It’s strange to come out and say at the age of 43-years old that you found out you have Autism, but that is exactly what Holly Madison is revealing about herself recently to the public.
“The doctors told me that I have high-executive functioning, which pretty much means that I can go about my life and do things ’normally,’” the former Playboy bunny said on Friday’s episode of the “Talking To Death” podcast.
Madison explained that she is highly functioning and completely has an in-depth understanding of her diagnosis. She may not be as extreme as others on the spectrum, but she still exhibits symptoms.
“I’m not the spokesperson for everybody. They call it a spectrum for a reason,” Madison noted. “I’ve been suspicious of it for a while because my mom told me that she was always suspicious that that was a thing.”
Madison shared that when she was finally diagnosed with autism, she recalled how the signs were always there, even when she was a small child.
“The first thing she noticed was that I would zone out a lot as a kid and people would always ask her, ‘What is wrong with her? What is she doing?’ And my mom would just be like, ‘She’s thinking.’”
Madison also talked about how she always struggled with not recognizing social cues or not picking up on things that everyone else was around her.
“I just made excuses for it. I thought it was because I grew up in Alaska, and then around middle school, moved to Oregon and I thought, ‘Well that was just a big social change,’” she recalled. “So I’m just very introverted. Like, that’s kind of always how I wrote it off.”
However, Madison explained that her past social struggles had previously rubbed people the wrong way. They thought she was stuck up or snobby and she was even told multiple times that she thought she was better than others.
“I think because I’m more quiet, I’ve only recently learned to make eye contact and I’m often off in my own thoughts, so people take that as offensive,” Madison explained. “I don’t have a gauge to tell when others are finished speaking. This leads me to accidentally interrupt others and end up pissing them off.”
Now aware of her autism, Madison says she is quick to apologize to others if she realizes she interrupted them or talked over them and she explains her diagnosis.
Continuing, Madison urged others to not “take it personally” when she isn’t hitting the correct social cues, because she’s simply “not on the same social wavelength” as other people.
“Everyone operates differently and maybe I think interacting with anybody, just have a little bit of patience because you don’t know what they’re dealing with or what their level of social function is, you know?”d
