In 1986, twenty-two years before my autism diagnosis, I had a chance to meet one of my musical heroes, George Michael. I hadn’t met George before, and the prospect of spending hours with him in the close confines of a recording studio thrilled and terrified me in equal measures. At around 10 pm that Friday evening, I was told that George was on his way to the studio and that I should make my way over. Immediately, the panic set in. My stomach began to churn with anxiety, and the excuses began as to why I couldn’t attend the session. Read More
Clinical Depression – How Meditation Saved My Life
In February 2019, my world crashed into a life-shattering wall of all-consuming clinical depression. Following 6 months of increasingly poor mental health, I could go no further in any direction. I feared that I had plunged so deep into the well of despair and hopelessness that perhaps life was simply to painful to carry on. Read More
Autism Meets OCD
OCD-ACTION Annual Facilitator DayBirmingham 2017 On November 4th, ocd-action kindly invited me to speak about autism at their annual facilitator’s event in Birmingham, UK. This is due to the rise in people with OCD asking them for advice that are also on the autistic spectrum. I spoke for around an hour to groups of OCD support groups from around the country, that are brought together each year in order to attend Read More
Autism: Feeling sympathy for inanimate objects
I have felt sympathy for objects since I was a very young child.This has caused me a huge amount of sadness and anxiety over the years. I feel sad for the photograph that gets pushed to the back of the display cabinet, the guitar that doesn’t get played anymore, and the once loved camera that has now been displaced by a newer one. As a young autistic child, I played Read More