Published by: U.K. Youth
Written by: Maya Hattenstone

There are around 700,000  people on the autism spectrum in the UK, many of these are young people and I am one of them. And you don’t hear from us often enough!

Being a young person with autism you can get lost in anxiety; worrying that people are judging you, that you are not accepted, that you sound strange when you talk. Too often we end up silencing ourselves with our self-consciousness.

I was diagnosed with Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome (a condition on the autism spectrum) when I was seven years old.  People with PDA have communication and social interaction difficulties. I found school life and academic work hard. In fact I found a lot of life hard.

For a long time I didn’t know how to be a voice and didn’t want to be a voice. So, like many autistic people my instinct was to withdraw – into silence in social situations, or simply avoid those awkward situations in the first place. Click here to read the rest of the story