I Passed the Interview. I Failed the Break Room
How undiagnosed autism and workplace masking led me to quit my job
My first job out of university was as a proofreader. People hear that and picture something calm, maybe a little dull. Nobody imagines it as a job that could push someone into a fear of leaving their own house, or into needing antidepressants just to function. The masking required in an office setting, however, drained everything I had.
The work itself suited me. Long stretches of quiet, focused attention on a page, checking for consistency, catching errors other people had missed. I was good at it. What broke me wasn't the proofreading, it was everything surrounding it. The open-plan office, the small talk built into every transition between tasks, the expectation that I'd be visibly, socially present for eight hours a day on top of doing the job I was actually paid for.
Two Jobs, One Contract
Masking is the practice of consciously suppressing autistic traits, such as stimming (self-stimulatory behaviour, which involves repetitive body movements, sounds, or manipulation of objects), an unusual tone of voice, and/or a lack of eye contact. It's not lying exactly. It's closer to running two jobs at once, the one on your contract, and the constant, unpaid work of performing neurotypicality.
I was 22 when I was diagnosed with autism. By then, I’d already spent years perfecting a version of myself designed to be easy to be around. Laughter timed to land a second after everyone else's. Sunglasses in winter to avoid throwing up when lights were too bright. Hands still, even when every part of me wanted to move. I felt like a robot, but I was a convincing robot.
Masking like this had always cost me. A few hours with friends meant a week of solo recovery afterwards. Before working full-time, I could absorb that cost in the gaps between one demand and the next. But a full-time job doesn't leave gaps.
As the weeks progressed, my ability to process what people were saying to me got worse, along with my own ability to speak. I was crying every day, not about anything specific, just a kind of overflow with nowhere else to go. Eventually I lost the energy to eat or shower, and was diagnosed with clinical depression and autism spectrum disorder.
Trying to Make It Work
The diagnosis itself was a lot to process, but once I understood what was happening, I asked for a few accommodations in my workplace. First, I asked for the lights to be turned down in my corner of the office, but was told no because other people didn't want them dimmed. That seemed fair, so I asked to drop to four days a week, as I'd already been told to “work slower” so the team didn't run out of work. That, however, was turned down too.
I got the sense, never said outright but unmistakable all the same, that management thought I was being dramatic. Difficult. That the requests were more about me being awkward than about any real barrier I was facing. Despite being advertised as a “disability aware” employer, I didn’t encounter a single manager who actually knew what autism was. What I got instead was "I hope you're okay," said kindly enough, but meaning nothing, because it was never followed by any practical accommodations.
Nobody explicitly pushed me out of the job. It would be a simpler story if someone had. Instead, I slowly realised that working in these conditions, without accommodations, was fundamentally unsustainable given my sensory and social difficulties.
What One Closed Door Proved
Interestingly, I recall being told to take one confidential call from a private office instead of my public desk, where I was usually made to stay at all times. The door shut, and something in me let go before I'd even sat down. The stress-induced brain fog lifted instantly, like a weight coming off that I hadn't fully registered I was carrying.
For the length of that call, I didn't have to micro-manage anything, not my posture, not my facial expressions, not the constant background awareness that I could be spoken to at any moment. I stimmed freely. It was such a small change, one door, but it showed me exactly what had been missing all along. My exhaustion had never really been about the work itself.
What the Numbers Say About People Like Me
From April to June 2026, there were an estimated 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK who were NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). Only 39% of them were unemployed in the conventional sense, actively looking for work and not finding it. The rest were economically inactive altogether, not studying, not job hunting, often because ill health had made either one feel out of reach, which was closer to my own experience than the word "unemployed" ever was.
I recently took part in a study aiming to give the government guidance on what to do about the number of people in this situation. It felt strange filling out a questionnaire about my struggles for an audience of policymakers rather than a single manager, knowing that whatever I wrote would sit alongside hundreds of other answers. There was a kind of relief in being one data point among many instead of being viewed as one difficult employee.
Nobody taking part in that study lacked drive or ambition. We talk about NEET status like it's a personal failing to be fixed with the right CV workshop or pep talk, when the research says otherwise. It says the system is doing exactly what it was built to do, sorting people by how well they fit specific roles, and quietly filtering out anyone who doesn't.
Right now, my focus isn't on finding the next job as fast as possible. It's on unlearning the shame that comes with not having one. I catch myself rehearsing explanations before I've even been asked, bracing for the "what do you do" question that doesn't have an easy answer.
There's a lot of noise right now about neurodivergence being over-diagnosed. What that narrative misses is the gap I actually lived through. I learned the reality of what happens when no one in a workplace has an accurate understanding of autism, and I frequently feel the embarrassment of trying to explain why I couldn’t just put on a brave face and push through.
This article has been sponsored by the Psychiatry Research Trust, who are dedicated to supporting young scientists in their groundbreaking research efforts within the field of mental health. If you wish to support their work, please consider donating.
