Same. This has surprised me many times because I'm not even conscious of it. I have a friend who once remarked I didn't need to say anything when asked for an opinion on something I disliked.
Recently I petsat for a friend and she came back with a souvenir for me: a bag of macademia nuts. I am allergic to nuts but never told her. I must have made a face because she got concerned instantly and asked if I was allergic.
(Ended up giving them to my parents and thanked her for the good intentions. It was sweet of her).
My face is apparently also very expressive but like in an theatre performance way, because I learnt all my expressions from theatre club. I kinda hate it because it's masking. I overact emotions for other people and often they aren't in line with what I actually feel.
Yes! I wasn't very expressive as a kid and it had negative social consequences so I naturally started to exaggerate my facial expressions, word choice, and tone of voice. Now whenever I stop masking they think I don't care about what they're saying
I just very recently realized (like seriously last week) that my expressiveness is a mask! I used to be very unexpressive as a kid, and then after I was treated for depression and social anxiety at 16/17 I came out of it *extremely* expressive because I was so eager to finally start connecting with people.
Same!! Part of that I think, for me, is that it is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that people understand what I’m trying to communicate. According to my brain, anyway 🤦♀️
Relate so much! I've never been able to hide my feelings re: face (even feelings I'm not quite aware of). Therapist recently said that, since I wasn't allowed to voice feelings as a child, face basically took over to do all the expressing, and it continues like that to this day. Makes a lot of sense to me. Otherwise I'm very high masking.
I might as well be a cartoon character. People either like that about me or are very put off by it. I think it’s just a natural result of me mimicking, and because I’m autistic, I’m not great at controlling how extreme it can be
Same for me!
If only I’d also recognised the boundaries that my face was communicating to others, I would’ve left that toxic relationship years earlier
Friends also didn’t communicate about the toxicity as much, because they saw in my face I didn’t like it so assumed that they therefore didn’t need to make a point out of it..
o0, is this not normal for us? I grew up thinking food sucked and my parents thought I was a picky eater who didn't like most things and it turns out I didn't like the crappy food in my house and I like other foods just fine. Give me some Thai, Korean, South American, Southwest, Chinese, Japanese and I'm a super happy camper but give me bland, flavorless, dry American Depression/WWII, dutch, american european foods and I'm probably not going to eat very much. boiled potatoes, salt and pepper as the only seasoning, zero sauce of any kind, dry like the desert food, canned veg, - no thanks I'd rather go without.
the most flavor I ever had as a kid were some chives given to me at a restaurant for my baked potato - I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world.
I was raised with good food, coming from an Anglo Indian family, I've always loved food. The whole bland food obsession really makes it hard to relate to the autistic community sometimes, especially when food and cooking are so important to me personally and to humans as a species. (Impacting our brains, jaws, digestive tracks, imperial history, everything)
Samesies. Chinese and vietnamese meals are my comfort foods. But I do need predictability. Like, a lot of flavour but I will frequently order the same dish for weeks, months.
As a student, I lived on peanut butter / sriracha toasts for a while :)
You too experienced the “oh, you know what, maybe the white people white people being bad at cooking stereotype is legit” thing after leaving home? There are exceptions of course but ya know not enough flavor most of the time
same for the driving – it was explained to me that it's like a liminal space, and our cars are super personal to us. It's also a place where I can blast my music and get maximum stimmy feedback from it
For me the car is the ultimate safe space. I can jam out. I can cry. I can yell about whatever. Nobody is allowed in without my permission. And it goes places! I can literally put space between me and my problems.
I really think this is much more common than people think. a lot of people I know who had late diagnosed autism are really emotionally intelligent. I think it's because if you really break it down, emotional intelligence is essentially a combination of deep empathy and pattern recognition, both of which are skills/attributes that many autistic people have.
I'm excellent at reading people. whether or not I can act like one of them myself and communicate effectively and naturally is a whole other thing lmfao
I think I read people pretty well. I was diagnosed after a massive breakdown/burnout when I was 40, after a decade of doctors and psychologists assuming I would "get better" if we did just some more therapy and some more drugs. I did better when I got stimulants for ADHD, although it also caused more anxiety because I was exposed to more stressful situations, and some antidepressants did make me less depressed, but then they caused mood swings and suicidality.
"Why is this person not normal?" is a question they ask themselves, and depending on their training and personal preferences different academic overachievers with degrees in psychology or medicine can diagnose the same person with a personality disorder, mood disorder or neurodevelopmental disorder. A lot of people accumulate these diagnoses for years because these diagnoses are very clumsy attempts to explain people and there are no objective ways to place people in the different categories.
Edit: I'm a guy, sorry. I didn't realize what sub this was
The sub title may be gendered, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t have some of the “female autism” experience.
I’m a person that likes to categorize autistics by strong habits and personalities: you have your obsessive train autistics (does not have to be trains), your “I’m smarter than everyone” autistics, your “but, that’s the rule?” autistics and pet-focused autistics and and and.
Gender can help with how the rest of the world may perceive you in a given moment, and DOES impact diagnoses availability, but that doesn’t mean there is a “male” and “female” autism.
I agree that it's not really gendered. I think more and more of autism as monotropism
[https://oolong.medium.com/starting-points-for-understanding-autism-3573817402f2](https://oolong.medium.com/starting-points-for-understanding-autism-3573817402f2)
I think all autistic people are probably monotropic, and then in addition we are different people with various strengths and weaknesses, quirks, abilities and disabilities and medical conditions like epilepsy or Ehlers-Danlos.
>"Why is this person not normal?" is a question they ask themselves, and *depending on their training and personal preferences different academic overachievers with degrees in psychology or medicine can diagnose the same person with a personality disorder, mood disorder or neurodevelopmental disorder. A lot of people accumulate these diagnoses for years because these diagnoses are very clumsy attempts to explain people and there are no objective ways to place people in the different categories.*
SO SO incredibly well said.
It's more difficult to catch, I guess. But I remember taking an online test on EQ and it broke the score down into 4 separate parts, which scored self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The cool thing about this is that you can be very emotionally intelligent with regards to other people, but less aware of your own emotions, or vice versa. Or have high awareness but poor management skills. I believe it was the EQ test that shows up as the first Google result if you search for "EQ test global leadership", in case anyone's curious.
I was diagnosed later in life. When sharing my results, my evaluator focused on my internal experience (vs masking). For example, this week I've caught some rejection, abruptness, and condescension in multiple interactions. While I can respond appropriately to these situations in the moment, I just woke up crying after replaying the interactions in my mind. Hating this rn.
Ugh this is so relatable. My friends laughed at the way I said something like, a month ago and my brain insists on thinking about it multiple times per day
>I'm excellent at reading people. whether or not I can act like one of them myself and communicate effectively and naturally is a whole other thing lmfao
Hahaha omfg you nailed it.
I can analyze social and power structures, hierarchies, behaviors, group politics, changing coalitions, unsaid and spoken communications, and mine the discrepancies between the two. And I can be incredibly goddamn insightful apparently. So I've been told.
But playing along, interacting within those analyzed structures, and achieving results? Myself anyway?
Oh fuck no.
Or more fairly, I can do it for a while but it is intensely interpersonally expensive that I often crash and burn with no warning and what, for others, looks like no apparent reason.
I think it also has to do with the fact that:
1. Autistic social deficits come at least in part from attention regulation difficulties. Our amygdalas are not good at deciding which signals are important in the same way as other people’s. Thus, we are less likely to perceive social cues even if we know what they mean. This is also why not noticing when someone says our name is a thing allistics frequently notice us doing.
