 the 40 or T podcast women and people of backgrounds that are not white I think are more likely to be misdiagnosed yeah yeah well I need to be misdiagnosed and undiagnosed I definitely agree with you and being Asian myself I'm the woman and I yeah I agree I think it's also because women are much better at masking or I don't know if they're better they just feel like they should mask I don't know because I definitely did mask a lot in my youth if I look back because I didn't know how I was supposed to act I had no clue so I used to just pick up and other people's behaviors and tone of voice and the way that they would interact so that I could fit in and I actually think that is another part of like why autistic people are more prone to mental health conditions because we're like expected to fit into like this mold and like everyone else and I always like think of it and describe it as like being neurodivergent in a world that's like designed for neurotypicals so it's really just I don't know how we're supposed to be comfortable enough to be ourselves in a place that doesn't make us feel able to be so yeah and it is quite it's quite a protective thing isn't it because you know that there are situations particularly in secondary school or high school over in the US that present a lot of real world dangers or real world stresses like bullying and you know if you kind of stick out and people notice that and people sort of take advantage of you perhaps not understanding like the higher cognitive like social situations that are going on then they do take advantage of you so there is like that aspect of it even in the workplace I would say I know for me I didn't really use to mask very much but I definitely used to have some like mirroring like behaviors so I there'd been lots of situations when I was younger and I was introduced to someone from like a different part of the UK like Scotland and I'd start just naturally mimicking their accent and obviously they were like what's happening there and the parents are like looking and asking why is why is your child doing this for me it was it was a way of relating to that person making them feel like that they're safer to be around me but I understand like looking back on it that it's not ideal and to be honest even within my podcast if you kind of look back at the different guests that I have on the way that I interact with people the way that I speak like the tonality of my voice tends to very much mimic the person that I'm talking to and it's not like a natural process it's not like I'm thinking right I need to do this and this it's just kind of like a learnt thing I don't know it's it's interesting isn't it and masking I think just in general can have some really bad effects on your identity as a person it can feel very hard to feel like you being genuine it can take a really big toll on your like overall energy can really make you look more anxious and aware and paranoid in social situations it's something that I only really started to do when I was in my early 20s I started to like realize that the people around me they were having much better time in terms of making friends forming groups at university and also finding a partner and those things were areas of my life that I wanted to work on quite a lot at that age and it started to like mimic and mask and copy people online who seem to have that life to them to have that aspect of their personality to make those friends but when I did it always just felt very false and it didn't feel like I was connecting deeply with other people which I think is another really big aspect of mental health that social element I agree with you completely and I definitely personally experienced this like feeling of I didn't know who I was and I didn't supposed to be so I used to constantly like wonder what my identity was and I think that identity is like always evolving anyway but there is definitely some parts of yourself that are more solid and I just didn't know because I was constantly presenting as typical I guess yeah yeah like passing passing as neurotypical yeah and I was really good at it but now and it was so tiring it was so tiring I used to be exhausted after the end of the day like after school in secondary school and and then also in the workplace as well like you mentioned and I experienced a lot of stigma and in the workplace which made me feel really unsafe because the reasonable adjustments that were supposed to be put in place weren't put in place instead I was just yeah instead I was meant to just those are like bare bones as well anyway so I was really like worried and anxious and stressed every time I went to work but I've been trying to educate the workplace and on autism and neurodivergence so that they can be more understanding and accommodating with people's needs