Sophie’s Story: Understanding, Strength and Finding the Right Support 💖
- Celine Dyer
- 3 hours ago
- 11 min read
In this lived‑experience video, Sophie shares her journey as an autistic woman, a mum to a non‑verbal autistic child, and a dedicated deputy charge nurse. Her story is honest, emotional and full of strength. It shows how understanding, acceptance and the right support can make a huge difference to autistic people and their families.
Growing up not knowing she was autistic 👶
Sophie talks about school being a difficult place to navigate. She enjoyed learning and the structure of classes, but the social side was overwhelming. Break times, lunchtime and trips often filled her with anxiety.
She had friends she cared about, but still felt like she did not fully belong. Like many autistic girls and women, Sophie masked her distress during the school day. When she got home, the exhaustion showed. Her parents supported her through these moments, even when the words for what she was feeling didn’t exist yet.
Training and working as a nurse 👩⚕️
University brought new routines, new people and new challenges. Having a close friend with her helped, but placement work was unpredictable and emotionally demanding.
Sophie shares that she nearly left the course, feeling overwhelmed and unsure if nursing was right for her. Encouragement from loved ones helped her keep going. She completed her training and now works in a department where she feels accepted and valued.
She talks with real gratitude about colleagues who have supported her, especially when she struggled with confidence or feared not fitting in. Their understanding helped her grow into the nurse she is today.
Becoming a mum and recognising her needs 👩🍼
When Sophie’s son Finley was born, she experienced severe anxiety. Professionals focused on postnatal depression and postnatal anxiety, which are very real experiences. But over time, as Finley went through his autism assessment, Sophie recognised similarities in herself.
She describes this as a turning point. Understanding she was autistic helped her make sense of years of anxiety, masking and overwhelm. It also helped her show herself the same compassion she offers to others.
Finley’s strengths and the joy he brings 💪
Finley is non‑verbal, but he communicates in so many meaningful ways.
Sophie explains that he has:
a bright and happy personality
strong problem‑solving skills
amazing motor skills
a smile that lifts everyone around him
He has been building jigsaws and Lego towers since before his first birthday. He explores the world in his own way and moves through it with determination and curiosity. Sophie speaks proudly about his progress and the joy he brings to their family.
Understanding the spectrum 💖
Sophie highlights something very important:
Autism is a wide spectrum. Every autistic person is different.
Everyone has their own strengths and their own challenges.
Some autistic people speak. Some do not.
Some work full time. Some need daily support.
Some love being social. Others find it overwhelming.
No one experience is “more real” than another.
Sophie asks us to remember that people who appear to be coping may still struggle.
Many adults, especially women, continue to mask their distress in public and only unmask at home. Understanding this helps us create kinder, more accessible communities.
The impact of support 🤗
Sophie shares how important support has been in her life.
This includes:
her husband
her parents
her close friend Fiona, who is working hard to create a communication‑friendly workplace
her wider family and friends
her health visitor
and NEST
NEST workshops and videos helped Sophie understand Finley’s needs. They also helped her understand her own. She describes the resources as “a massive support”.
What Sophie wants people to know 🤔
Sophie ends her story with a message that is gentle but powerful:
Reach out when you need help.
You are not alone.
Kindness and understanding make a huge difference.
You never know who might be masking or struggling silently.
Learning about neurodivergence helps everyone, not just those directly affected.
She encourages us all to take time to understand the broad range of autistic traits, so we can support people with empathy and respect.
A final message from Sophie 💬
Sophie reminds us that:
autism is a wide spectrum
every person’s experience is valid
verbal ability does not reflect how much support someone needs
being informed and kind helps create safer, more inclusive spaces
Her story is a powerful example of strength, perseverance and the importance of community support. We are grateful to Sophie for sharing her experience with such honesty and courage.
🎥 Watch the Video
Hear Sophie's story in her own words.
📢 A Note on Personal Stories
This story is shared in Sophie's own words, reflecting her personal experiences as a neurodivergent individual. It has not been written or shaped by NEST or NHS Ayrshire & Arran. We’re simply supporting her to share her voice as part of Neurodiversity Celebration Week.
📝 Full Video Transcript
To read the full video transcript you can either download it below or read it below.
Hi, I'm Sophie. I am autistic and I'm also a mum to a non-verbal autistic five-year-old son.