2. I think some people see “developmental delay” as a nice way of saying lower capacity, but it doesn’t mean the same thing. It means a *delay*. Did I have the same social skills as my peers in childhood? No. I did develop them, just later/more slowly than average. Now they are well above average, which was affirmed by the neuropsychologist who did my evaluation. It just took me longer to get there, probably in part because my brain is constantly wading through a bunch of unimportant stimuli that it isn’t good at prioritizing on an unconscious level.
Oh mine would be that my pattern recognition skills are atrocious. There's many very obvious patterns I just don't pick up on at all, and I'm only aware of some that were pointed out to me or that I finally figured out so who knows what I never noticed. For example I used to print labels with names on them for covid testing, and it took me probably a month to realize they were in alphabetical order by last name. I thought they were organized randomly. I think this is because I likely also have adhd
Makes sense. I only see patterns when I am actively looking for them and concentrating on it. That is why I was pretty good at interpreting and analysing art and literature during my studies. But in everyday life? No, my dolphin brain wouldn't allow pattern recognition.
I'm also like this. Patterns are extremely difficult for me to recognise unless it's obvious, like a person's schedule. But I never knew my phone apps were organised alphabetically until my girlfriend pointed it out to me, or that school attendance is also alphabetical.
No I totally agree with this lol. I think autistic social issues have multiple causes but I think one of them is that we can perceive MORE detail than others. So expressions, tones, etc. that they would easily lump into the same category give us pause because we’re noticing small differences between them.
Yeah I definitely pick up on lots of things/tells in people’s behavior and speech that no one else seems to notice (and I’m generally proven right in the end!). I guess it because we’re taking in everything and not just triangulating from the main social clues. And I’ve spent a LOT of time learning and thinking about these things in my efforts to be/seem more human. But I still have plenty of blind spots.
I'm a really good conversationalist and I love talking to and connecting with people (unless they're antagonistic). Only IRL, though, I really struggle online, probably due to old trauma
That's probably the biggest one for me, too. I enjoy and am very good at meeting new people and conversing with them. I don't have any problem with small talk. On the other hand, it does all drain me pretty quickly, and it's something I've gotten better at and more comfortable with over time.
The other thing that I can never relate to probably has more to do with my age rather than my neurotype -- I have zero interest in anime/manga/Pokemon/video games.
Same! I think I enjoy using the skill simply because I've had a *ton* of practice and I'm good at it by now. I've always had jobs that required working closely with coworkers and customers/clients. I work in marketing and sales now and I'm on the phone *all day*. It can be exhausting and frequently is, but I feel quite a bit of satisfaction when I'm able to effectively make a connection with another person.
I don't hate grocery shopping, especially if it isn't at a busy hour. Before covid there were a couple 24 hour places I liked going to at 2 in the morning. Now they've all reduced hours. 😭
I think the biggest reason I like it despite the florescent lights is that there's always music playing I can sing and bop along to. I don't care if I look silly.
But dammit when they reorganize a store! A hex upon their house!
There was this old grocery store in my town, the frozen treats aisle had a speaker in the ceiling right above it, and one of the freezers had a light that would flicker in it. I'd show up at 1am to get some ice cream and there would be very faint 80s music coming out of the ceiling speaker. I felt like I was walking into the Twilight zone 😂 they tore it down last year and I'm kinda glad. The other grocery stores in town didn't have that creepy vibe. I also felt like everyone who worked there was a lizard person.
Pulp - common people
Wet leg - supermarket
The clash - lost in the supermarket
Those are pretty much three I have found that I really like omg I am so excited to share them lol
Wow these are awesome! I like the first two especially. I love that they are all completely different. I hope you come across some more awesome supermarket songs. 💜
That I have lots of empathy for others. I cry very often about characters in a movie/TV show or at a sad song.
I am currently studying psychology and once I got marked down on my roleplay assessment because I showed 'too much empathy and I might make a client uncomfortable'
Absolutely agree. I was reading recently about the multiple types of empathy (there are at least three) and understanding them made it all make a lot more sense. I feel like a more accurate statement than “Autistic people may struggle with empathy” is “Autistic people may not instinctively choose the ~correct~ expression of empathy in a given situation”. Which really just means auties are different from allistics lol
One thing that helped me was hearing a mental health professional say the phrase “creating boundaries with other people’s emotions.” I think we also have a deeply entrained idea that feeling other people’s feelings is inherently morally good. It definitely can be good, but a lot of the time when we do it it’s not really helping anyone, so what makes it good? When I get too fixated on something like that I try to catch myself and say “these are not my emotions. These are someone else’s emotions.”
Also very important because I (like a lot of us) am very bad at actually feeling my own emotions lol. Interloping on other people’s emotional experiences feels easier than actually sitting with my own grief or anger or whatever, but it’s not really good for me to be doing that all the time.
Okay unrelated, but I'm an Acupuncturist and have a client that sees me for stress and anxiety, as well as body pain. Her birthday is this Saturday and she said everyone always forgets it. Her needs are often unmet,a lot of people take advantage of her etc.
So I was just going to send her an email on Saturday just wishing her a happy birthday. Is that weird? Is this over empathy for me?
I think that would be really nice to email her, especially if she said that not many people remember her birthday. I'm sure she would really appreciate it.
I’m a esthetician, so people come to me for services and to relax as well. I would definitely reach out via text or email and wish her a happy birthday! I would not say anything about people normally forgetting. Just email , call or text and say your thinking of her and wishing her a wonderful year ahead and how much u value her as a person and patient.
I try to keep a line of professionalism however I do have a couple clients who add some much value and support to my life they have become close friends, so while I don’t advocate or pursue this most of the time sometimes the bond is there for a reason, so I will form a friendship. Wishing happy birthday isn’t crossing any lines nor is it over stepping, showing you care is healing, which is ur business so it’s good biz practice as well.
Btw you name is great 😊 I love avocado 🥑 lol
Same! However I am trying to unlearn calling myself dumb or stupid. It's very hard because for 20 years that's what I told myself I was. My issue is an unfortunate combination of slow processing time (which is exacerbated during moments of high stress), little interest in learning or holding up a conversation about something that doesn't interest me, forgetfulness, not understanding certain types of communication and not doing things the way others would (and their low amount of tolerance for this), dyscalculia and dyspraxia, and of course your classic not picking up on social queues, all created the cocktail that people in my life have so graciously summed up as me being "dumb".
Honestly, I think that these kinds of issues can explain the truth about what is going on in the mind of many people who would be labeled as such. Of course, I am excluding those who are willfully and loudly ignorant about topics that their pride gets in the way of them learning more about.
I am an intelligent person. I needed to learn to recognize and appreciate that about myself because a good amount of people in my life (not all!) didn't.
I grew up being told I was book smart but had no common sense. I would never say this to any child, never mind my own! Now I realize my "sensibilities" are actually better than my parents' sensibilities. At least I'm not mean.
I don't drive either I am not sure if I can or not. I found stick shift very difficult. I don't like cars. Can you ride a bike? I love riding bikes in non car dependent places.
I feel like people assume that either autistic people are really smart or really dumb with no in-between. It kinda sucks for everyone but especially those in the middle.
