I became depressed & suicidal at the time. I was very open & honest about this, about what I was struggling with & what would help. My manager at the time just had an attitude of 'do as I tell you, you don't get treated different' & 'do I have mental problems'. Luckily I lost that job!

I've been self employed (out of work but need the income) for nearly ten years, desperately trying to get into suitable work & to find help to do so. I've tried autism charities for support, they've never engaged. Tried the job centre, but I can't claim benefits so can't access support they offer.

I was open about being autistic in my last job which was supporting families at a social care level& managing a team of family support workers. It got me discriminated against. Recently I applied for a job helping parents of autistic children & didn't get it because of being autistic.

I think the main thing is education and awareness. If you are aware of how you can be influenced & can recognise influence, you can better decide to take a different path & not engage with the influence, or even find yourself instinctively having the opposite effect to it, not going with it.

I've grown my own TikTok, Facebook & X accounts to 1000's of followers, three YouTube channels to 1000's of subscribers (one about 130k). I am autistic, trained to work with autistic clients, an author, coach & therapist, knowledgeable about AI tools & now make most my living as a content creator.

Thank you, that is very kind