Oh, It’s Autism, Mary H.K. Choi Learned at 43. Okay, She Thought, That Explains a Lot.

Mary H.K. Choi compares living with her brain to just not understanding the operating system on a computer. She didn’t know if this was a result of trauma and neglect in her childhood, the experience of being parentified as a child, grief after the death of her father, or what. So she spent decades of effort and piles of dollars to figure it out. She did cognitive behavioral therapy, internal family systems therapy, “heroic doses of psilocybin under the watchful gaze of a shaman”, and anything else she could try. Finally, under the burnout and fear from covid, her functionality began to fall apart and she looked into the possibility of autism spectrum disorder as a possible culprit. And ding ding ding goes the slot machine, first a self-diagnosis from online resources and then a confirmed clinical diagnosis. Looking back now, she sees some of the clues, including a lack of empathy for others and the act of “performing competency”, that make more sense now. Mary offers insight on the long path to figuring out one’s mind and what she’s doing now that she has some answers.

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