for autism in someone is their failure to see nuance and to see things simply in black and white. As an adult, you realise life is not that simple and always operates in ‘shades of grey’.

I find this trend very sad and it’s increasingly harder to have genuine, healthy disagreements with people without it creating a permanent rift in your friendship with them. Most of the time, I tend to avoid political discussions with friends as a result, especially in a group setting. Unless we have a very strong relationship and can navigate those with ease, I play it safe.

People would rightly say I love a debate and am quite strident in my opinions but equally, I’ve learned to admit when I’m wrong and I’m actually quite agreeable when it comes to decision-making in everyday life, sometimes comically so. Perhaps that’s still a minor people-pleasing scar.

Irrelevant advocacy

My final unpopular opinion in the current conversation around autism is there’s a fair bit of advocacy right now on things I don’t feel is helpful or needed and feels very surface-level. I ‘stim’ quite a lot on work calls when it’s not my turn to speak i.e. twiddling my pen between my fingers or I hold my arm with one hand to stop myself from fidgeting.

I even watch television out of one eye unconsciously. I used to think this was a consequence of having a previous lazy eye muscle in childhood (which corrected itself eventually I was told by medical professionals). However, on reflection, I wonder if it could be some sort of visual stim from autism? Who knows. When Temple Grandin asked autistic children why they look out of the corner of their eyes, they said “because I can see better that way”, which to me, makes sense.

Despite this, I don’t think there is any huge amount of stigma around stimming that stops people with autism from succeeding in life.

I also find awareness weeks generally pointless now, whether that’s in mental health or other topics. It generates a week or even a day of media coverage, a load of public figures and influencers who likely don’t give a shit about the issue then discuss it, sometimes for clout and usually at a very surface-level too.

Then they move on, the world moves on and its left to the rest of us who work in this field on the ground to pick up the pieces for the other 364 days of the year.

I’d like advocacy efforts around autism to focus on supporting those at the severe end of the spectrum, who might be non-verbal or need high levels of community care. In addition, reducing waiting lists and making it easier for people to get assessed without needing to go private like I did, is a no-brainer.

I want the education sector to be more informed about boys with ADHD, particularly working-class boys who have historically been vilified and punished for their behaviours and ‘lost’ in the system. I’m not working-class but in many ways, I was lost in the system too. I accept we may not be able to change the system to fit these boys learning styles completely, but some reasonable adjustments and compassion is not too much to ask for, is it?

I want children and young people with autism to be given as much support as possible to be able to manage it and have successful careers alongside it, not in spite of it.

Finally, I want society to abandon the ‘bigotry of low expectations’ that seems to accompany conditions like autism. Some of the most intelligent and creative people on the planet have had autism or were suspected to have had it, now we know more about the condition. These include the likes of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Emily Dickinson, Nikola Tesla, Tim Burton and Michelangelo. I would like the current discourse to elevate these people as role-models, encourage self-actualisation around autism and take people out of victimhood, if it applies.

We should also not look at autistic people as one-dimensional charity cases. As Grandin states: “by cultivating the autistic mind on a brain-by-brain, strength-by-strength basis, we can reconceive autistic teens and adults in jobs and internships not as charity cases but as valuable, even essential, contributors to society.”

For the future of the next generation, we cannot allow a culture of victimhood around autism to take hold and tell young people that their destiny is not in their hands to shape.

What now?

Now I am ‘officially’ diagnosed, I have spent the last few weeks processing it as it feels like a big moment in my life. The moment of diagnosis was a huge relief as now, everything makes sense.

I also feel even more proud of that younger Freddie and the bravery and courage he had to have to get through that pain and suffering, not knowing he had autism or how to regulate his emotions alongside it.

As I said earlier, I am going to get assessed for ADHD as I have too many mixed traits to not want clarity on this either.

I am getting better at spotting red flags of autism in others and can hopefully increase the level of support I give to other autistic people through Vent and in my personal life. In time, I would like to try and be a role-model or mentor for those who need guidance and validation, like I did all those years ago.