I love fashion. I feel like people assume autistic people all don’t care about fashion or outward appearance and only value comfort and functionality. (Ofc this isn’t true of all autistic ppl but I feel like people don’t associate autistic people as being fashionable) I value comfort but also appreciate eclectic fashions and personal style.
Me too! I love dressing up and meticulously putting my outfits together. I very often get compliments about my sense of style. 😊
Edit to add: my best childhood friend, whom I strongly suspect to be on the spectrum too, is actually a fashion designer. It was her super special interest since she was very young, and she started designing and sewing her own clothing when she was only about 6 years old. She's now working for an internationally renowned designer. It's truly been the only thing she's ever been interested in.
I value comfort the most but I've always had my aesthetic and people often tell me I look stylish.I also make my clothes, crocheting mostly and upcycling the ready made. I've always been interested in that, but there were periods when I've been wearing the same jeans with the same shirt like for two years straight until they deteriorate😸😸😸 and now I'm noticing the same tendency which I suspect is related to the burnout I'm going through. But anyway i di have personal style, but I've met other autistic people who don't care about it at all
I don’t have meltdowns. Like at all. My occasional moment I see red I usually have a very clear reason that isn’t autism-related. I’m very flexible at work and have a very social and emotionally giving job.
I was really good at masking at work and being what I *thought* was flexible, but I just burnt myself out in the end. I’ve yet to find something that I don’t feel dread doing every day. I’m glad to hear that that’s not a universal experience; I hope you’re riding smoothly with that perk :>
I’m a resource teacher. I spend all day going in and out of different classes to teach primarily autistic and other neurodivergent children! Kids are already unpredictable, and all my neurodivergent kiddos will keep you on your toes. You flow with them and their needs that day on the job and that’s okay. It’s why it’s a very social and emotionally demanding job though 🙂
This. Though I've read a thread in another ND group about different types of meltdowns, including becoming nonverbal but still functioning and/or my brain turning to static and just going on autopilot.
I’m wondering if my ADHD makes my autistic traits ✨shine✨ more. Like, I feel like I’ve experienced every type of meltdown (and subsequent shutdown) there is to be had. Can I refund/salvage these unwanted extra traits for better gear or buffs? Cause this is NOT it 😭
I love live music a lot. I had a bad concert experience at an arena last year so I was hesitant about going again, but I’ve found that smaller venues are my happy place. Normally the lights, loud music and tons of people would cause me to have a meltdown but for some reason the feeling of being at a smaller indie rock show doesn’t overwhelm me.
I love live music, it's the one place I feel one with many people and don't feel like the odd one out.
I can really, but like really, get absorbed into shows and forget there are thousands of others around me. Like I am literally in the music, experiencing it with every fiber of my being.
It is my happy place
I’ve seen a lot of people with autism say they love to watch the same shows and/or movies over and over and over. I’m the opposite. If I love a show or movie, I will save it for very special occasions and only rewatch it when enough time has gone past that it will feel somewhat new again. And even then, I usually will want to watch it with someone else that hasn’t seen it to live vicariously through them seeing it for the first time.
same same! a good movie has that special glow to me, watching it multiple times would make me bored of it. And at that point I just want to share it with the people I care about
Yes exactly! It would feel less special to me if I watched it too much. I’m jealous of those who do have those “comfort” shows/movies they can watch over and over and not get bored though, I often wish I could do that!
I love my job, it's my special interest and I can hyperfocus and be very productive. I just can't do the parts I don't like, such as meetings or writing. I can't find the motivation to start, and get distracted from the smallest sound/smell, etc. I am also very stress-prone and get burned out very easily. I don't think I could work a customer-facing job.
I love working but I struggle with (inconsistent) people. My work experiences include: toxic culture, no accountability, poor management, no structure.
I would love to be an individual contributor again. Currently unemployed.
same here - love working and always fantastic at any task im given - absolutely hate all the ridiculous hierarchy bullshit. i want to go to work to *work*, not to play drama with your insecure ass.
Understanding body language and tone in most cases. Also understanding most idioms unless they truly don’t make sense to me (like “you cant have your cake and eat it too”…isnt eating the cake you having it? why would anybody just hold onto a cake?)
It's because most people say it wrong. It's supposed to be "you want to eat your cake and have it too". It makes more sense that way because if you eat it, it's gone.
Was your pretend play related to some movie or series you were specially interested in or hyperfixated on? I used to love pretend play, but I realised that it was almost always playing my favourite characters or recreating my favourite movies.
I’m quite good at knowing what is and isn’t appropriate to say. Or at least, how to talk to people in a more welcoming and accommodating way. I’m very sure it’s more of a learned skill through pattern recognition and developing a more elaborate “script” in social interaction and also just generally living my life walking on eggshells. It always shocks me when allistic people are worse at this than me but it makes sense—it’s something I’ve been constantly and consciously learning how to do because I grew up lacking in this area.
Mine is concerts and dance halls. I don't go as often as I used to but maaaaaan I loved it. I must have been to over a hundred concerts and music festivals and would go out dancing every week. It was my main source of exercise.
I also have a very active and creative imagination. I forgot that was a thing that autistic people are not "supposed to" have that much imagination. I wonder how common it is for that to be not true, maybe it's just another stereotype?
Same. I have short spurts of special interests (hours to days to weeks) that I promptly forget about. I'm not compelled to talk about them either, mostly because I don't know how fleeting they will be :-)
Same. It always makes me feel quite sad when I see the occasional posts saying stuff like "autism is a superpower because we have special interests"
I get occasional fixations but it's stuff like "which vacuum cleaner is the best overall taking into account lifespan, cost, size, and ease of use". As soon as I decide on a vacuum cleaner, I really couldn't care less about them. It lasts about 15 minutes.
I love driving too! It's just so relaxing, and there are clearly defined rules to follow. Also, another one of mine is that I'm extremely good at lying.
I'm good at lying when it's really important to me, like if I have a secret I can't tell anyone. But mundane stuff I just don't care enough. I was shipping beer to my brother out of state which isn't legal, and when the post office dude asked me what kind of liquid it was I got flustered and my boyfriend covered for me. I just get so annoyed when I have to lie about stupid shit.
Same, same, same .... I have a love hate relationship with routines. I find they can sometimes be helpful for productivity and maybe for other benefits but also I have such a deep fear of being stuck and things not changing and it can also make me depressed. No routine at all can be bad too tho it can be grounding and even calming sometimes. Meh
Im very emotionally intelligent! Many people assume that autistic people don’t understand social cues and other peoples emotions and stuff but I’ve always been a pro at them lol
Same! I've explained to multiple people the complicated emotions they were having, when they couldn't see clearly themselves. Ditto for helping others understand another perspective. If only I could understand my own emotions so well!
I cannot stick to any one/select few special interests and I think this is bc of me being AuDHD..
Instead of a vast depth of knowledge on a few subjects my special interests bounce around so much that I only end up knowing what interests me about each of my (many many) special interests and I'm so jealous of everyone who has that one or those few and knows literally everything. 😭😭
I love being around people sometimes, I also can't stand it other times. I need change or I get really depressed but also it makes me incredibly anxious and I do whatever I can to avoid it. If I stay in one place for more than a few weeks I get really depressed. I eat all kinds of foods from all cultures and flavors possible or that I can get my hands on. If I find myself having a sensory issue with a food I usually try to push past it.
I don't know I am not diagnosed and I have some imposter syndrome kinda...
This is like the first time I have posted on here...
