The book is Strong Female Character by Fern Brady. There have been several occasions in the past year where friends have asked me if I was autistic and my answer was typically, “probably not.” I knew I shared certain traits with autistic friends but I thought it had to do with my anxiety problems.
I made one autistic friend with a sensitivity profile similar to my own, then lived with a father & daughter (both diagnosed) with a very different profile to my own, and thru that realized that in certain ways, all of us were like peas in a pod. And then I realized many of my friends are in the same orbit.