Chronicles of an Atypical Mind — Unfiltered and Unapologetic
Personal stories, science-based articles, and resources on autism, bipolar disorder, and atypical cognition.
Many autistic people have a strong ability for pattern recognition. In 2025, I realized that I primarily think this way.
This pattern-based thinking is formidable.
Sometimes even… too much. The Autisticism that follows is a perfect example.
“What do you think about the outcome of these tests?” the neuropsychologist in charge of my IQ assessment asked me. I will always remember that moment. At that instant, I hoped that identifying giftedness would be enough to rule out the bipolar cause. So I answered, naturally, that I suspected a confirmation of giftedness. I was right. I was formally identified as very highly gifted by a neuropsychologist… and I believed it would resolve all my difficulties.
A former friend once asked me how I perceived being in love. I replied that it was “a whole lot of unpleasant sensations in the body.” I had not yet been diagnosed, and it amused him a great deal. He had never heard that kind of description before, and my answer was instinctive. I myself think I had indeed never encountered this description elsewhere (I had even researched it thoroughly, like a diligent student, to break it down).
Autism is often misunderstood. It is reduced to a few stereotypes, whereas in reality it is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects communication, social interactions, and sensory perception. Autism is a spectrum, grouped since 2013 under the term Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It manifests very differently from one person to another. Before exploring its nuances, it is necessary to go back to what autism really is.
A short Autisticism pause to evoke this time a rocambolesque situation linked to my rigidity regarding rules—especially those in movie theaters—which are nevertheless displayed in huge letters with icons on a blue background in the UGC cinemas I go to, just before the film starts. Namely: avoid talking during the film, put your phone in airplane mode. For some people, these rules are apparently mere suggestions. Some of them did not see the scene I’m about to recount coming.
To begin my series of articles on bipolar disorder episodes, I thought about presenting them to you in chronological order, reflecting their cycle. Hypomania is the first euphoric (or irritable) phase of this condition. It sometimes progresses either into a manic episode (in bipolar disorder type I) or into depression. Hypomania — which can manifest in two drastically different ways — is what we’ll focus on in this article. I’ve experienced a large number of hypomanic episodes that turned me into a production machine, a walking factory.
Over the years, I’ve collected a whole range of quirks — the kind that never show up in diagnostic manuals, yet quietly shape my everyday life. They’ve become part of how I make sense of my autism, and in a way, they’ve even helped confirm that the diagnosis fits. So here starts this series: small autistic misadventures, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes funny, always distinctly mine. I call them my autisticisms — a word I came up with to name these wonderfully awkward, unmistakably autistic oddities… the ones that make me smile (and occasionally other people too).
5 to 8% of autistic people are believed to be affected by bipolar disorder, and yet, this association between the two conditions is rarely mentioned in the literature. When you type “autism and bipolar disorder” into Google, finding a personal account can feel like a challenge. A few years ago, I took part in a podcast on this topic, sharing an experience that was almost unique—especially in France. The idea of a blog exploring both subjects in detail slowly began to form a few weeks ago. A few days later, the project was underway.
This blog is not intended to talk only about autism. From the beginning, when the idea for this project emerged, I hoped to provide a rare and in-depth testimony about two of my conditions: autism and bipolar disorder. Why rare? Simply because I noticed how drastically the literature lacks first-person accounts from people living with both conditions, even though this comorbidity is actually quite common — with bipolar disorder being even more frequent among autistic people than allistic individuals. And in-depth, because I intended to share my experience honestly and without filter through a long series of articles detailing what it means to live with both conditions.
Autistic burnout is often compared to a prolonged shutdown. More specifically, it is a state of physical, mental, emotional, and sensory exhaustion that can affect autistic people after a prolonged period of overload or sustained social masking. Unlike ordinary fatigue, it can last for several months and lead to a significant loss of everyday functioning.