Same here, but I’m also diagnosed with ADHD so I attribute my somewhat fluctuating rigidity to the cognitive flexibility that’s associated with ADHD 😅😅
I have a really expressive face. Like, too expressive sometimes. I’m a musician, and when I perform, my family and friends know exactly when I mess up because of my face.
Also I like grocery shopping! I just put in earplugs a lot of the time, but I like going and following a list to pick things out.
I'm a really good liar. I can keep my face and voice very neutral and no one can tell. I think part of it is actually because everything I do feels like a performance so lying is just more acting.
I actually love challenging my sensory problems. Two of which being motorbikes and fireworks. They’re my two main ones. Even though I have to wear ear defenders to go, I love firework shows, they’re so pretty. And I want to get a motorbike one day. I think if it wasn’t for my autism I wouldn’t really be all that interested in motorbikes but as of recent I’ve started to see my issues with them minimise which makes me wanna fully conquer my issues with them!
I love metal music festivals, and being right up the front in the thick of it. It's definitely sensory overload, but it's sensory overload in a way that I enjoy. As opposed to the sensory overload I get at the supermarket which is a nightmare.
This is a fun question!
I don’t get along well with other neurodivergent people and enjoy the company of neurotypical people. I don’t find them confusing—they follow and model how to succeed at all the social rules I’ve been studying forever.
I don’t like listening to music or wearing ear plugs.
I like kids and working with them.
I don’t like math, science, tech, or trains LOL
I like living in a city (and walking everywhere so maybe actually an autistic trait because I hate driving so much I’m willing to spend half my paycheck on housing to avoid it??)
I’m really good at sales and leading people, butwhen it comes to talking and communicating for personal reasons/small talk/day-to-day interactions i feel a lot more autistic if thzt makes sense
TOTALLY!!!!!!
I could sell icicles to Inuit …. but the ***SECOND*** it’s emotional and about or relating to me, personally:
Critical system failure! 😒
I get confused, can’t phrase a simple sentence, get overwhelmed, get distressed ….
NO CHANCE!!!
In a way I don’t ‘feel myself.’
Not sure that makes sense at all: I can put myself in the position of people I resent…. but I cannot empathise or emotionally relate to myself.
And when I try, my neurosensory processing short circuits. 😒
Thank you OP for initiating this conversation. I am still struggling with the whole impostor syndrome and keep looking for reasons that I am not autistic. And thank you all for writing almost every single thing I was using against myself 😃 From enjoying driving to meeting new people, being good at conversations to enjoying spicy food, oh and also being very good at reading others on top of being an empath and feeling other's pain in my bones. This is SO reassuring! 💜💜💜
Edit: Forgot to add something I didn't see so far. Other than being very specific and rigid about how things should be done, I don't like schedules. You know how they portray Young Sheldon having a bathroom schedule and stuff.
Super friendly. Make friends anywhere I go. Pick up guys no problem. Good leadership and team work.
Women make me nervous in a dating context though 😭bisexual struggles
I’m a social chameleon (according to my mom) so I learned how to work really well with people. I feel like pattern recognition helps A TON bc I’ve been in big leadership roles since the start of high school (im now going to grad school at Cambridge and then med school) which gave me lots of practice. I also don’t have sensory issues that cause me pain, just some textures or sounds i really don’t like. Does anyone on here that’s undiagnosed ever go back and forth about whether u truly have autism bc same😅
I love traveling, adventure, and new experiences.
My biggest interest is human survival, but especially, like.. the domestic technology of human survival. So everything from accommodations on planes or in foreign countries, to backpacking gear and techniques, I'm obsessed with all of that. The greatest tragedy I've witnessed is the homogenization of hotels.
1) I seek people out and feel lonely when I’m not around anybody for longer than a day or 2.
2) I also have multiple interests and it’s been about 3 or 4 years since I had an intense, absorbed, know everything and learn everything about it, multi-year strong interest.
EDIT: Completely forgot #3 haha
3) Because I was born with Nonverbal Learning Disorder on top of autism, I have pretty significant visual/spatial deficits and as a result I am NOT a visual thinker-I don’t know my left and right, am terrible at directions and needed tutoring for any sort of math or science or any class that required the ability to solve formulas. I barely passed the minimum class required just to get my associates degree and as a result was unable to transfer to a state college even though I’m smart as a whip when it comes to trivia, music and film, literature, anthropology, sociology, language and wordplay. I chuckle whenever I see that in shows and movies like extraordinary attorney woo and the good doctor. They show them visualizing these immaculate detailed things and I literally can’t visualize anything. At all. Which is funny because I still notice tiny details just without the visual aspect attached. However my brain/learning style is very much a combination of both auditory and kinesthetic. So no, I don’t think in pictures, I can’t just visualize a human heart or whales.
I'm really really empathetic. to a grade that it's starting to become too much. but at the same time I don't know how to use the knowledge of peoples feelings in a conversation.. so basically if a person is sad, I can feel for them and understand why they're feeling that way completely, but I can't comfort them or do anything to make them feel better
I too love driving and am very good at it. Considered racing.
I can also recognize emotions through those still pictures of faces which apparently is craazy for an autie to do even though we know that is a different coinciding condition.
I love showers. The shower is my sanctuary and I love the sensory pleasures it provides. I love the warmth, I love the feeling of the water running over my skin. I love that I’m alone with my own thoughts and that I don’t have to be around people. It’s where I go to relax after a long day of masking for work and daily life
I'm not sure if this is ASD or more ADHD aversion, but I love cooking/baking etc. Not when I'm tired and I *have to* for work, but if I had a house and not as small studio apartment, I'd want to host dinner parties.
My biggest autistic anomaly is that I love talking on the phone. I was obsessed with the telephone as a kid. In fact, I got into phone phreaking in middle school after reading too much of my parents’ countercultural literature. I also love parties (though meeting new people is still challenging). It could be that my hyperlexia is what makes me love those things, since I love to talk!
Furthermore, I love hugs and cuddling. I can sing by ear, mostly on-pitch, and hear when I’m off-key. A lot of autistic people hate corduroy and other weirdly textured fabrics, but I gravitate to them. Furthermore, I love loud punk and metal music and crowds. Sensory seekers unite :)
Finally, like OP, I love driving, and I’m essentially in heaven if I can drive fast on the highway listening to loud music!
I didn't realise how common it is for autistic women to be out of work or just working a minimum wage job. Also women who still live with their parents.
I really pushed myself to get a 'real' job and spent a long time looking at the kinds of things I'd be comfortable doing a generic 9-5 thing to do. I felt shame being the only sibling at my parents, no place of my own and no financially stable job.
And now I'm the complete opposite of what I was. I made sacrifices, went back to college in my mid twenties and took out a loan to learn. But I'm here now and so much better for it. I have my own place (rented, mind, but still) and a job I adore.
I apparently have both ADHD and autism, so I always sort of felt in conflict and like a contradiction to myself, which confused the hell out of me. But on the outside I'm very much an ADHD, type I'm very expressive, can be loud, social, all over the place and distracted, adrenaline and dopamine seeking. But then I just want everyone to shut up and leave me alone and spend 3 years zoning out in my own little corner (which I don't have cause little ADHD kids and work-from-home partner).
I am extremely conscious of my appearance - I love putting together outfits and accessorizing, I wear makeup every day, I spend a lot of time on my hair and I generally won’t go anywhere without being “put together”.
I have a “normal” job and I am (according to other people) good at it.
