Jake Ogden is a local autistic person and autism ambassador based near me in Leyland. Over the past few years, he has been raising awareness about autism through public speaking, interviews and his book, Being Jake. 

In this short book, Jake shares his experiences of growing up in a world that didn’t understand him. He speaks with frankness and humour of ‘the cost of missing rules’, the exhausting effort of ‘translating what others take for granted’ and bridging the gap ‘between what’s assumed and what’s actually explained.’

This comes across most memorably in a couple of examples. ‘When I was about six, I stared at a glass of orange juice because the label said concentrate. When my nan told me to “hop off the bus,” I hopped down the aisle on one leg.’ As a fellow autistic person who also takes things literally these stories resonated with me. 

The book covers a wide range of topics from why time pursuing interests and routine and predictability are essential to self-regulation and how relationships with friends and family need to be built on trust and reciprocity. It also addresses masking and its costs in terms of effort and how acting out can lead to making the wrong connections (I have done this!).

I particularly related to the chapter on ‘anxiety, overload and losing control’. Jake’s description of anxiety was very familiar: ‘Anxiety isn’t something that comes and goes for me. It’s something I live with. It’s common among autistic people, and it doesn’t always look like panic or fear. Often, it’s persistent, invasive, and without an off-switch. It settles into the background and waits… Anxiety brings decision paralysis, mental looping, and an inability to shift focus once my attention has locked in place.’

He speaks of his recognition of how learning to cope with anxiety is not a cure and of his mixed experiences with CBT. ‘It treated anxiety as a thinking error instead of a system overload. That meant the responsibility stayed with me to tolerate environments that were actively dysregulating’ and critiques its failure to take into account ‘how autistic overwhelm works’. 

This fits with my own experience of anxiety that stems from system overload. CBT can be useful for addressing unhelpful thoughts and worries but it’s limited to the cognitive faculties only and doesn’t take into consideration the differences in sensory gating, information processing, or nervous system response in autistic people.

Jake also mentions issues around food, which is something many autistic people struggle with. I related to needing to eat the same foods at the same times and to finding that learning the facts behind nutrition and a structured approach to diet have been the best way of maintaining a healthy weight.

This book provides a personal, open, honest, no nonsense account of what it is like growing up and living with autism in a neurotypical world. I would recommend it to autistic people, those who suspect they might be autistic and those who are curious about learning about autism from an autistic viewpoint.