Naz Nami
What happens when a lifetime of masking, adapting, and surviving finally gives way to the discovery of who you really are? Survival Was Brilliant: May the Power Be With You, Always: Autism, Masking, Trauma, and Reclaiming the Self by Naz Nami offers a deeply personal and psychologically informed exploration of late-diagnosed autism and the hidden costs of chronic adaptation.Blending memoir with accessible clinical and research-based insights, Nami examines masking, hypervigilance, burnout, emotional regulation, trauma, sensory overwhelm, attachment, giftedness, and identity reconstruction. Drawing on experiences from childhood in Istanbul, Turkey, through adulthood, relationships, academia, and mental health systems, she reveals how autistic girls and women can be overlooked, misunderstood, or pathologized while learning to perform a version of themselves that meets others’ expectations.The book explores the often-invisible labour involved in social mimicry, emotional surveillance, perfectionism, and self-erasure, while considering what happens when these strategies become unsustainable. Grounded in neurodiversity-affirming and trauma-informed perspectives, it offers language and validation for autistic people-particularly women and marginalized late-diagnosed adults-while encouraging clinicians, educators, caregivers, and students to look beyond conventional stereotypes of autism.Ultimately, Survival Was Brilliant is a story of moving from invisible survival toward self-understanding, authenticity, and the reclamation of identity. Ideal for students and professionals in disability studies, neurodiversity and autism studies, counselling and clinical psychology, psychiatric nursing, social work, trauma studies, and women’s and gender studies, as well as autistic readers and those seeking a deeper understanding of lived autistic experience.