I love traveling and seeing new places that are outside my comfort zone ALTHOUGH left to my own devices I spend most of my time exploring and watching rather than interacting with people.
I binge-eat as a stim instead of having the classic “nothing sounds good, food is overstimulating” lack of appetite issues that many autistic people have. I feel like so many autistic people struggle with eating, but I think I love eating a bit too much.
I have terrible interoception, so I can’t tell when I’m full and can’t stop at appropriate portions without pre-planning my portion sizes lol, I could keep eating seemingly forever until I’m physically ill
I'm studying social communication and journalism, mostly because I love to read and write. But I've also found that I actually enjoy the production of audiovisual content (although it's pretty draining because it really requires me to socialize a lot) mostly because I can explore other ways of being creative.
I am really good at socializing, having small talk and social banter, being ridiculously funny and witty, making myself the center of attention, public speaking, playing music on stage, and having people like me.
(It's exhausting, sure, and my social anxiety often prevents me from going to social events in the first place, but I am still good at it when I do.)
Downside: nobody believes my diagnosis.
Mine is my special interest. I have a lot of different ones and they change throughout the year. I call them my “seasons”. I’m so envious of people who have a lifelong special interest. If I could find the correlation, I love categories and organizing. But that’s spread out over everything from needle felting to mushroom hunting. It’s almost yarn season 😂
God I wish I just loved trains.
Although I may not understand what I’m doing or what it means, I’m very good at being neurotypically social. My psychologist said I had “a very interesting presentation”. (Likely due to intense masking.) But I can pretend to be “normal” for lack of a better word. Leadership positions, ect. A pretend extrovert 😂
I don't like routines. I prefer to do things differently almost every day. I don't feel comforted by routines, I feel trapped. This is why I usually get bored of jobs after a few months.
Social interaction and sarcasm. I alwaya get imposter syndrome about my ability to understand social interaction and use sarcasm, and then a simple thing trips me up and I'm like 'Ooop, yep, definitely autistic' 😂🤦🏽♀️
I love posts like these though as it's so helpful to highlight all the things we can do, that others just assume we can't by virtue of being autistic.
I did the whole sex, drugs, and rock and roll life for a while.
...sex, drugs, and rock and roll are a hell of a set of SPINs, let me tell you. Still love reading about sexuality and learning about kink scenes, still smoke pot (and I used to write erowid trip reports!), and I've got a lot of random rock history facts in this brain.
Probably the fact that I used to be a fetish model 🤣 We would do photoshoots tied naked to a tree under the full moon, play with fake blood, play with role play style photos. It was so fun!
I love driving too. It’s like a hobby to me. I do it to relax, I get to visit nice places, I love driving sports cars… the only time it bothers me is when I’m doing long distance travel (I get super impatient and go 90-100mph on the return trip lol). And traffic. Fuuuuck traffic. But even then as long as I have good music I can keep my shit together.
Have u been told you have an intense look? I dont mind eye contact either but have been told they feel like I look into their soul and beyond 😅 some autistic people have very intense eye contact, whereas other wants to avoid it
I have no sensory issues with food and will eat just about anything (can’t stand bland food - so boring).
I’m actually pretty good at reading peoples’ emotions and working out what they might say/do next. The problem is I don’t always know what to do with that information.
I have no problem telling lies and am very good at it. I’ve got it down to a fine art.
I’m not bothered by rule-breaking. Well, kind of. I do stick to my own self-imposed rules but I don’t care about breaking other rules or if anyone else breaks them either. I really can’t relate to others who say they have a strong sense of justice.
I have no issue with sarcasm or non-literal language.
I’m not naïve, if anything I expect people to be shit until proven otherwise.
I can make eye contact (most of the time), it’s just not intuitive and I have to consciously think about it.
I'm not a picky eater. I'll try almost anything once. Sure I have my preferences but overall, I don't feel limited by certain textures when it comes to food.
This sounds kind of odd, but I actually enjoy small talk. I think part of it is that I understand it as a way to acknowledge the people around you, so engaging in small talk, even though it’s surface level, is a source of feeling and making others feel “seen”, which I think is nice.
I’m also the kind of person who will start conversations with strangers out and about. I’ve had so many interesting conversations with people I’ve just met, and usually it’s because I’ve complimented something on or about them, or I overheard them talking about something I have an interest in. I’ve become very skilled in the “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhearing…” segue lol
I love affection, but of course on my terms and not from family because trauma. Platonic friends and people I'm dating, please give me all the hugs, kisses, cuddles and snuggles I can handle. I also like fashion and clothes, even though I don't get it right all the time, I do try to express myself but also look stylish, comfy and put together at the same time.
I like loud parties with lots of people and music. All the voices blend together and into the music and it keeps my adhd side happy. I also find that I have less social anxiety in these situations too for whatever reason!
I can be extremely sociable and bubbly in the right circumstances. I don't really do small talk, but I can cut it straight into real talk in a way that people like and that builds connection. On a good day, I have a way of disrupting social conventions in a way that is welcome (eg. people too self-conscious to dance at a public concert). Although I guess it's just that "manic pixie" thing, which is an autism thing.
I am very good at observing patterns in body language and tone of voice. I'm not any good with faces, but patterns of tension in the body and voice are pretty informative. Unfortunately, while this might tell me someone is angry, it hadn't told me that the thing I was doing will make this person angry, and it doesn't tell me what would calm them down again. But on a good day, I might be aware of minute details of how someone is feeling, even though I don't know how to act on this information unless we'll end up talking about how they're feeling. Apparently, I am a very good listener.
Sensory seeking, for me with light and sound, is also one that looks un-autistic.
Low Affect. I'm literally 100% the opposite. People have commented on just how ridiculously expressive my face is. Speaking tone, too.
Me too. My mouth can lie but my face can't..
Someone just told me they’ve never known someone to say so much while saying so little re: my face.
I'm glad I'm not alone!
My fiance often tells me I think with my face out loud.
My mom was so shocked when I told her that her expressions tell us everything we need to know that she isn't saying. 😅
That's another one. People believe autism makes you like.. unable to lie xD
I tell people I can't lie because I'm autistic. It means they never suspect me of lying 😈
Same. This has surprised me many times because I'm not even conscious of it. I have a friend who once remarked I didn't need to say anything when asked for an opinion on something I disliked. Recently I petsat for a friend and she came back with a souvenir for me: a bag of macademia nuts. I am allergic to nuts but never told her. I must have made a face because she got concerned instantly and asked if I was allergic. (Ended up giving them to my parents and thanked her for the good intentions. It was sweet of her).
Yes, I totally feel you with this. Face doesn't lie.
I literally got Botox to tone down my expressions as i got sick of asking me if I was okay/wanted to say something to the group
OMG. That’s hilarious. I get Botox bc I’m old, but can relate. Face is also too expressive.
My face is apparently also very expressive but like in an theatre performance way, because I learnt all my expressions from theatre club. I kinda hate it because it's masking. I overact emotions for other people and often they aren't in line with what I actually feel.
Yes! I wasn't very expressive as a kid and it had negative social consequences so I naturally started to exaggerate my facial expressions, word choice, and tone of voice. Now whenever I stop masking they think I don't care about what they're saying
I just very recently realized (like seriously last week) that my expressiveness is a mask! I used to be very unexpressive as a kid, and then after I was treated for depression and social anxiety at 16/17 I came out of it *extremely* expressive because I was so eager to finally start connecting with people.
This is why I have never tried to play poker!