I have started learning more about autism through various books and speaking to others who have been diagnosed for longer than I have. It is a new part of my journey I am excited to embark on it.

I have already discovered, again through Temple Grandin that one biological risk factor for autism is your father being older at time of conception and my dad was over 40 years old when I was born.

The scientific reason behind this risk factor is due to the way sperm cells divide. As Grandin states; “sperm cells divide every fifteen days, more or less, so the older a father is, the greater number of mutations in his sperm. It’s like making a copy of a copy of a copy on a photocopier. And the greater number of mutations, the higher the risk of a mutation that might contribute to autism.” This likely provides one explanation but I am learning more about it every day and there are no doubt other reasons I have not discovered yet.

Final thoughts

And finally, my therapist says I still do not give myself enough credit for what I have achieved, particularly living with undiagnosed autism for my entire life up to now.

So, here’s a few achievements I can write without cringing too hard: I got five As at GCSEs despite the fact I was being horrifically bullied and spent months and years at a time feeling suicidal, I got AAAB at AS, AAB at A-Level, went to Sussex university and got a 2:1 degree in Politics. I moved away from home and lived independently (with a lot of mistakes!)

I started saving to buy a flat from 15 years old and I managed to fulfil this ambition in 2021 when I bought the flat I now live in, independently, in London, 10 minutes from my parents and siblings, which didn’t require me to move hours away from them.

I successfully learned to drive and pass my driving test on the first attempt (with only four minors!).

I have developed a high level of emotional intelligence and can support people with issues that 99% of people cannot stare at, refuse to or don’t have the skillset to support.

I have a good career in a job which I enjoy.

I started a social enterprise for men’s mental health which celebrates its seventh year in September 2024.

I started a podcast in April 2019 which at time of writing has over 340 episodes. That’s not a bad list!

Some people might be surprised knowing I have autism and for some it might be a surprise it’s taken me this long to figure it out. For the former, they may have thought my highly-extroverted nature and hyperactive ADHD traits created a mask that didn’t make them jump to the conclusion of autism.

When I have disclosed privately to a few people I have been diagnosed with autism, the usual reaction has been they already thought or knew that. I know that it is seen as rude to point it out, but it would have been nice to have been told that 10 years ago!

It is also perhaps a sign of my personal achievements alongside the autism that when I described these traits and the severity of my bullying and the trauma I went through as a child to one of the clinicians who assessed me, he asked: ‘have you ever taken medication for any of this Freddie?’ I replied no and he just said ‘Wow!’

I didn’t expect this to be the longest article I’ve ever written. It’s more suitable to call it a dissertation. In fact, its longer than the two 8,000-word dissertations I did in university!

If you’ve got to this point 9,300+ words in, I salute you (ironically, this brain splurge is a demonstration of an autism/ADHD trait itself, as well as the fact that I wrote 4,800 words of this article in 45 minutes in one evening).

However, this feels like such an important moment in my life that it’s felt like it’s had a 20-year build-up to it, and I wanted to get absolutely EVERYTHING I wanted to write about down.

I know not everyone will agree with my views contained in this piece and that’s fine, I don’t expect them to. I’d be annoyed if everyone agreed with them! However, I do hope it’s given you a greater understanding of me, my life and perhaps makes you reflect on your own conversations or attitudes towards me in the past, positive or negative, now I have an autism diagnosis.

It’s hugely important for me to state that I do not want any special treatment after this diagnosis. I don’t want anyone to treat me any differently or tread on eggshells around this subject. I am a very open person, and I would much prefer you to be curious and show an interest rather than avoid it altogether. All I ask is for you to have a greater understanding and awareness of autism not just in me but in everyday life.

It’s equally important to say that my autism has shaped me but it does not define me. I am not my autism and my autism is not me. It is merely a part of me.

Finally, I hope this article allows you to spot the red flags of people in your own life who might have a condition like autism or ADHD and hopefully help get that person the clarity they need, one way or the other.


FScreenshot

Freddie Cocker is the Founder and CEO of Vent.

This article is also available as a podcast below:

A list of all the sources this article references, as well as others which you may find helpful are below:

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