A Day in an Autistic Life

It is a common saying that to truly understand another person, you should walk a mile in their shoes. For an autistic person, that mile is a daily marathon, run across a brutal obstacle course of sensory assaults, social minefields, and the relentless, crushing demand for predictability in a world that thrives on chaos.

Who is this study about?

In this case study, we interviewed a brave autistic adult, DJ Merryweather, who has shared his daily struggles to help us all learn about autism and its challenges. He co-authored the book, 'The Autistic Robot Man', for the same reason. In his case, he has a high IQ and he doesn't have any learning disability. He is hyper-sensitive to sensory stimuli, and he has very strict routines and rules he lives by. His thinking is quite inflexible, so he doesn't cope easily with changes or the unexpected. He does have a physical disability which makes it hard to move around effectively.

This story is told from DJ's own perspective, in the 'first person', in the words he used during the interview. But it's really important to realise that every autistic person is different - they think differently from each other, they have different co-occurring conditions, and they have different sensitivities and challenges. One autistic person's challenges are completely different from the next one's, and the next one's, and so on!

What it's like to have a neuro-diverse brain

So, in DJ's case, he likens his autistic brain to a high-performance computer running on a unique operating system. It craves logic, order, and routine, yet it is forced to exist within a society designed for a completely different, intuitive, and often illogical system.

Every single day is an exercise in monumental mental, emotional, and physical effort. It involves the constant, exhausting task of filtering a flood of sensory information that can feel physically painful, navigating social interactions that require the conscious, manual processing of a detective, and battling a relentless tide of anxiety that rises with every unexpected change. From the moment my eyes open in the morning to the moment they finally close at night, my life is a precarious tightrope walk of meticulously planned routines, pre-calculated strategies, and carefully managed coping mechanisms. All of this is designed to keep me from falling into the abyss of a sensory meltdown or a complete cognitive shutdown. What follows is a glimpse into 24 hours inside my autistic brain - a day that, to an outside observer, might look perfectly ordinary, but is internally a titanic struggle for survival.

A day in the life

This timeline details a typical day, exposing the internal challenges and the immense cognitive and emotional cost required to navigate a world not built for "my mind"...

• 6:00 am - Waking Up

  There is no gentle transition from sleep to wakefulness. The moment my consciousness returns, my brain doesn't just switch on; it comes online with a jolt, all systems firing at once. Instantly, I am flooded with the day's entire operational plan: the sequence of tasks, the timings, the potential for disruption, and a full diagnostic report of every anxiety. It's an immediate and overwhelming need to structure the day, not out of a desire to be organised, but as a desperate defence mechanism against the paralysing fear of the unknown.

• 6:15 am - The Digital Routine

  Before I can face the physical world, I must first impose order on the digital one. I reach for my tablet, not for a casual scroll, but for a critical regulation ritual. I scan the news to arm myself with information, but the most vital task is checking my bank accounts. Every transaction is meticulously cross-referenced with a complex budget spreadsheet. This isn't about wealth; it's about certainty. An unexpected transaction of 50p is not a minor discrepancy; it is a piece of corrupted data, a system anomaly that triggers an immediate spike in anxiety. My brain cannot let it go. It will run a background process of worry and analysis until the discrepancy is identified and resolved. This routine is a crucial act of control, a way of building a firewall against the financial chaos I fear.

• 7:00 am - Getting Ready

  Choosing an outfit is not a matter of style; it's a sensory risk assessment. I run my hands over fabrics, assessing their texture. A seemingly innocent t-shirt might have a seam that, by midday, will feel like sandpaper rubbing against my skin. A label can feel like a persistent, sharp insect bite. This single choice is fraught with the potential for all-day distress, a low-level sensory torment that will drain my cognitive resources. To mitigate this, my wardrobe is a curated collection of 'safe' items. The routine of washing, dressing, and brushing my teeth is a rigid, unchangeable script, each step performed in the same order, every day, to provide a foundation of predictability.

• 7:15 am - Feeding the Dog

  My love for my dog is immense, but the sensory experience of his food is a daily ordeal. My olfactory system is hypersensitive, and the pungent, meaty smell of his breakfast is a physical assault. The odour feels thick and invasive. I must hold my breath, work quickly, and immediately scrub my hands to eradicate the lingering scent. Only then can my sensory system reset enough to face my own breakfast.

• 7:30 am - Breakfast

  I eat the same bowl of porridge every morning. This is not a culinary rut; it is a sanctuary. It removes the exhausting cognitive load of making a choice and guarantees a predictable sensory experience. As I eat, I watch an episode of 'Shaun The Sheep'. This ritual is a precision instrument of regulation. The show's seven-minute runtime is the exact duration of my meal. Its gentle, dialogue-free humour and predictable narrative structure provide a safe, comforting anchor for my mind, preventing it from drifting into the anxious 'what-ifs' of the day ahead.