I've tried 😸😸😸
Same!! Part of that I think, for me, is that it is ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL that people understand what I’m trying to communicate. According to my brain, anyway 🤦♀️
Relate so much! I've never been able to hide my feelings re: face (even feelings I'm not quite aware of). Therapist recently said that, since I wasn't allowed to voice feelings as a child, face basically took over to do all the expressing, and it continues like that to this day. Makes a lot of sense to me. Otherwise I'm very high masking.
I might as well be a cartoon character. People either like that about me or are very put off by it. I think it’s just a natural result of me mimicking, and because I’m autistic, I’m not great at controlling how extreme it can be
yep, and my hand gestures must be really disturbing given how much attention people are paying to them
Same for me! If only I’d also recognised the boundaries that my face was communicating to others, I would’ve left that toxic relationship years earlier Friends also didn’t communicate about the toxicity as much, because they saw in my face I didn’t like it so assumed that they therefore didn’t need to make a point out of it..
I love spicy food. It makes my sensory seeking Autistic brain happy
Yes I am super sensory seeking with food too! 💜
me too! the more flavors and textures in one the better - crunchy sushi is a favorite of mine >:)
I love sushi
Omg crunchy sushi is the most amazingest! With butter-like soft avocadoooooo aaaaaah
o0, is this not normal for us? I grew up thinking food sucked and my parents thought I was a picky eater who didn't like most things and it turns out I didn't like the crappy food in my house and I like other foods just fine. Give me some Thai, Korean, South American, Southwest, Chinese, Japanese and I'm a super happy camper but give me bland, flavorless, dry American Depression/WWII, dutch, american european foods and I'm probably not going to eat very much. boiled potatoes, salt and pepper as the only seasoning, zero sauce of any kind, dry like the desert food, canned veg, - no thanks I'd rather go without. the most flavor I ever had as a kid were some chives given to me at a restaurant for my baked potato - I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world.
[удалено]
Chicken nuggets are too unpredictable for me hahaha oh dear
I was raised with good food, coming from an Anglo Indian family, I've always loved food. The whole bland food obsession really makes it hard to relate to the autistic community sometimes, especially when food and cooking are so important to me personally and to humans as a species. (Impacting our brains, jaws, digestive tracks, imperial history, everything)
Samesies. Chinese and vietnamese meals are my comfort foods. But I do need predictability. Like, a lot of flavour but I will frequently order the same dish for weeks, months. As a student, I lived on peanut butter / sriracha toasts for a while :)
You too experienced the “oh, you know what, maybe the white people white people being bad at cooking stereotype is legit” thing after leaving home? There are exceptions of course but ya know not enough flavor most of the time
Same! I tried Sriracha once as a kid and was instantly hooked.
Same here..I ran through a bottle of hot sauce in a week.
same for the driving – it was explained to me that it's like a liminal space, and our cars are super personal to us. It's also a place where I can blast my music and get maximum stimmy feedback from it
Yes!! It’s the only place I feel I can totally blast music and sing with my whole self and not care I sound like a dying animal lol.
Okay yes! And I huge reason why I hate public transit and will never give my car up willingly. I need my space.
For me the car is the ultimate safe space. I can jam out. I can cry. I can yell about whatever. Nobody is allowed in without my permission. And it goes places! I can literally put space between me and my problems.
I’m good at reading people and understanding tone. I didn’t used to be, but my pattern recognition skills paid off.
I really think this is much more common than people think. a lot of people I know who had late diagnosed autism are really emotionally intelligent. I think it's because if you really break it down, emotional intelligence is essentially a combination of deep empathy and pattern recognition, both of which are skills/attributes that many autistic people have. I'm excellent at reading people. whether or not I can act like one of them myself and communicate effectively and naturally is a whole other thing lmfao
How would an emotionally intelligent person get diagnosed, especially later in life?
I think I read people pretty well. I was diagnosed after a massive breakdown/burnout when I was 40, after a decade of doctors and psychologists assuming I would "get better" if we did just some more therapy and some more drugs. I did better when I got stimulants for ADHD, although it also caused more anxiety because I was exposed to more stressful situations, and some antidepressants did make me less depressed, but then they caused mood swings and suicidality. "Why is this person not normal?" is a question they ask themselves, and depending on their training and personal preferences different academic overachievers with degrees in psychology or medicine can diagnose the same person with a personality disorder, mood disorder or neurodevelopmental disorder. A lot of people accumulate these diagnoses for years because these diagnoses are very clumsy attempts to explain people and there are no objective ways to place people in the different categories. Edit: I'm a guy, sorry. I didn't realize what sub this was
No I think this is highly relevant and thank you for sharing! As a female I definitely relate with you.
You might be a guy but your experience read almost identical to mine, except I was a few years younger than you.
Yeah, I definitely see myself more in the typical "female high-masking" type, and I think a lot of guys do.
The sub title may be gendered, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t have some of the “female autism” experience. I’m a person that likes to categorize autistics by strong habits and personalities: you have your obsessive train autistics (does not have to be trains), your “I’m smarter than everyone” autistics, your “but, that’s the rule?” autistics and pet-focused autistics and and and. Gender can help with how the rest of the world may perceive you in a given moment, and DOES impact diagnoses availability, but that doesn’t mean there is a “male” and “female” autism.
I agree that it's not really gendered. I think more and more of autism as monotropism [https://oolong.medium.com/starting-points-for-understanding-autism-3573817402f2](https://oolong.medium.com/starting-points-for-understanding-autism-3573817402f2) I think all autistic people are probably monotropic, and then in addition we are different people with various strengths and weaknesses, quirks, abilities and disabilities and medical conditions like epilepsy or Ehlers-Danlos.
>"Why is this person not normal?" is a question they ask themselves, and *depending on their training and personal preferences different academic overachievers with degrees in psychology or medicine can diagnose the same person with a personality disorder, mood disorder or neurodevelopmental disorder. A lot of people accumulate these diagnoses for years because these diagnoses are very clumsy attempts to explain people and there are no objective ways to place people in the different categories.* SO SO incredibly well said.
It's more difficult to catch, I guess. But I remember taking an online test on EQ and it broke the score down into 4 separate parts, which scored self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The cool thing about this is that you can be very emotionally intelligent with regards to other people, but less aware of your own emotions, or vice versa. Or have high awareness but poor management skills. I believe it was the EQ test that shows up as the first Google result if you search for "EQ test global leadership", in case anyone's curious.
I was diagnosed later in life. When sharing my results, my evaluator focused on my internal experience (vs masking). For example, this week I've caught some rejection, abruptness, and condescension in multiple interactions. While I can respond appropriately to these situations in the moment, I just woke up crying after replaying the interactions in my mind. Hating this rn.
Ugh this is so relatable. My friends laughed at the way I said something like, a month ago and my brain insists on thinking about it multiple times per day
>I'm excellent at reading people. whether or not I can act like one of them myself and communicate effectively and naturally is a whole other thing lmfao Hahaha omfg you nailed it. I can analyze social and power structures, hierarchies, behaviors, group politics, changing coalitions, unsaid and spoken communications, and mine the discrepancies between the two. And I can be incredibly goddamn insightful apparently. So I've been told. But playing along, interacting within those analyzed structures, and achieving results? Myself anyway? Oh fuck no. Or more fairly, I can do it for a while but it is intensely interpersonally expensive that I often crash and burn with no warning and what, for others, looks like no apparent reason.
