Pete Wharmby has opened up about being diagnosed with autism in his 30s — and his hopes to “try and raise that base level of understanding” of autism with his new book.

The author’s latest book, Untypical, is out now. It’s a practical handbook of how to make the world a simpler and better place for autistic people to navigate.

It is also a call to arms for anyone who believes in an inclusive society — and who wants to be a part of finding the solution for it.

Pete was diagnosed with autism when he was 34 years old. He told Chic how it was “completely missed” when he was a child in the ‘90s, as he didn’t “act in a stereotypically autistic way, as far as people were concerned at that time.”

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He recalled, “I was just very quiet, very reserved — I kept out of the limelight and out of the way.

“I was diagnosed when I was 34, so six years ago now. And it was a result if wanting to find out why I wasn’t coping with the change in routine of parenthood.

“Obviously, I was aware postpartum depression can exist for both the mum and dad — but it was bigger than that. And it just wouldn’t shift, I was struggling in a way that I’ve never struggled before.

“I wanted to know why. I looked into it, did some questionnaires like so many people do. I really immersed myself.”

Pete explained that everything he’d read at the time about autism was “new to me”.

He said, “I knew the myths, the stereotypes — but all of the stuff I was reading in 2017 was new to me. It was like, ‘oh, this wasn’t what I thought autism was like at all, this is different to what I expected’. And it’s also me, completely me — it was scarily accurate.

“Everything that I’d experienced, I was finding in these lived experiences from other autistic people and thinking the whole time, ‘wow, this explains an awful lot’.

“I got a diagnosis from that. I went to the GP and they referred me immediately, which is pretty good. And I was diagnosed probably within six to nine months, I think, which is unheard of now unless you go private. I was very, very lucky.

“It just helped explain — everything slotted into place. You go back over your life with this new information and kind of realise, ‘oh, that’s why that happened’ or ‘oh, that explains why I reacted like that’.

“It just helps — it contextualises everything. It’s hard, it’s tiring, but afterwards you feel kinder to yourself and more reasonable to yourself.”

Pete recalled how “two things in combination changed everything for me”, as he opened up about his former career as a teacher.

He said, “It was the diagnosis, and coming to terms with that, and then a year or two later the pandemic hit.

“I was very open with my diagnosis with my work, with my school. To be fair to them, they wanted to put things in place for me and support me. I voluntarily took a kind of step down from my head of department role because I just needed to look after myself.

“But it was funny — even though they were very good and I really couldn’t speak any ill of them in that way at all, they were fantastic — there was still a shift in expectation.

“And I think that happens to a lot of disabled people. If they say that they are disabled, the people around them may lower their expectations of them — without even realising it. It’s little things, like, ‘oh, we won’t bother Pete with that’ or ‘maybe Pete hasn’t got the energy for that’.

“You start losing opportunities, even though you might actually still kind of want them. They’re not necessarily offered anymore.”

Pete told how while it is “done with kindness, I think, mostly”, it can “make you feel a bit low”.

He continued, “That kind of knobbled my confidence a bit. And then the pandemic came and we’ve got to be really careful at home and look after ourselves shielding-wise — and the idea of being in classroom with just a mask, not even any filters or windows open often, I just couldn’t do it. I had to walk away.

“But luckily it kind of synchronised with the writing taking off and I do a lot of online talks and things like that about lived experiences to workplaces, schools, and hospitals and people who want to know more about what it is to be autistic.”

And Pete told how the book was his take on his experience so far, noting that “no one person can speak for the community”.

He said, “I say it repeatedly [in the book]: this is my take, this is my experience and this is what I understand about autism from what I’ve been told by others.

“No one person can speak for the community. All of our experiences are so different.”

Pete also opened up about the inspiration behind Untypical — and how he hoped to “try and raise that base level of understanding” of autism as much as he could.

He recalled how, after joining the community online after his diagnosis, he noticed “autistic adults in particular were burned out, massively stressed and hugely misunderstood by the people around them — even their friends and family”.

He continued, “All of it boiled down to the fact that nobody knows about it.

