Life as a social chameleon: Anna, insider perspective

When you are born without a “social autopilot” you need to learn to fit in in order to pass into the norm that other people expect. I call myself a chameleon because of my ability to adapt to my surrounding; everything from the way I look, speak, dress to the way I move and what words I use. I have Asperger syndrome and adhd and as long as I can remember I have noticed that I am different and therefore adapted. I didn’t get the answer to why until I was 40 but by then I had already put myself through school and five years of studies at university and gotten a lot of bumps and bruises along the way. I am a registered nurse, a mother to a child with similar diagnosis and I now work a lot with making the world better for my son and every other child who doesn’t quite fit into the narrow form that I had to struggle with. I especially want to educate people about what autism and adhd presents in girls and women because for some reason- people expect them to behave the same.