“You’ll need to grow a thicker skin!”
I half‑understood what my senior colleague meant at the time. My hyper‑visual brain took “grow a thicker skin” literally, conjuring images of skin tissue hardening. Eventually I realised she meant I needed to toughen up – stop crying, gain control, and be less affected. But in that moment, none of that was possible.
It was 1995. I was nineteen, with a 20‑week‑old baby at home, an extremely low mood, and a new job I had started only twelve weeks earlier. I’d been misinformed about my maternity rights and believed my Statutory Maternity Pay was ending when it wasn’t. I needed income, so I returned to work far too soon.
When I made an admin error – a simple failure to place one blank form in a folder – another colleague took the blame. Not to protect me, but because blame was being passed around like a hot coal. And yes, the mistake was mine.
I was devastated. Someone else had taken responsibility for my error, and I loathe getting into trouble. I was then marched to the consultant’s office to confess and apologise. Already in tears, I became non‑verbal, overwhelmed, and deeply dysregulated. I don’t remember his exact response, only the tension between the senior colleagues and the sense that there were agendas at play far beyond my mistake.
The following week, another senior colleague asked what had happened. When I explained, she said, “You’ll need to grow a thicker skin.”
That moment stayed with me for decades.
Through a neurotypical lens, I was overly emotional, unable to handle conflict, and in need of resilience. Through an autistic lens – the lens I didn’t yet know existed for me – the situation looks entirely different.
I worked in a large, noisy environment full of strangers, authority figures, and constant interruptions. My brain works best in quiet. Interruptions make task‑switching difficult, and I lose my place easily. My working memory is poor, but my long‑term memory is exceptional – which is why I remember this event so vividly. I was new, still learning the system, and still postpartum.
When conflict arises, I struggle to communicate. I can become emotionally dysregulated, shut down, and lose speech entirely. That’s what happened that day. And when I can no longer cope, I retract – which is why I resigned soon after. It was a trauma response, not a lack of resilience.
A week before I left, another clerk told me, “You’re the best one we’ve had so far.” The organisation lost out too.
Experiences like this accumulate for autistic people – small and large “T” traumas that leave cognitive and emotional scars. We carry the weight of living in a world built for a different neurotype, one that often misinterprets our reactions as flaws rather than reflections of unmet needs.
When I was finally diagnosed as Autistic – after first recognising myself as a highly sensitive empath – everything made sense. I realised I was never faulty. I was never inadequate. I simply wasn’t “thicker‑skinned,” and I never would be. My sensitivity is not a defect; it is a gift. A beautiful one. But in a society that values stoicism over empathy, it is often treated as something to correct.
Many autistic people are highly sensitive empaths, despite the persistent myth that we lack empathy. In truth, we often feel too much – your tears, your hurt, your tension – and we carry it.
What I needed in 1995 was not thicker skin.
I needed understanding.
I needed recognition.
I needed a neuro‑affirming environment.
And I needed to know I was autistic.
Because without that knowledge, I internalised the belief that I was broken.
Today, I know I am “good enough” – as a human being and as a worker. And good enough is more than okay.
But workplaces must change. We need:
Above all, we need empathy.
Not thicker skin – but softer hearts.
Mind Matters has recently launched training the Thrive Neurodiversity in the Workplace program. Details can be found here.