I’ve spent 22 years hyper-aware of how my brain deviates from normality — be it my intense emotions, my hypersensitivity to those of others, or my affinity for rules.

Throughout my school years, I found comfort in academia.

It was the place I didn’t have to mask, in fact my ability to hyper-focus was an asset. Academic giftedness became my identity.

In other areas of life, I learned to dilute qualities others considered “odd” to a tolerable level, but in doing so I also diluted myself.

My mental and physical health deteriorated until I was completely consumed by various mental illnesses and spent more time in hospitals than I did in my own home.

Interventions used a one-size-fits-all approach and failed to fix me. I found the treatments restrictive, forceful, and traumatic.

I endured many years of pain.

It was only when I entered my 20s that things shifted and my focus turned to my healing and advocacy.

These are the lessons I’ve learned along the way:

I am disabled

Prior to this year, I’ve never identified as autistic, let alone disabled.

I now see that I have always faced and will always face challenges incomprehensible to most.

My ability to mask and fit in means that I don’t appear disabled, but it doesn’t mean I’m not. I do so across multiple facets of my life, to such an extent that usually I’m not conscious of it.

One of the earliest memories I have of doing so was in primary school, when I first started experiencing obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and becoming aware of some of my behaviours.

I have a specific memory of a lesson in which I was holding my hands awkwardly and stimming (a way of self-soothing and expelling energy) by flapping them around — neurodivergent folk refer to this as “T-rex arms”.

I can still see the look in the eyes of the classmate who came up and started mocking and mimicking me.

I learnt to move through life playing a part. It consumed so much of my energy, time and focus that I also existed in a constant state of exhaustion.

To this day, I don’t know what it’s like to not feel tired.

There is no shame in disability

People with disabilities face barriers because society is designed for non-disabled people.

A perfect example is in communication.

When I communicate with another neurodivergent person, it feels to me like a chaotic but brilliant symphony. Our conversations flow like rapids that twist and turn in every direction.

However, we live in a world where neurotypical communication is the norm and a lack of rigid structure in conversation is a barrier.

Neurotypical communication expects me to follow set rules — give eye contact, talk in chronological order, use certain body language and posture. If I don’t string my thoughts together in a socially acceptable manner, people underestimate my intelligence or assume I’m being rude.

In the same way, some wheelchair users encountering stairs might describe the stairs as disabling, rather than their chair.

Not all disability is visible

When we talk about disability, we think of physical disabilities. But you cannot tell if someone has a disability by looking at them.

Recently, I bought a green sunflower lanyard for the bus.

The green sunflower is representative of hidden disabilities. It is a tool used to indicate the presence of a person’s disability or disabling condition that is not visible.

The concept came from a passenger advisory group at a London airport in 2016 and began as a way to discretely signal to staff that a person may need a little extra support.

It didn’t take long to figure out that next to no one knew what the lanyard meant.

Neurodivergence is not like the movies

I grew up confident that I knew what autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) looked like, informed solely by depictions like Dustin Hoffman’s autistic character in the movie Rain Man.

Neurodivergence is far more complex and can look vastly different — it may not be visible at all.

Research has shown that those assigned female at birth are harder to diagnose with autism than boys and men because the model is constructed around males.

Delayed diagnoses are not uncommon for women and girls, and can deny them access to the support they need.

Autism is often depicted as a lack of awareness of social cues, but I would argue that in many cases the opposite is true for women and girls.

We develop socially faster than boys. Our brains collate social information into an internal manual on how to behave, meaning we get very good at masking our traits.

Often, we appear normal and go undiagnosed until late teens or adulthood when we inevitably burn out in a world that is not designed for us.

Poor mental health is not mental illness

Mental health is something we all have, in the same way that we have physical health. It is neither good nor bad, it simply is.

At times a person’s mental health may be good, at other times not so much.

People tolerate mental ill-health in others until it gets to point where it starts to affect how they function, at which point it becomes too uncomfortable to make space for.

It is indescribably hurtful and invalidating when others claim they understand whatI’ve been through, they simply do not.

It’s turning an experience that is mine into something about them.

Not all disabilities are equal

Psychosocial disability (a disability which arises from a mental health issue) remains largely neglected, despite the devastation it can wreak.

It’s next to impossible to get National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) support, and even if someone qualifies, the complexities of the process discourage them.

The fact is that not all disabilities are treated equally.

My hope is to shift the way we view imperfection and value human dignity, to fight for it as a universal right and appreciate it deeply.

I want to draw attention to the connections between mental ill-health and neurodivergence and for society to view patients as people.

Rachael is a 22-year-old lived experience mental health and disability advocate in Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia. She is a member of numerous advisory groups, youth groups, mental health organisations and consumer representative bodies, and hopes to pursue a career in advocacy and peer support.

This article was commissioned as part of the ABC’s coverage and recognition of International Day of People with Disability.