Christine McGuinness thanks fans for encouraging her to speak out about her autism
Christine McGuinness has credited her fans for encouraging her to be open about living with autism, after she became the first female star to win Celebrity Hunted.
The model and presenter, 36, said the experience has given her a new sense of confidence, but said that she never would have continued speaking openly about her autism if not for her fans.
McGuinness has been praised by viewers for her honesty about the symptoms of autism, which she was diagnosed with as an adult in 2021. She also shares three children with her ex-husband Paddy McGuinness, all of whom have also been diagnosed with autism.
Since their diagnoses, McGuinness has campaigned for more awareness around the condition, particularly in women, and explored her own experiences through her BBC One documentary Christine McGuinness: Unmasking My Autism.
She told The Mirror: "I get messages pretty much every single day on social media, mainly women watching the show and they’ll open up and just say, 'Thank you so much for sharing, because I felt like I was being dramatic or sensitive'.
"I do get lovely messages just saying, 'Thank you for letting us feel like we can be ourselves'. And it’s crazy because I feel like I should thank everyone else because if I hadn’t [gotten] those nice messages after I first spoke about my autism and for it to feel acceptable for me to do what I’m doing, I don’t know if I would have carried on.
"So I need to thank everybody else," she added.
McGuinness also said that her experience on Celebrity Hunted taught her that she is "a lot more capable" than she initially thought, particularly if she is with "the right person and someone understanding and caring".
"I doubt myself, I preempt a lot, and I probably put myself down more than I should," she said. "I realised that on the run that sometimes I’m just too hard on myself. But I don’t think I’ve done anything that’s made me feel so proud."
The TV host, who also released the BBC documentary Paddy and Christine McGuinness: Our Family and Autism, added that she hopes her three autistic children will grow up "knowing nothing is going to hold them back".
She added: "I definitely go for things a lot more now."
McGuinness split from Paddy in 2022 after 11 years of marriage. However, the couple still live in the same house in order to co-parent their children without making changes that would be distressing for them, she previously explained.
In October, she said her own autism diagnosis made her worry about trying to date again after separating from Paddy.
She told the Daily Mail: "I only started dating this year after I delayed it for a long time because of the worries. It was scary hearing other people’s stories as I haven’t heard many good dating stories so I wasn’t in any rush to do it."
Despite the worries that came with her diagnosis, McGuinness previously said it was a relief to hear as she had "struggled" throughout her life.
"I struggle with change, I struggle with food, sensory issues, clothing, labels, being in busy places, it’s everything - I ticked a lot of boxes, I am surprised it wasn’t picked up a lot earlier," she said.
"Understanding that I was struggling because I’m autistic, I was able to just speak to [people] and say, 'Listen, every now and again I’m going to have a little bit of time-out'. If I hadn’t had my diagnosis before that, I would have been panicking thinking that I [would] look really antisocial."
Read more about autism:
Autism signs, symptoms and getting a diagnosis explained (Yahoo Life UK, 8-min read)
I was diagnosed with autism at 29 after my mum read an article (EssexLive, 3-min read)
Study finds 1 in 127 people worldwide have autism, almost double the previous estimate (EuroNews, 2-min read)
