But Everyone Feels This Way
How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life
Ratings3
Average rating3.8
15
How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life
Ratings3
Average rating3.8
Autism acceptance activist and TikTok influencer Paige Layle shares her deeply personal journey to diagnosis and living life autistically.
“For far too long, I was told I was just like everyone else. But knew it couldn’t be true. Living just seemed so much harder for me. This wasn’t okay. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t functioning. And it certainly wasn’t fine.”
Paige Layle was normal. She lived in the countryside with her mom, dad, and brother Graham. She went to school, hung out with friends, and all the while everything seemed so much harder than it needed to be. A break in routine threw off the whole day. If her teacher couldn't answer “why” in class, she dissolved into tears, unable to articulate her own confusion or explain her lack of control.
But Paige was normal. She smiled in photos, picked her feet up when her mom needed to vacuum instead of fleeing the room, and earned high grades. She had friends and loved to perform in local theater productions. It wasn’t until a psychiatrist said she wasn’t doing okay, that anyone believed her.
In But Everyone Feels This Way, Paige Layle shares her story as an autistic woman diagnosed late. Armed with the phrase “Autism Spectrum Disorder” (ASD), Paige challenges stigmas, taboos, and stereotypes while learning how to live her authentic, autistic life.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm not sure I agree with Paige's take on identity v person first language and high support needs v low functioning, I should listen to those parts again. I need to examine my biases and possibly unlearn or reassess.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, around the end the book takes a turn from the memoir genre to that of self-help. In the self-help section there was too much use of the word ‘perfect' for my taste. Not everything is for me.
And speaking of ‘not everything is for me', I don't think I'm the intended audience for this book. I want to hear from ‘actually Autistic' voices, but I'm also picky about craft. Paige's writing style and choices sometimes threw me. I really appreciate that at some point Paige talks about contradictions because there feels like there's a lot in here, but she has a point, life is messy and complicated and contains contradictions. Normally, I love exploring the contradictory nature of life (I used to say ‘life is simply complex and complexly simple) but they don't feel explored and at times I felt annoyance, doubt, disbelief, and defensive, at times thinking ‘but you said x earlier' or ‘but you're capable of y'.
Sigh I did feel sympathy and a sense of injustice for Paige, for example when she didn't realize that she could have had accommodations for university until already more than 1 or 2 years in, ugh didn't her high school support system teach her to self-advocate, to ask for help or to tell her to talk to student services.
I don't understand how her diagnosis is “later in life” when she was 15ish and she's not far from that now. That was the main reason I was interested enough to read this - I've never seen her videos and would not recognize her in any context. If you claim you're writing about the difference a “later in life” diagnosis can make - or you provide a blurb claiming this is “later in life” - it should not turn out “still diagnosed before high school graduation was near.” “later in life” is misleading.
