Stefanie Preissner has been speaking for the first time about her recent diagnosis of autism.
The 34-year-old screenwriter behind 'Can't Cope, Won't Cope' on Netflix, received the diagnosis this year.
Ms Preissner says she doesn't agree with the general tendency to differentiate between 'high functioning' and 'low functioning' autism.
She says to her, the autism spectrum is like a radio desk with a number of faders, with each fader representing something different.
In an interview with Newstalk, she said: “Ability to make eye contact, ability to process sound, ability to process light, verbal communication, non-verbal communication, ability to tolerate change, the whole gamut.
“For each individual autistic person those faders are at different levels, so for me, I can make eye contact, so that fader might be pretty low, but I am pretty bad in social situations because I feel like everyone has a script that I don't have and that can be alarming and stressful, so that might be pretty high for me.”
After speaking about her anxiety with a therapist, he recommended a test for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
“It was a shock, but it wasn’t at all a surprise and that’s been my experience of sharing the news with other people who know me,” she said.
Ms Preissner added: “I’m absolutely the same person I always was, I have always been autistic. I just wish I had known that autism can look like me.”