• 8:00 am - The Dog Walk

  Walking the dog requires the strategic planning of a military operation. My primary objective is to avoid unplanned social encounters. The thought of being ambushed with small talk - "Lovely day, isn't it?" - is enough to trigger significant anxiety. It would require me to launch my resource-intensive 'Social Banter' sub-routine, a program I can barely run when my energy is low. I have a database of routes, cross-referenced with times of day and the likelihood of human traffic. The entire walk is a state of hypervigilance, scanning for distant figures, ready to execute a pre-planned diversionary route at a moment's notice.

• 8:45 am - The Commute and the Panic

  My 10-minute journey to work on my disability scooter is a vital part of my daily structure. The route is a sacred, unchanging sequence of turns and landmarks. Today, my path is blocked by a "Pavement Closed" sign. The external world sees a minor detour; my internal world experiences a catastrophic system failure. A tidal wave of panic hits me. My heart hammers against my ribs, my breath catches in my throat, and a siren blares in my mind: ROUTE FAILED! ROUTINE COMPROMISED! It takes every ounce of my mental strength to fight the overwhelming urge to flee. I have to stop, anchor myself, and force my logical brain to override the panic. I manually compute the next safest, shortest, most predictable route, but the cost is immense. The sudden surge of cortisol and adrenaline leaves me shaken, and I arrive at work with a significant portion of my daily energy reserves already depleted.

• 9:00 am - Arriving at Work

  I enter the building, still trying to regulate after the commute, only to face the next disruption: the shift rota has been changed. The meticulously constructed schedule I had in my head, the one I relied on for security, is now useless. This is not a simple adjustment; it is the demolition of my day's architecture. The 'mask' of calm competence has to be forced into place as I suppress the internal chaos. I must rapidly and covertly re-plan every task, every interaction, every transition for the next few hours. This frantic mental gymnastics is utterly invisible to my colleagues, but for me, it is another huge withdrawal from my dwindling energy bank.

• 9:15 am - 12:45 pm - The Morning Shift

  As a support worker, my job is to create a calm and predictable environment for others, a task that requires me to project an aura of stability I rarely feel myself. The real challenge is the constant demand for "cognitive empathy". I don't intuitively feel what others are feeling; I deduce it. I am a detective, constantly gathering data - a client's tone of voice, their posture, a subtle facial tic - and cross-referencing it against a vast internal library of human behaviour to calculate their most probable emotional state. I then run the appropriate script: "You seem upset. Can I help?" This is not a fluid, human connection; it is a complex, logical process that is incredibly mentally taxing.

• 1:00 pm - Lunch

  My lunch break at home is not just about refuelling my body; it's a critical system regulation period. I eat the exact same meal. This predictability is a non-negotiable requirement. It lowers my cognitive load to the bare minimum, providing a precious 30-minute window for my overloaded processors to cool down before the afternoon's demands begin.

• 1:45 pm - The Supermarket Ordeal

  A trip for groceries is my personal battlefield. The supermarket is a weaponised sensory environment. The fluorescent lights hum and flicker at a frequency that feels like a drill boring into my skull. The overlapping sounds - store announcements, crying children, beeping tills, the squeak of trolley wheels, people chattering - form a disorienting wall of noise. The visual data is overwhelming: thousands of brightly coloured products screaming for attention. The air is a thick soup of conflicting smells. Crowded aisles force unwanted physical proximity. I navigate this hellscape with the focus of a soldier, clutching my list like a map, wearing my noise-cancelling headphones as armour. By the time I escape, I feel as though I've survived a genuine assault.

• 2:45 pm - Housework

  The noise of the hoover is not just loud; it's an invasive, unpredictable roar that obliterates my ability to think. The washing machine's rhythmic drone is a low-level torture. I have to wear industrial-grade ear defenders to perform these tasks. They are not a comfort measure; they are an essential tool to prevent a full-blown sensory meltdown.

• 4:00 pm - 6:30 pm - The Afternoon Shift

  Returning to work is a monumental effort. My "social battery", a finite resource, is now flashing red. Every interaction, every question, every empathetic response has to be manually generated from empty reserves. The mask feels heavy, ill-fitting. My smile feels like a rictus grin. I am running on fumes, sustained only by the knowledge that the routine has an end point.

• 7:00 pm - Home and Dinner

  The front door closing behind me does not bring peace. My brain does not have an "off" switch. It is still processing, analysing, and de-fragmenting every bit of data from the day, trying to sort it all out and decide which bits are important and which aren't. Preparing dinner requires following a familiar recipe to minimise cognitive load, but the social expectation of connecting with my wife is a huge challenge. I have to excavate the last dregs of energy to engage, to ask about her day, to perform the role of a present and attentive husband.

