For someone on the autism spectrum, navigating daily life can be an exhausting and overwhelming experience. The senses are often hypersensitive, making even ordinary environments difficult to manage.
Marielle Rollmann, who has Asperger’s syndrome, explains it this way: when any type of stimulus that a neurotypical person would instinctively filter out reaches her ears, it reaches it with full force with no automatic mechanism to separate the relevant from the irrelevant.
Growing up, Rollmann felt consistently on the fringes of society, struggling to find her place and unable to understand why. Nor could those around her. She feels there is a lack of understanding for the behavioural habits associated with an autistic person and diagnosis all too often coming far too late:
“No one, be it my parents or my family in general, ever understood why I was always different”, she recalls. “Of course, neither did I. I was diagnosed at the age of 34, and the world was a little better for me after that.”
It is important to clearly understand autism as a lifelong developmental condition, not an illness. Organisations such as the Fondation Autisme Luxembourg and Autism asbl provide support to both those affected and their families.
Carlo Klein, treasurer of the Fondation Autisme Luxembourg, puts the scale of the problem in stark terms. Assuming a prevalence of one percent, he estimates that between 6,000 and 7,000 people in Luxembourg are on the spectrum. Last year, the organisation dealt with just 147 cases out of 433 requests. Files accumulate, cases are left waiting, and the result is a waiting time that has now stretched to five years.
Autism also does not always present in the ways people expect. Rollmann knows this all too well. “You don’t look like an autistic person”, she was told repeatedly, comments that caused real pain. “It’s a reality, and I wasn’t taken seriously, it wasn’t respected or accepted.”
Rather than stepping back, Rollmann has chosen to be part of the solution. Drawing on her own experiences in therapy, she has written a book aimed at others on the spectrum. While no two autistic people share the same experience, she believes it is simply important to know that you are not alone, and that awareness-raising remains as vital as ever.
Rollmann is also a trainer for assistance dogs. Her black Labrador Lex, who has been her therapy dog for eight years, is a constant companion, alongside Mischa, her golden-haired dog.
