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  • It's beautiful, isn't it?

  • It's my favourite place in the whole wide world.

  • But what do you see when you look here?

  • I imagine you see trees, green leaves, some branches, a beautiful woodland scene.

  • But what I see is different.

  • Because I'm seeing every trunk, every branch.

  • I'm seeing the connections between them.

  • And then I see the leaves.

  • I can see the slightly different colours, slightly different shapes, any damage that's been done to them.

  • As a naturalist, this is enormously beneficial.

  • But sometimes all of this, the visual part of my world, is simply too much.

  • It becomes utterly overwhelming.

  • And that's because I'm autistic.

  • In 2017, I first shared my autism diagnosis on television.

  • Since then, I've been astonished by the thousands of letters and emails

  • I've received from other autistic people.

  • Some telling me the programme had helped them connect with the people around them.

  • But others telling me they're lonely, miserable, even suicidal, because they feel the world doesn't understand them.

  • For me, these letters reveal a hidden crisis.

  • Because estimates suggest there could be as many as 700,000 autistic people in the UK.

  • And I think that the wider world still doesn't really understand what it means to be autistic.

  • And this is a problem for those of us who already feel excluded, different, like we don't fit in.

  • In this series, I want to do something about it.

  • Working with top filmmakers, graphic designers, animators and musicians, I'm giving four autistic people the chance to bring their experiences to life.

  • That's it.

  • By creating short films...

  • OK, cool.

  • ..that reveal to their friends and families...

  • To my mum.

  • ..how they're really feeling inside.

  • Sometimes, I can't cope at all.

  • I hope to give all of us a better understanding of our autistic minds.

  • For much of my early life, I felt like I was a child again.

  • Completely misunderstood.

  • Like no-one knew what was going on inside my head, how different my world was.

  • If I can now change that for just one person, then my work here will be done.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

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