Let me take you back several years ago. I’m living in the little town centre apartment I share with my partner (now my ex). It’s warm outside, even warmer inside, and the kids on the estate are roaming around being loudly feral while I’m trying to have my autism assessment online.

It’s awkward. And more bizarre than I was expecting.

The assessor has asked me to look at a book called Tuesday by David Wiesner. It’s an almost completely wordless picture book where frogs mysteriously fly through the night on lily pads, drifting into a nearby town and encountering people as they go.

I’m supposed to explain what the frogs are thinking, feeling and doing. And somehow this will tell the assessor if I have autism or not.

God I have no clue what the frogs are thinking. I barely know what I’m thinking half the time these days. I’m literally here because my life is a mess right now and I don’t know what else to do.

The mess my life was in

At this time, I’d been working at a design agency for over a year. I had started as a Junior Designer and at the time of my assessment, I had recently been promoted to Midweight. The pressure had always been there. But recently, things had gotten worse.

The agency required us time how long we worked on every project and sometimes I felt those hours were getting shorter and shorter.

I was young, the only woman in the company at the time and only one of three designers in the entire team. I’d had a few design jobs before this one but never worked at a proper agency, and I was determined to keep up, keep the clients happy and keep the boss happy.

For the first year I managed it.

If I didn’t finish something within the time slot we’d been given, I stayed on well into the evening and finished it in my own time so it was perfect. I constantly criticised myself for being a “slow designer” when, looking back, once I was asked to create a custom illustration for a client in only a few hours . And I still got it done.

I kept doing that for as long as I could. Until I couldn’t. Eventually I burned out so badly that the sight of ClickUp made me feel physically sick and shaky. I still hate you, ClickUp.

I remember logging on every morning with the pressure already sitting in my chest. Every evening I’d finally log off, curl up in a ball and cry.

Why I didn’t just leave

Looking back, people might wonder why I didn’t just leave. Partly because I genuinely thought this was a me problem.

I was also part of an industry that constantly tells you how competitive and hard it is. At university, guest speakers spoke about how we all needed to work hard, and online all I saw were senior art directors talking about how ruthless the design industry was.

I took every word completely literally.

I worked myself to absolute exhaustion every day. I never showed any weakness and never told anyone I was struggling because I thought if I just worked harder I’d eventually become everything work wanted me to be.

The company also encouraged us to think about how we could continuously improve and make things faster at the end of every project. Which I completely understand. Everybody wants to get stronger and improve their systems.

The problem came when I felt like every tiny aspect of every project was being constantly scrutinised. I became so worried about getting everything perfect that I actually started making more mistakes. It became a vicious cycle.

I also didn’t tell my parents what was really going on because they would have encouraged me to leave. I’d worked incredibly hard to get into an agency and I genuinely believed this was the job that would make my career.

By the time my assessment came around, leaving wasn’t as simple anyway.

And I’d recently moved out of my parents place and into my own, I thought that living with my partner and being closer to work would make everything easier. I had rent to pay.

And honestly? I was also holding onto the belief that I could fix this somehow. I thought

therapy might be able to help me find a magic solution that I was missing I’d finally become everything they wanted.

So I stayed.

I was determined to fix things

So here I was, new home, new town, new job and funnelling most of my new earnings into my new therapist’s bank account.

My therapist was lovely, and I instantly connected with her. Let’s call her Elsa. She actually lived close to me but weirdly, we never actually met in person once. I think I was too anxious and the idea was to work up to that.

I instantly identified with Elsa. She was a lot like me, only a decade or two older. I always admired the way she was dressed. She had a shaved head which I thought was ballsy and artsy, she always wore something whimsical like star earrings, and she’d experienced similar things to what I was going through.

Here’s where I struggle a little to explain what we actually worked through. For the first few months we mostly talked about things that had happened to me in life, especially school. While I cried. I’d dealt with some pretty heavy bullying, and it wasn’t hard to see where the anxiety came from.

