 Hello, my name is Thomas Henley and I'm from the YouTube channel Asperger's Growth. Today I'm doing a special video for Matthew Moss High School. So as a whole I'm currently studying at University of Manchester, a Russell Group University, but I've also done some other interesting stuff in my life and I just want to tell you a little bit about what happened and the lessons that I learned along the way. It wasn't an easy childhood for me, I had a lot of problems, but throughout this little monologue that I'm going to be doing I'm going to bring your attention to some of the problems that I had and some ways that I fixed it. So as many of you may know, when you hit your teenage years a lot of changes occur. For many people this can lead to issues with self-confidence, issues with socializing and a whole host of different things. Before my teenage years I used to be a pretty good swimmer, but when I reached that age I realized that I was feeling sad even though I didn't have anything to be sad about. Even though I felt stressed, there was nothing to be stressed about. I started going to a psychologist and they diagnosed me with depression and anxiety, something that I'd heard about but I never thought it would happen to me. After some hard times, issues with attendance at schools, pulling out of sports that I once enjoyed, I decided that I wanted to do a martial art. I was inspired by the Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z, Naruto and Street Fighter and I wanted to be like them, I wanted to be a fighter. I went to a few martial arts and I decided taekwondo was the martial art for me. I didn't like touching people so using your legs to kick people was the best thing to get me started. A few years passed and I got my black belt joining a much tougher sport taekwondo class. As part of the training we had to do a lot of sparring or fighting but I was always very aggressive and the better fighters would always leave me battered and bruised every weekend I went down. A few more years later I was fighting around six times every year both within England and in different countries. The Great Britain national team noticed me as a great contender and they put me down for the Commonwealth Championships, a very well known competition for most modern sports. I had to battle it out with three Australians, one being a lot taller and heavier than myself. It was a tough competition but I managed to win myself a gold medal but not only that I was also put forward for the amazing title of best male fighter of the Commonwealth and I won that as well. After this competition I moved up to the adult category coming fourth in the European under 21 taekwondo championships being the athlete from GB that won the most fights out of everybody. I started off with low self-confidence and a lot of anxiety but taekwondo gave me more than just titles little did I know it was shaping me into the confident hardworking person I am today so that was a little bit about my taekwondo journey next I'm going to talk a little bit about university the place that you go after high school I never really thought about studying hard until I reached A levels actually by then I decided I was definitely going to attend the Russell group university the University of Manchester it wasn't going to be easy no no but taekwondo taught me that if I put all my efforts into my dreams I could achieve them it was a difficult and boring couple of years I had to work during lunch break after school just to keep up with the high entry requirements I needed for my university worse yet my mental health was getting worse it wasn't my fault that the disease that is depression affected me heavily and it was very hard to do anything let alone fall asleep every day was much harder but the difficulty only made me try harder put more of my time into my studies and by the time that the results came out I had made it I was accepted into this place I'd worked my butt off to get into I'm currently still studying at Manchester but before I tell you about the conclusion to our story actually to be honest I hadn't finished yet so I can't do that but I'm going to tell you about something crazy that I did for my third year at university after two years of university my mental health wasn't great once again the high pressure of university and the creeping deadlines left me in a really bad place I had to do something something crazy I decided that I would take a leap of faith and apply to study in Thailand for a year a very difficult and daunting thing for anyone to do let alone someone with my conditions it was difficult to adjust but after a few months I found myself developing an amazing group of friends we went traveling almost every weekend right my dad even came over and we traveled almost all of Southeast Asia once my project finished me and a close friend in the group decided to go backpacking now if you told me a few years ago I'd be in Southeast Asia roaming around with nothing but a backpack I'd think you were crazy but it was the most amazing experience of my life but also one of the more stressful things I could do I arrived back in Manchester to start my last year of studying and found myself drawn to the world of media I had a youtube channel which was getting more and more popular I connected with many people from all different corners of the media now I found myself traveling down to media city the central place of the renowned BBC I'm set to appear on many BBC podcasts radios and I was given my own video on the BBC website and currently filming a documentary for my final year project but I'm also starring in the documentary made about myself as well so it's a lot of work but I hope you can appreciate how important this was to me my self-confidence and my mental health now many of you may be thinking hey why are we watching this why is this guy telling us about his life do I care well there's something that I haven't told you just yet actually at the age of 10 I was diagnosed with autism more accurately Asperger's syndrome we are all told that autism makes it hard to fit in hard to make friends hard to do well in life and that is exactly why I have done so well Autistics are strong smart creative and I don't know about you but I reckon as an autistic I've done a lot more than most people can dream of I've made a great lovely group of supportive friends I'm very well known in Taekwondo I've been accepted onto a difficult university course and I've traveled around areas of the world most people would struggle with navigating so yes I'm autistic but this isn't just the lesson on shattering misconceptions about autism it's also a lesson for everyone else out there I didn't have many friends at all so I forced myself to go to university to go to Thailand now I know people from more countries than I can count on my fingers I was depressed anxious lacking self-esteem so I competed in a full contact martial art and took it by storm I never thought I could ever do any of this to any degree sure autism makes stuff harder sure depression and anxiety can be extremely overbearing at times but if you have a problem whatever it is you can change it and do more than you ever thought you could have whatever you love if you put enough effort and time into it you will succeed I promise you this has been Thomas Henley from Asperger's Growth the YouTube channel and this is a special video for all of you at Mafumos High School and anyone else out there struggling with the challenges that life has to offer thank you for watching guys peace peace