Stefanie Preissner has revealed that she’s autistic.
The best-selling author was diagnosed with autism earlier this year, at the age of 34.
Opening up about her diagnosis for the first time on Newstalk, Stefanie told Anton Savage: “I always felt that I was a little bit ‘something’, like a bit too ‘something’, like a little bit too sensitive, a little bit too controlling, a little bit too anxious. Always just a little bit too off.”
The writer admitted she always felt “different” when she was a teenager, but Stefanie never thought she was autistic due to common misconceptions about people who have the condition.
Stefanie explained: “I never thought about autism because my version of autism, and this is a huge barrier to diagnosis, was based on Rain Man or genius savant men who are unemotional and can’t make eye contact or a seven-year-old boy who rocks back and forth and can’t respond to his mother.”
“That’s my fault Google exists I could have done research but the mass media was feeding me this is what autism is and it didn’t look like me.”
After releasing her first book ‘Why Can’t Everything Just Stay the Same?’, a doctor suggested to her that she might be autistic.
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Stefanie admitted she initially “laughed off” their suggestion, but the coronavirus pandemic made her reconsider.
“I was on social media a lot during the pandemic helping other people to process what was happening and I noticed that while a lot of people were struggling with their mental health, what was happening to me was slightly different I just became fixated on the data,” she said.
“I could have told you how many cases there were in any country on a given day, how many cases there were developing in Ireland and then as the Government were coming out with new rules, I was reading those long documents and telling people the rules.”
“I was very worried about why people weren’t sticking to the rules, like these are very clear rules you were told to do it why would you not do it.”
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After Stefanie told her therapist how upset this was making her, he too suggested that she get assessed for autism – and she was later diagnosed with the condition.
Speaking about her diagnosis, the 34-year-old said: “Part of it is a relief. Then there’s sort of a big fear as well.”
“It was a shock but it wasn’t at all a surprise and that’s been my experience of sharing the news with other people who know me.”
“I’m absolutely the same person I always was, I have always been autistic. I just wish I had known that autism can look like me.”