The problem was that understanding those things didn’t practically change anything at work.

I’d actually coped reasonably well at university. I definitely ran into some problems (mostly some bullying again), but I was also high achieving. I did good design work, got good grades and even completed an internship or two. I’d worked other jobs before and never experienced this extreme level of anxiety at work.

So I kept asking Elsa the same question. Why wasn’t I coping? What was wrong with me?

Endless conversations followed where I asked her why I wasn’t coping with this or that situation. She did her best to reassure me that lots of people felt the way I did about work and suggested different things she thought would help.

Some did. Some didn’t. But I still couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me and why I couldn’t become the person work wanted me to be.

Then one day someone else I knew got diagnosed with autism. If you don’t know this, when someone is assessed for autism they are usually encouraged to bring someone along that was present for their childhood, so they can answer questions about their behaviour and development.

The person they’d brought along casually told me that a lot of the questions about autism had reminded them of me. I remember looking at them and just thinking, “What?”

And they repeated “It sounded like you, Bry.”

So I went home and started Googling autism. It was like a lightning moment. I was floored, this is why things have been so hard. This was why I felt so different.

I floated the idea with my Mum, who, bless her, had always been my sounding board for these types of things. And the only person in my life at the time I felt safe discussing this with.

And she had told me that she’d had years of teachers and doctors commenting on my little quirks, so she asked what could be done for me and they basically told her nothing. That I was just odd, or particular, or weird and she was sent on her way and told to stop bothering them with it.

Well, I was determined to get someone to listen to us now. I told Elsa what my Mum and I had found and she said, “Oh yeah… maybe.”

We talked through the things that seemed to fit the autism pattern and, for the first time in a long time, I felt hopeful. I remember thinking, “Oh my God… is this actually a proper explanation for everything?”

Then I started reading more and realised something I hadn’t quite sat with yet. There isn’t much you can do about autism. So if I really was autistic, I wasn’t going to be able to find a solution to magically change into the person I want to be.

I must admit, even though I love who I am now, and attribute the success of my business to being autistic. But at the time, this realisation got me down because I was completely at my wits end.

But, Elsa reminded me that a diagnosis could still make a huge difference. If I really was autistic, I’d finally have an explanation. Work would understand why I was struggling and we’d be able to make things easier for everyone. That filled me with hope again.

Together we wrote down every sign we thought could point towards autism. I handed it to my GP and asked for an NHS autism assessment. They skimmed through the thick stack of paper I handed over and agreed pretty quickly.

A few months later, once I had settled into my new flat I finally got my assessment date.

Assessment day

So there I was, in the middle of a heatwave, on a noisy estate, trying my absolute best to interpret what some random bloody frogs were thinking so I could keep my design job.

And it went about as well as you’d expect.

By this point I’d developed a relentless perfectionist streak. I thought I had to give an exact right answer and immediately panicked.

Are you autistic if you get the answer right or wrong? Which one was better to be?

So I just kept giving flat, literal explanations of what I could see them doing.

“They’re probably happy… I think?” I’m lost, I’m hot, I’m overwhelmed and I’m just trying to get these random tests over with so I can get on with my life.

And oh, my poor Mum! I hope she doesn’t mind me saying this, but she was part of my assessment, the “witness” to my autism if you get what I mean. And bless her, she had to try and explain some of my bizarre behaviour which could be hilariously random.

Side note, it literally says in my report that I once had a conversation with her about toilet designs in Berlin. My Mum deserves a medal for showing up for me when I needed her most, and also for not laughing while explaining the toilet thing.

Then, one of the assessors asked her, “Why wasn’t Bry diagnosed before?”

Not accusingly, they were just curious. But my poor mum HAD been trying to get people to listen to us for YEARS.

This is why this is called “No One Knows What To Do With Me” Apart from my family who genuinely accepted who I was as a person, no one else knew what to do with me.