• 8:00 pm - Attempting to Relax

  We sit to watch television, but for me, there is no relaxation. My mind is a frantic hive of activity. I am replaying a conversation with a colleague, analysing it for errors. I am worrying about the unexpected rota change and its implications for tomorrow. I am processing the sensory input from the screen. Often, I will scroll on my tablet while "watching" TV. This isn't rudeness; it's a coping mechanism. The predictable, controllable input from my tablet helps to regulate the overwhelming, unpredictable input from the television and the room.

• 9:00 pm - Life Administration

  Before my system can even consider powering down, I must run a final diagnostic and impose absolute order. I return to my budget spreadsheet, reconciling the day's spending. I plan household tasks for the week ahead. This is not a choice; it is a compulsion driven by a deep need to eliminate all unknowns. An unresolved issue is a background process that will steal processing power all night, preventing rest.

• 9:30 pm - Bedtime Routine

  The final routine is a sensory anchor. The precise temperature of the shower, the familiar texture of my towel, the specific taste of my toothpaste - these are known, safe, predictable data points. They are a sequence of signals to my overstimulated nervous system that the day's sensory onslaught is over and it is safe to begin the shutdown sequence.

• 10:00 pm - Winding Down

  In the relative quiet of the bedroom, I must perform one last task: a full communication data dump. I methodically clear every email, every text message, every notification. My brain cannot rest while there are unresolved "open loops". Each unanswered message is a task left running, a loose thread that my mind will snag on, preventing sleep.

• 11:00 pm - Trying to Sleep

  Sleep is not a state I drift into; it is a destination I have to fight to reach. My brain is a noisy, chaotic place, replaying conversations on a loop, searching for social missteps, and running simulations of tomorrow's potential disasters. The slightest sound - a creak in the floorboards, the hum of the fridge downstairs - is amplified into a jarring intrusion. To have any chance of rest, I need a weighted blanket to provide calming deep-pressure input, and a white noise machine to create a predictable sonic wall, blocking out the unpredictable sounds of the night and giving my racing mind one simple, monotonous thing to cling to until, finally, blessed exhaustion pulls me under.

The crushing weight of normality

"This is the relentless, exhausting cycle of my daily life. The most painful truth is that this titanic internal struggle is almost entirely invisible. Years of painful social conditioning have taught me to hide it all behind a carefully constructed mask of normality. I have learned to force eye contact that feels like a physical violation, to script conversations, to mimic facial expressions that don't match my internal state, and to suppress the natural, self-regulating movements of my body," says Merryweather. "I have built an incredibly sophisticated 'Autistic Robot Man' to send out into the world, a persona that can perform the role of a competent, calm, and 'normal' person. This performance is my shield, but it is also my prison, and the energy it consumes is astronomical. I end every single day with a profound physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that sleep barely touches."

"However, the constant need to mask is not the biggest problem I face. The biggest issue is that our society is not built for the autistic brain. Its sensory chaos, its bewildering social complexities, and its rigid intolerance for different ways of being mean that I, and millions like me, have to work monumentally harder just to stand still, let alone get ahead", Merryweather says.

This must change. The path forward is not for autistic people to build more convincing masks, but for society to build a more compassionate and understanding world. It begins with conversations. If you know an autistic person, ask them about their world. Listen with patience and an open heart. More importantly, talk to your neurotypical friends and family. Share what you have learned. Help them see that the behaviours they might find 'odd' are often survival strategies in a hostile world.

To truly deepen your understanding and become an agent for this change, I urge you to explore these three books, all of which provide invaluable insights and practical guidance:

• Understanding Autism: A simple guide for everyone

  This book is an essential primer, written by an autistic author to demystify the complexities of autism for a neurotypical audience. It explains core traits like sensory sensitivities and communication differences in simple terms, debunks harmful myths, and provides practical, real-world advice on how to interact with and support autistic people respectfully and effectively in all areas of life, from healthcare to the workplace.
  See https://www.autisminfocenter.org/autism

• The Autistic Robot Man: Unmasking for a fuller, happier life!

  This is a deeply personal and brave account of the life-long experience of autistic masking. It chronicles the exhausting effort of emulating neurotypical norms, the creation of a 'robot' persona to survive socially, the inevitable system crash of autistic burnout, and the courageous journey of unmasking to find an authentic, happier, and more fulfilling life by embracing one's true autistic self.
  See https://www.autisminfocenter.org/robotman

• The Autism Manifesto: Goals for a compassionate society

  This book is a powerful call to action, systematically identifying the barriers autistic people face in ten key areas of society, including education, healthcare, and the justice system. For each challenge, it lays out clear, actionable 'Manifesto Principles' designed to guide individuals, institutions, and governments in creating a world that is not just tolerant, but genuinely inclusive, equitable, and supportive of all neurodivergent people.
  See https://www.autisminfocenter.org/manifesto