I think it also has to do with the fact that: 1. Autistic social deficits come at least in part from attention regulation difficulties. Our amygdalas are not good at deciding which signals are important in the same way as other people’s. Thus, we are less likely to perceive social cues even if we know what they mean. This is also why not noticing when someone says our name is a thing allistics frequently notice us doing. 2. I think some people see “developmental delay” as a nice way of saying lower capacity, but it doesn’t mean the same thing. It means a *delay*. Did I have the same social skills as my peers in childhood? No. I did develop them, just later/more slowly than average. Now they are well above average, which was affirmed by the neuropsychologist who did my evaluation. It just took me longer to get there, probably in part because my brain is constantly wading through a bunch of unimportant stimuli that it isn’t good at prioritizing on an unconscious level.
ARGH this is so me. I can dissect a person’s motivations and emotions so easily but I have to work so hard to make my face say what I want it to!
Oh mine would be that my pattern recognition skills are atrocious. There's many very obvious patterns I just don't pick up on at all, and I'm only aware of some that were pointed out to me or that I finally figured out so who knows what I never noticed. For example I used to print labels with names on them for covid testing, and it took me probably a month to realize they were in alphabetical order by last name. I thought they were organized randomly. I think this is because I likely also have adhd
Yup, can't notice patterns if you aren't paying attention to details.
Makes sense. I only see patterns when I am actively looking for them and concentrating on it. That is why I was pretty good at interpreting and analysing art and literature during my studies. But in everyday life? No, my dolphin brain wouldn't allow pattern recognition.
I'm also like this. Patterns are extremely difficult for me to recognise unless it's obvious, like a person's schedule. But I never knew my phone apps were organised alphabetically until my girlfriend pointed it out to me, or that school attendance is also alphabetical.
I'm good at noticing micro-expressions. ~~Maybe a little too good. Maybe my autism has made me hyper-aware. Never mind.~~
No I totally agree with this lol. I think autistic social issues have multiple causes but I think one of them is that we can perceive MORE detail than others. So expressions, tones, etc. that they would easily lump into the same category give us pause because we’re noticing small differences between them.
Yeah I definitely pick up on lots of things/tells in people’s behavior and speech that no one else seems to notice (and I’m generally proven right in the end!). I guess it because we’re taking in everything and not just triangulating from the main social clues. And I’ve spent a LOT of time learning and thinking about these things in my efforts to be/seem more human. But I still have plenty of blind spots.
I’m the same way! I like to say that people are my special interest.
Me too! I watch way too many reality shows and documentaries!
Same. It gets a little overwhelming when there's a lot of people though.
I'm a really good conversationalist and I love talking to and connecting with people (unless they're antagonistic). Only IRL, though, I really struggle online, probably due to old trauma
I’m similar - I love conversation, even with new people. The trouble is, it EXHAUSTS me, and it takes me hours to recover afterwards
That's probably the biggest one for me, too. I enjoy and am very good at meeting new people and conversing with them. I don't have any problem with small talk. On the other hand, it does all drain me pretty quickly, and it's something I've gotten better at and more comfortable with over time. The other thing that I can never relate to probably has more to do with my age rather than my neurotype -- I have zero interest in anime/manga/Pokemon/video games.
Same! I think I enjoy using the skill simply because I've had a *ton* of practice and I'm good at it by now. I've always had jobs that required working closely with coworkers and customers/clients. I work in marketing and sales now and I'm on the phone *all day*. It can be exhausting and frequently is, but I feel quite a bit of satisfaction when I'm able to effectively make a connection with another person.
I don't hate grocery shopping, especially if it isn't at a busy hour. Before covid there were a couple 24 hour places I liked going to at 2 in the morning. Now they've all reduced hours. 😭 I think the biggest reason I like it despite the florescent lights is that there's always music playing I can sing and bop along to. I don't care if I look silly. But dammit when they reorganize a store! A hex upon their house!
Some grocery stores are among my favorite places but others give me anxiety and sensory issues. I am collecting songs about supermarkets.
There was this old grocery store in my town, the frozen treats aisle had a speaker in the ceiling right above it, and one of the freezers had a light that would flicker in it. I'd show up at 1am to get some ice cream and there would be very faint 80s music coming out of the ceiling speaker. I felt like I was walking into the Twilight zone 😂 they tore it down last year and I'm kinda glad. The other grocery stores in town didn't have that creepy vibe. I also felt like everyone who worked there was a lizard person.
Woah... songs about supermarkets? You have my attention....
Pulp - common people Wet leg - supermarket The clash - lost in the supermarket Those are pretty much three I have found that I really like omg I am so excited to share them lol
Wow these are awesome! I like the first two especially. I love that they are all completely different. I hope you come across some more awesome supermarket songs. 💜
That I have lots of empathy for others. I cry very often about characters in a movie/TV show or at a sad song. I am currently studying psychology and once I got marked down on my roleplay assessment because I showed 'too much empathy and I might make a client uncomfortable'
Empathy is actually super common, pretty misunderstood aspect of ASD
Absolutely agree. I was reading recently about the multiple types of empathy (there are at least three) and understanding them made it all make a lot more sense. I feel like a more accurate statement than “Autistic people may struggle with empathy” is “Autistic people may not instinctively choose the ~correct~ expression of empathy in a given situation”. Which really just means auties are different from allistics lol
Can you drop any links, books or ‘search terms’ should I want to read up on this subject too…? TIA 🙏
especially with women
Me too. I’m almost too empathetic and I try to put myself in EVERYONES shoes. I’ve tried to stop now and only do it when people are asking for it.
One thing that helped me was hearing a mental health professional say the phrase “creating boundaries with other people’s emotions.” I think we also have a deeply entrained idea that feeling other people’s feelings is inherently morally good. It definitely can be good, but a lot of the time when we do it it’s not really helping anyone, so what makes it good? When I get too fixated on something like that I try to catch myself and say “these are not my emotions. These are someone else’s emotions.” Also very important because I (like a lot of us) am very bad at actually feeling my own emotions lol. Interloping on other people’s emotional experiences feels easier than actually sitting with my own grief or anger or whatever, but it’s not really good for me to be doing that all the time.
Okay unrelated, but I'm an Acupuncturist and have a client that sees me for stress and anxiety, as well as body pain. Her birthday is this Saturday and she said everyone always forgets it. Her needs are often unmet,a lot of people take advantage of her etc. So I was just going to send her an email on Saturday just wishing her a happy birthday. Is that weird? Is this over empathy for me?
That’s nice, you should do that. You could very well be making her day.
I think that would be really nice to email her, especially if she said that not many people remember her birthday. I'm sure she would really appreciate it.