Nursery didn’t know what to do with me.

Primary school didn’t know what to do with me.

High school didn’t know what to do with me.

College didn’t know what to do with me.

University was better… in some ways, but yeah, my tutors definitely didn’t know what to make of me.

And now work didn’t know what to do with me either, and I was paying the price.

Well, long story short. I got diagnosed. Without any doubt apparently. I don’t think they are allowed to say I’m autistic by a landslide, but that’s basically what the report said if you read between the lines of clinical jargon.

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Getting diagnosed didn’t make my job better

So my boss caught me after the call and carefully asked what was going on because I’d had to take leave for more than one assessment and he could tell it was something.

So I told him. Because I thought being honest was best and it would finally lead to understanding. At first, it actually seemed to. They did a bit of Googling on autism and told me that I had their “full support.”

Finally, I thought. Maybe this is it. Maybe people will actually understand why I’ve been struggling.

I also need to add a bit of context here. I’d just been diagnosed with a disability, I’d just moved to a new city, and my Nan, who I was incredibly close to, had passed away. All within the same couple of months.

Instead of the understanding I thought I’d get, I felt that if anything, the goalposts kept moving. I genuinely tried my best but I felt like I was slowly drowning, I had less time to complete projects than ever and I had to work so quickly, and I was so incredibly stressed that some mistakes were made.

After a few weeks of struggling to keep up, one afternoon, I received an email from my boss, that included a document listing everything that I was doing wrong in their opinion.

I had reminded them several times leading up to this that I was grieving as well . But they suggested this was because of my autism diagnosis, and even stated in the email that “I’d lost my creativity” and it was hinted that I wasn’t right for this job.

Example: I’d explained to my manager that I was still fairly new to website design, and wanted to know how we were supposed to tell every action the user would take. He told me “he just knew”. And he seemed to expect me to just know too.

I tried my best to explain that I’d only been working there a few years, and I suggested that maybe I found it harder to “just know” because I was autistic so maybe I needed a more practical way to learn and I needed to find a course or a book.

That conversation, where I was simply asking my manager for some direction, ended up being included in the email as a suggestion as to why I shouldn’t be a designer.

I wish that I could have told myself back then that ANY good designer or marketer shouldn’t assume they “just know” what’s best, and should back up their thinking with actual data and testing.

I designed a simple LinkedIn banner for a client. Remember, by this point in my career, I was working as a Midweight Designer and I’d already worked on hundreds of projects where I’d taken ownership of the creative direction. A little LinkedIn banner was nothing.

But my design manager and the art director kept asking me to change every tiny little detail over and over again. Every change increased the time I’d spent on it because I had to make those changes. Then, unknowingly to me, they still decided it still wasn’t right even after I’d signed it off with them, redid it themselves and told me in that document that I’d cost the business a lot of money. As if I was solely responsible for a project two other senior member of staff had eyes on.

Receiving that document completely devastated me. I had tried working harder. I had tried being faster. I’d paid for therapy when I couldn’t do that. And I’d gone through an autism assessment because I genuinely thought an explanation would finally help people understand me. It just… didn’t.

That was my “I’m done with this” moment.

Moving forward

Obviously, I didn’t stay there forever. I had a few more jobs after that. Some I look back on really fondly, some I’d rather keep in the past.

Eventually I realised I was spending far too much energy trying to fit into someone else’s business. So I built my own instead.

These days I work with people who have felt out of place too. Business owners who think differently, communicate differently, or have spent years wondering why everything seems so much harder for them than everyone else.

And I have to say, I don’t feel like I need to “fix” myself any more, I’m a lot kinder to myself and I’m grateful that the experiences I’ve had led me to this.

I’m finally where I’m supposed to be.

Thanks for reading, I hope my story resonated with you.

Next time, I’m talking about what it’s been like dating as an autistic woman while running a business. Until then, if you’d like to see what I’m up to, you can find everything on my Linktree.

Bry x