I actually am a deputy charge nurse in quite an acute ward in the hospital and I work full time there. And when I'm not at work, I'm at home with my husband and my little boy.
As I said, he's non-verbal, so I come home, we support him in every way we possibly can and we're just really trying to…
Life’s obviously different to the way we expected it to be, but we certainly… we're just trying our best as a wee family unit to take all the positives we can and just create a great life for him and for us as well.
So for myself, I actually just got diagnosed a few months ago at the age of 28, so I got diagnosed quite late. I certainly noticed probably starting secondary school how much I really did struggle. A lot of the time I just thought that I had really severe anxiety and academically I had no issues.
It was the classes and the structure of the classes and taking projects home and things I really liked. It was the social side of school - the bits where people probably looked forward to break times and trips. And I would be sitting in class dreading that lunchtime bell going because I would think: right, where am I going to sit? Who’s going to be there? Who will I talk to? And don’t get me wrong, I had groups of friends, but I feel like I spent most of school trying to fit in… But also at the same time never actually feeling like I belonged anywhere. So school was tough.
I had a couple of really close friends through school that I am eternally grateful for and who probably don’t understand how much they really did help me in that journey.
I would mask a lot at school. I could go through school and probably to my peers I would just be looked at as a kind of quiet, weird one that just sat in the background and blended in - the one nobody really wanted to come to their parties, or who “won’t come because she’s at her dancing,” because that was one of my coping mechanisms.
But it would be going home and having the meltdowns and the emotional overwhelm that thankfully my mum and dad were great with, because I obviously managed to mask quite well all day and they would see how emotionally exhausted I was. But I got there. I managed. I started university. I did my nursing course, which was something I always wanted to do.
Luckily, one of my close friends transitioned from school to the same class at university with me, so that made it slightly easier. Because certainly with classes and things, I had that one person that I knew and that one person I could bounce off. But then the placements started - going into a new world, a new routine, new faces, and every shift would be different faces again. I remember sitting at the end of that first placement and saying to my mum, “I can’t do this. I seriously can’t.” At the end of first year, I thought about just not doing it. I thought that was me. I was going to be finished. And I remember my mum sitting me down and saying, “Just see it through, and if you really get to the end of it and you don’t like it, you can go and do something else. It’s seven‑week placements - just see them through and you’ll be fine.” I remember going to my management placement - that was 12 weeks - and thinking, right, I just need to get through this and then I can go and study something else because nursing’s not for me.
Luckily, I ended up in the department I’m in just now and I honestly can’t begin to say how blessed I am with the group of colleagues I’ve got. They have been amazing with me from the start, because when I first started there, I was extremely quiet. Again, the nursing skills — the things I was taught to do with patients — were never a problem.
I just always had that horrible feeling that I wasn’t fitting in with the team. I thought, I can’t work in here if people aren’t going to accept me and like me.
I’d go home every night — in my 20s — going into work in the morning in tears because I didn’t know whether folk would want to go for lunch breaks with me. I remember sitting with my husband one night thinking, “This isn’t right. I shouldn’t be sitting at 25 thinking, I don’t think they want to go for lunch with me.” It was tough. But my work have been fantastic. And with their support, and the support at home, I am where I am now.
Things probably really shifted when my son was born. He’s five now.
And when he first started going through his autism diagnosis, I remember thinking, “There’s quite a lot of this I can relate to.” In that first year of his life, that’s when I really hit breaking point with my own anxiety. I had input from the health visitor, GPs, mental health practitioners — because I really hit rock bottom at that time.
It was put down to postnatal depression and postnatal anxiety. But honestly, for my husband to stick by me through all that… I take my hat off to him. He doesn’t realise how supportive he’s been — not only to me, but being in the house with me going through my diagnosis and our son’s. He’s been fantastic. My mental health took a dip. I was on various medications and CBT. And I just remember thinking: no matter what help I’m given, nothing seems to be fixing what is actually going on in my head. It was chaos all the time and I couldn’t cope with that. I’d get up in the morning and think, “Right, I don’t actually know how today’s going to go.” And I genuinely couldn’t cope with that.
Going through Finley’s diagnosis, I started seeking more help and thought: yes, I know I have underlying anxiety, but I think there’s a bigger picture. I think there’s a reason I’m struggling so much.
A strength of mine, especially in my job, is that I’m very hyper‑focused and task‑oriented. If I’m given a task, I’ll complete it to the highest standard I can. I’m a hard worker. I always strive to do my best — probably because I don’t cope with criticism very well — so I like to know I’m doing a good job.
