What started out as a civil conversation between me and my former department chair quickly escalated into a heated argument. I stormed out of her office yelling some poorly chosen and insulting words that no one should ever say to a supervisor. I was a professor in the middle of an autistic meltdown, and I wasn’t about to stick around for what I knew would come next, an uncontrollable crying fit.

Imagine a switch turning on in your head that is completely out of your control. An explosive burst of emotions makes it impossible for you to control your impulses because your brain can no longer handle any rational thoughts. You can barely say anything at all, but you somehow manage to lash out at your boss, gutturally screaming insulting words. The fact that your job could be on the line or that you’re overreacting doesn’t even cross your mind until the volcano stops erupting.

Usually, the inciting incident that sets a meltdown in motion doesn’t seem significant enough to cause an intense emotional reaction. For example, any unexpected disruption to my routine like a change to my teaching schedule can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

While anyone pushed hard enough at work can have an emotional breakdown, an autistic meltdown is usually much more intense. Once the fight-or-flight response is fully engaged, very little can be done to stop it. The crying fit I avoided in my former department head’s office ended up happening in my own office, which continued to a lesser extent on my drive home, and even after I got home.

Imagine a switch turning on in your head that is completely out of your control.

I didn’t always know I was autistic, but I knew that I was different. I was a selectively mute child who rarely spoke in the classroom, but I didn’t stand out, because I wasn’t disruptive. Most girls from my generation weren’t diagnosed unless they had an extreme form of autism. Even now many girls who have autism spectrum diagnosis (ASD) go undiagnosed or are misdiagnosed. Only one girl for every 4.5 boys has an ASD diagnosis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recent studies have found gender differences with autism, which could explain the skewed gender ratio. I wasn’t diagnosed with ASD until my late thirties.

If you know an autistic woman at work, she may seem calm and friendly one moment and argumentative and angry the next. I sometimes feel like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But I don’t hold a grudge against any of my colleagues, even when we’ve had heated arguments in meetings.

An autistic woman may also have trouble working in teams because she has trouble with empathy, as I do. I often belabor points in meetings even when I have no chance of convincing others of my viewpoint. If you work with an autistic woman, try to be patient, knowing that she will likely have difficulty with communication even when she has a lot of valid points to share.

Luckily, I didn’t get fired over those insulting words I said to my former department chair. She never brought up the incident after that, at least not in a direct way. One day, she offhandedly said, “I feel like there’s always been some tension between us.” My response was simply to agree and leave it at that.

She didn’t know I was autistic until a year later. She was in the audience at a creative writing festival when I read a personal essay I wrote for Glamour revealing I’m autistic. She later approached me in the hallway outside my office to say, “Thank you for sharing your…condition.” She struggled with the last word, not sure exactly what to call it.

Another reason I have difficulty interacting with students and colleagues in the workplace is my prosopagnosia, commonly known as face blindness. With this condition (which two thirds of autistic people have, according to one study), I have trouble recognizing faces.