Cover art for 'Untypical' by Pete Wharmby published by HarperCollins
Pete's new book 'Untypical' is available now

“It’s not like a lot of other disabilities, where there’s a reasonable level of knowledge that people just walk around with.

“They don’t have a base-level of understanding that people have that might have about x, y or z disability or different identity or whatever it might be.

“And when it came to autism and things like ADHD as well, it feels like that base level of knowledge is incredibly low — and often totally wrong, and based on all kinds of old myths and stereotypes and what have you.

“I started tweeting about it — that’s how all this started — and talking about it online. And I had lots of people telling me, ‘you should put all of this stuff into a book’ — all these insights, and everything.

“But I’m very passive and I don’t tend to go out and get things — but then HarperCollins came to me and said, ‘do you want to write a book?’ And I was like, ‘actually, yeah, I do!’

“And this is exactly what I want to do. I want to try and raise that base level of understanding as much as I can.”

Pete added that he hopes the idea was to create a “ripple effect, ideally” — and get people talking and the conversation moving in a different way.

He said, “To be fair, it’s already starting to happen.

"It’s been happening the last five years or so, thanks to so many autistic advocates getting online and talking about their lives and experiences. The shift is happening, but it’s slow.”

Pete also shared what he reckons the biggest misconception about autism is — and how he feels it is “one of the biggest barriers that the community faces”.

He said, “I think that here, and probably elsewhere in the world as well, the biggest misconception is that autism is a childhood thing. You hear more about autistic children than anything else — and that it’s kind of a white, male middle class thing.

“That's your kind of stereotypical autistic kid in school.”

Pete added that that’s starting to change now, and “people are realising that autism affects literally every demographic, it seems, pretty much equally”.

He continued, “Even though is a reality, and the researchers know it and the autistic community knows it, it is taking ages for it to filter through to the general population.”

The public speaker noted that the misconception can lead to “an awful lot of being told ‘oh, you don’t look autistic’”.

Pete opened up about what he hopes that readers are able to take away from Untypical.

He said, “It goes back to that idea of I want them to have a greater understanding of how to interact with the autistic people who are almost certainly going to be in their lives.

“The rate of autism in the population, it keeps going up — there’s estimates that it could be one in thirty or one in 20.

“It’s a lot of people, so everyone is probably going to know somebody.

“I’d want people to be better equipped to understand what's going on for us and then they’d be better place to have more compassion for us.

“If we’re overwhelmed by stress or sensory stuff like that, it’s better to have people around who understand that and who know that sound sensitivity is a big thing for autistic people — and who therefore might be able to help us with it, or at the very least not get angry with us for struggling.

“That’s what happens, especially with autistic children. If they're struggling with noise or bright lights or something, their behaviour might change and they might get more angsty, fidgety and what might be seen as more difficult — but they might not be offered any compassion because of what’s going on now.

“Whereas I like to think — and I like to think the best of people, even in these dark times — that if people know about this stuff, they’ll be far more likely to at the very least say, ‘oh, it’s because of the noise, he’s not being difficult’ or ‘they’re not trying to cause a problem — they’re just struggling, so let’s help’.

"If only a couple of autistic people benefit directly from that, as a result of people reading my book, then I’d be happy.

“Because having grown up with that and having received irritation, annoyance or struggling with things, it’s not something that I want anyone else to have to ever go through.”

Pete also shared his advice for anyone who is trying to become more of an ally.

He said, “If you were to search for books on autism, for example, you’ll come up with a lot of results. And the first thing that you should do is filter through and find those books that are by autistic writers — that should be your first port of call.

“And that’s not just my book, there are thousands of writers across the world who’ve written about their experiences — like The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida. There are a lot of really good quality books by autistic writers about their experience.

"So, I’d say to look up autistic authors, keep that as your real focus.

“Alternatively, get online and find the voices online — Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. Every kind of social media platform has a different set of autistic voices who are there, talking and looking for people to listen.

“#ActuallyAutistic is a good one, and that will lead to some people — you can go from there.

"Just start listening. That would be the best way, as far as I’m concerned, to become a real ally.”

Untypical by Pete Wharmby, published by HarperCollins, is available now.

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