Another strength is that I’m extremely loyal.
I’m emotional, but I see that as a strength. I think it’s good to be open with people.
Especially in my role as Deputy Charge Nurse, showing staff that it’s okay not to always be completely strong. Everyone has vulnerability, and being emotional can be a good thing.
For my son — with him being non-verbal — his strength is his ability to make everyone around him so happy. He’s just got this special little personality. I’ll probably get emotional talking about him. He’s so smiley. He can wrap everyone around his little finger. And seeing how much he’s come on in the last five years, considering the hurdles he faces daily, is so inspiring. He’s becoming so much more independent.
He really tries to pick up communication devices and tools we show him.
A massive strength of Finley’s since he was born — during all the milestone checks — is his gross motor skills. He’s been doing jigsaws and Lego towers since before his first birthday. I remember watching him build blocks thinking, “How can you do that?”
There’s no speech there, but it doesn’t hold him back. If he wants something, he’ll find a way to get it. He doesn’t need to tell us.
So his biggest strength is his non‑verbal communication — this ability to be such a loved and adored little boy without needing words.
A massive thing for me is wanting people to understand that even though Finley doesn’t use words, nothing changes — you can still have the same love, the same relationship, the same connection you would with a neurotypical child. It’s just about taking time to learn his cues. He does certain things when he’s hungry, certain things when he wants to play, certain things when he needs deep pressure. It’s spending time with him and learning these little cues. And once you know them, you realise you don’t need words to feel reassured by him.
On the flip side, people understanding that although I have an autism diagnosis, I can talk, I can attend social things if I’m up to it, I can work full time — I’m in a stressful job.
But I still have struggles day‑to‑day. I might just be good at not showing it.
My husband knows when I’ve had a tough day and can’t regulate. He knows if I come in and go straight upstairs without talking, I’ve had a bad day and need space.
So it’s about acknowledging that no matter the “severity” of traits people show with autism, everyone has their own struggles. They can work full time, live a typical life — but they’ll still react differently to certain situations, and that still affects them.
A great support has actually been NEST. They’ve got fantastic workshops. They’ve got a great website with loads of videos available at the touch of a button. For example, if we notice a certain behaviour from Finley, we can scroll down and find something helpful right there.
Attending the workshops was a big step toward me getting my own autism diagnosis as well — because originally I came to find ways to support Finley. And through that I thought, “I completely resonate with a lot of what’s being said.” So the workshops and videos on NEST are a massive support.
And the support of family, and friends… My best friend in particular — Fiona — and her family have been so good. She’s very much — where she works — trying to introduce a communication‑friendly workplace and introducing sensory packs. Knowing that you’ve got a friend who takes so much interest and who is also trying to understand autism and completely understand Finley and me has been amazing. Her family too — I can’t thank them enough.
So yeah, certainly your friends and family, those around you, NEST, and also your health visitor. All these people are here to help, and I think the main thing is just taking that first step — reaching out and looking for support. I honestly couldn’t have gotten through a lot of this without reaching out and asking for that extra wee bit of help. It’s so important.
What I hope people take away is that the spectrum is so large. It’s understanding that no matter where someone is on the spectrum, they will have different challenges.
Having that understanding and being able to support people is so important.
As I’ve said through this story, without the support of people around me, I wouldn’t be where I am today, in the job I’m in Or raising my little boy for the last five years with all his additional support needs.
It’s just having that understanding. Even if you aren’t neurodivergent, even if you’re not a carer — still taking time to look at these videos and understand is so crucial.
You never know who you might come across. Someone at work might be suffering in silence. A friend might be masking and going home to real struggles.
So having an understanding of the traits, being able to offer support, having that knowledge — that’s really important.
The message I want to share is this:
The spectrum is very large. You don’t know what people are struggling with.
Just because someone is verbal and living an independent life doesn’t mean their autism is any less important than someone who can’t talk — like my little boy.
Being there, being kind, being informed, and having that bit of understanding really is so important.
Spending time learning how to help neurodivergent people and understanding that you never know what people around you are dealing with — that matters.
So just be patient. Look after the people around you. Just reach out. Get the support you need. Don’t feel like it’s something that can’t be spoken about. Be open with people, be honest with people, and you’ll receive the support and kindness you need to get through the struggles each day.
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