Author Stefanie Preissner diagnosed at 34 with autism

Stefanie Preissner: 'I wish I had known that autism can look like me'

Screenwriter and author Stefanie Preissner has revealed that she was diagnosed with autism earlier this year.

In an interview, the 34 year-old creator of the RTÉ series Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope explained that the diagnosis was part “relief” and part “a big fear." 

“I always felt that I was a little bit ‘something’, like a little bit too sensitive, a bit too controlling, a little bit too anxious. Always just a little bit too off,” she told Newstalk.

Ms Preissner said that from the time since she was a teenager, she had always struggled to accept change.

“I wondered a lot as a kid particularly like as I started to diverge - with girls we were all fine in primary school and then in secondary school girls started to change and wear makeup and listen to different music and I was like, what? Hang on we all decided that we like the Spice Girls and that we were going to hang out at my house on Friday night why do you want to go to that park and sit in a bush and what’s happening and how long are we going to be there and who’s going to pick us up.

“Why am I different why can I not relate to the impulses of other people,” she said.

'Autism didn't look like me'

Following the publication of her first book Why Can’t Everything Just Stay the Same in 2017, a doctor who had read the work suggested she be assessed for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

“I kind of laughed it off and was like I have a cousin and an uncle with autism and they’re both non-speaking,” she said.

"I never thought of that because my version of autism - and this is a huge barrier to diagnosis - my version of autism was based on 

Rain Man genius savant men who are unemotional and can’t make eye contact or a seven-year-old boy who rocks back and forth and can’t respond to his mother."

I could have done research but the mass media was feeding me this is what autism is and it didn’t look like me.

Then, during the pandemic, the author said she became fixated with and stressed by data around the spread of Covid-19.

“I was on social media a lot during helping other people to process what was happening and I noticed that while a lot of people were struggling with their mental health, what was happening to me was slightly different. I just became fixated on the data.

“I could have told you how many cases there were in any country on a given day, how many cases there were developing in Ireland and then as the Government were coming out with new rules,” she said.

"I wasn’t worried about catching Covid, I was very worried about people not sticking to the rules.” 

When she mentioned her anxiety to her therapist, he suggested she be assessed for ASD. After a lengthy process, she then received the positive diagnosis.

“It was a shock but it wasn’t at all a surprise and that’s been my experience of sharing the news with other people who know me,” she said.  

Since the diagnosis, Ms Preissner said she has something of a better understanding of herself.

"I’d be on The Late Late Show for something and the next day, I wouldn’t be able to talk," she said.

However, she now realises this wasn't a typical type of exhaustion. 

"I can get up, I can walk around, I can go for lunch. But I can’t speak. I can speak in monosyllables, but to try and form a sentence is too much and now I know that that’s called shut down - it’s very, very normal and typical for autistic people.

“I’m absolutely the same person I always was, I have always been autistic. I just wish I had known that autism can look like me.”