Pete Wharmby is a British Secondary English teacher and father who also happens to be autistic.
He was diagnosed with autism back in 2017 and from that moment he had been determined to assist others with his help and advice.
He has a website patreon.com/pwharmbyautism where he usually writes posts to share with others his feelings and thoughts.
Pete Wharmby is also very active in Twitter. He frequently posts tweets about his interests, thoughts as an autistic person, social aspects being autistic… etc.
An example of this, is the recent Tweet that he post in early April about “20+ daily experiences an autistic person will typically have – an insight into our world”.
These are the 20 experiences that Pete Wharmby shared in Twitter:
“1. Having a morning routine that is extremely tightly-scheduled with each activity’s estimated duration seared into your mind. Any deviation from this routine will be painful and unpleasant.
2. Waking up feeling anxious about managing your morning routine, worried about a possible change you have to make, perhaps, dreading it.
3. Hating the sensation of water on your head as and in your ears while you shower. Alternatively, finding it so soothing you cannot get out of the shower. Either way, the shower’s gonna mess with you.
4. Skipping breakfast as you literally don’t have the organisational capacity to manage it right now, knowing you’ll be starving by 9am but equally knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.
5. Feeling guilty as you put an item of clothing on for the second or third time that week as you’re so exhausted you need the comfy familiarity and you haven’t been organised with your washing this week. Going to work worried people will notice.
6. Having a mini-crisis as you try to work out what direction you will go to work. If you have multiple options, expect this to rise commensurately in complexity. Can be paralysing. Can lead to doubling back and changing mind.
7. Seeing a cat on your way to work/school that you like but it ignores you and it was one of the few positive moments of your day and wtf? Continue in a dim frame of mind.
8. Getting rained on. You haven’t got your coat as you hate how it feels and you don’t have an umbrella as you don’t like the noise the rain makes on them. You get soaked.
9. Think about getting the bus but the thought of the change in routine and the sensory experience is just too much. Stand awkwardly at a bus-stop before shaking your head and walking on regardless.
10. Your shoes really hurt but sorting that out would involve going shopping for new shoes and frankly, you’d rather saw off your own feet than go through that hell anytime soon. You limp to work.
11. Seeing a colleague and going out of your way to avoid having to do small talk with them. Finding yourself in crisis between avoiding colleagues and changing route.
12. Fudge up your small talk with an unavoidable colleague. Worry about what you said to them for the next 7-14 days.
13. Bump into your boss. A little chat, draining your battery like you’re a 10 year old iPhone. You make a joke out of nervousness and realise in bed later that evening it was wildly inappropriate. Can’t sleep.
14. Realise that thing you really could not forget to do – the thing you put alarms on your phone and wrote reminders everywhere for – somehow didn’t get done.
15. Feel so stressed at work or school, ten minutes in, that it feels impossible to see the day through. Try to figure out your routine for the day, involving as few movements as possible.
16. A colleague is talking to you. They say something that in the past has 50% of the time been an implied request, 50% hasn’t been. Spend 40 minutes trying to work out what to do.
17. Realise you’ve been sitting in a really unusual position for the past 30 minutes in full view of everyone. Hey, you were comfy! But you looked like someone had tied you in a knot.
18. Realise that you haven’t had anything to drink since you woke up. It’s midday and you have a splitting headache.
19. Overhear someone mention one of your favourite interests. You blurt out something about it, wanting to infodump a bit. Everyone looks at you like a weirdo. You make a mental note to never speak again.
20. Your dental issue that’s been bothering you for 12 months niggles you again. You think about phoning dentist but haha that’s not gonna happen.”
It is wonderful that, thanks to technology and social networks, people with autism can be comforted by feeling identified with Pete. At the same time, people who don’t have autism can better understand how autism community feel and better figure out the reason of some of their reactions.
