I was reflecting today on why I become a different person with different people and I came to conclusion that’s how I understand the advice that ‘everyone is different and we need to be considerate of others’ or that we ‘need to give people space to be themselves’.

It does seem to me that people occupy spaces in the game of life so if someone is The Bossy One and I become The Pushover, it’s like if I gave them as much space as possible. And if someone else is The Pushover it feels to me that if I become The Bossy One, I am also considerate of them. I can only see now how ridiculous that sounds, but it is my instinctive response.

It does make me think though that I can control my behaviour better than I thought.

The problem with being me, I think, is that, despite being autistic, I am very focused on other people. In a way it helps me cope better, or at least I hope so, but it also means that I’m very sensitive to all those kind of advice about how to make people feel certain way but I understand it differently to how people mean.

Ok, so what does it mean to be considerate of others? I don’t really know, you see. If it comes to residents in the care home, it’s easy because I just try to make sure their needs are met. But with colleagues is different – they need to meet a lot of their needs themselves and outside of work, which wouldn’t involve me. I remember they need breaks and that our workload should be approximately equal but otherwise I really don’t know how to be considerate of them.