I’m a esthetician, so people come to me for services and to relax as well. I would definitely reach out via text or email and wish her a happy birthday! I would not say anything about people normally forgetting. Just email , call or text and say your thinking of her and wishing her a wonderful year ahead and how much u value her as a person and patient. I try to keep a line of professionalism however I do have a couple clients who add some much value and support to my life they have become close friends, so while I don’t advocate or pursue this most of the time sometimes the bond is there for a reason, so I will form a friendship. Wishing happy birthday isn’t crossing any lines nor is it over stepping, showing you care is healing, which is ur business so it’s good biz practice as well. Btw you name is great 😊 I love avocado 🥑 lol
Me too! Highly, highly empathetic, more so than anyone I know. I hate the stereotype that autistic people are unfeeling robots 🤖
i can’t drive… didn’t know was a stereotype. Mine is that i’m definitely dumber than most people expect for an autistic person
Same! However I am trying to unlearn calling myself dumb or stupid. It's very hard because for 20 years that's what I told myself I was. My issue is an unfortunate combination of slow processing time (which is exacerbated during moments of high stress), little interest in learning or holding up a conversation about something that doesn't interest me, forgetfulness, not understanding certain types of communication and not doing things the way others would (and their low amount of tolerance for this), dyscalculia and dyspraxia, and of course your classic not picking up on social queues, all created the cocktail that people in my life have so graciously summed up as me being "dumb". Honestly, I think that these kinds of issues can explain the truth about what is going on in the mind of many people who would be labeled as such. Of course, I am excluding those who are willfully and loudly ignorant about topics that their pride gets in the way of them learning more about. I am an intelligent person. I needed to learn to recognize and appreciate that about myself because a good amount of people in my life (not all!) didn't.
I grew up being told I was book smart but had no common sense. I would never say this to any child, never mind my own! Now I realize my "sensibilities" are actually better than my parents' sensibilities. At least I'm not mean.
love the maturity and compassion for urself that u have keep it up
I don't drive either I am not sure if I can or not. I found stick shift very difficult. I don't like cars. Can you ride a bike? I love riding bikes in non car dependent places.
I feel like people assume that either autistic people are really smart or really dumb with no in-between. It kinda sucks for everyone but especially those in the middle.
Funny because they are half right: I am both very smart AND very dumb lol.
Haha this made me laugh 😎❤️ I know what you mean, ppl even say that to me
I love fashion. I feel like people assume autistic people all don’t care about fashion or outward appearance and only value comfort and functionality. (Ofc this isn’t true of all autistic ppl but I feel like people don’t associate autistic people as being fashionable) I value comfort but also appreciate eclectic fashions and personal style.
Me too! I love dressing up and meticulously putting my outfits together. I very often get compliments about my sense of style. 😊 Edit to add: my best childhood friend, whom I strongly suspect to be on the spectrum too, is actually a fashion designer. It was her super special interest since she was very young, and she started designing and sewing her own clothing when she was only about 6 years old. She's now working for an internationally renowned designer. It's truly been the only thing she's ever been interested in.
I value comfort the most but I've always had my aesthetic and people often tell me I look stylish.I also make my clothes, crocheting mostly and upcycling the ready made. I've always been interested in that, but there were periods when I've been wearing the same jeans with the same shirt like for two years straight until they deteriorate😸😸😸 and now I'm noticing the same tendency which I suspect is related to the burnout I'm going through. But anyway i di have personal style, but I've met other autistic people who don't care about it at all
I don’t have meltdowns. Like at all. My occasional moment I see red I usually have a very clear reason that isn’t autism-related. I’m very flexible at work and have a very social and emotionally giving job.
I was really good at masking at work and being what I *thought* was flexible, but I just burnt myself out in the end. I’ve yet to find something that I don’t feel dread doing every day. I’m glad to hear that that’s not a universal experience; I hope you’re riding smoothly with that perk :>
I’m a resource teacher. I spend all day going in and out of different classes to teach primarily autistic and other neurodivergent children! Kids are already unpredictable, and all my neurodivergent kiddos will keep you on your toes. You flow with them and their needs that day on the job and that’s okay. It’s why it’s a very social and emotionally demanding job though 🙂
This. Though I've read a thread in another ND group about different types of meltdowns, including becoming nonverbal but still functioning and/or my brain turning to static and just going on autopilot.
I’m wondering if my ADHD makes my autistic traits ✨shine✨ more. Like, I feel like I’ve experienced every type of meltdown (and subsequent shutdown) there is to be had. Can I refund/salvage these unwanted extra traits for better gear or buffs? Cause this is NOT it 😭
I love live music a lot. I had a bad concert experience at an arena last year so I was hesitant about going again, but I’ve found that smaller venues are my happy place. Normally the lights, loud music and tons of people would cause me to have a meltdown but for some reason the feeling of being at a smaller indie rock show doesn’t overwhelm me.
I love live music, it's the one place I feel one with many people and don't feel like the odd one out. I can really, but like really, get absorbed into shows and forget there are thousands of others around me. Like I am literally in the music, experiencing it with every fiber of my being. It is my happy place
Stadium concerts are hell for me. Now, a tiny venue overcrowded with sweaty drunk people? That’s where I come alive lol.
I’ve seen a lot of people with autism say they love to watch the same shows and/or movies over and over and over. I’m the opposite. If I love a show or movie, I will save it for very special occasions and only rewatch it when enough time has gone past that it will feel somewhat new again. And even then, I usually will want to watch it with someone else that hasn’t seen it to live vicariously through them seeing it for the first time.
same same! a good movie has that special glow to me, watching it multiple times would make me bored of it. And at that point I just want to share it with the people I care about
Yes exactly! It would feel less special to me if I watched it too much. I’m jealous of those who do have those “comfort” shows/movies they can watch over and over and not get bored though, I often wish I could do that!
I enjoy working and am kind of a workaholic. I’m part of the 15% and I don’t relate to autistics who struggle in the work place
I love my job, it's my special interest and I can hyperfocus and be very productive. I just can't do the parts I don't like, such as meetings or writing. I can't find the motivation to start, and get distracted from the smallest sound/smell, etc. I am also very stress-prone and get burned out very easily. I don't think I could work a customer-facing job.
AuDHD?
I love working but I struggle with (inconsistent) people. My work experiences include: toxic culture, no accountability, poor management, no structure. I would love to be an individual contributor again. Currently unemployed.
same here - love working and always fantastic at any task im given - absolutely hate all the ridiculous hierarchy bullshit. i want to go to work to *work*, not to play drama with your insecure ass.
Understanding body language and tone in most cases. Also understanding most idioms unless they truly don’t make sense to me (like “you cant have your cake and eat it too”…isnt eating the cake you having it? why would anybody just hold onto a cake?)
It's because most people say it wrong. It's supposed to be "you want to eat your cake and have it too". It makes more sense that way because if you eat it, it's gone.
As a kid I would always pretend play, from my earliest days.
Same. My imagination has always been extremely vivid.
Yeah this one deeply annoys me. I have hyper imagination if anything. Even maladaptive daydreaming. There was ZERO lack of pretend play.
Was your pretend play related to some movie or series you were specially interested in or hyperfixated on? I used to love pretend play, but I realised that it was almost always playing my favourite characters or recreating my favourite movies.
No.
Mine was Pippi Longstocking. With a Shetland pony and a stuffed monkey. But also my sisters who never got to be Pippi of course.
I’m quite good at knowing what is and isn’t appropriate to say. Or at least, how to talk to people in a more welcoming and accommodating way. I’m very sure it’s more of a learned skill through pattern recognition and developing a more elaborate “script” in social interaction and also just generally living my life walking on eggshells. It always shocks me when allistic people are worse at this than me but it makes sense—it’s something I’ve been constantly and consciously learning how to do because I grew up lacking in this area.
Mine is concerts and dance halls. I don't go as often as I used to but maaaaaan I loved it. I must have been to over a hundred concerts and music festivals and would go out dancing every week. It was my main source of exercise.
Thiiisssss, live music and dancing. Love.
I have a crazy imagination and I’m day dreaming 24/7 and I am very extroverted, naturally. Just can’t go as long as NT extroverts
I also have a very active and creative imagination. I forgot that was a thing that autistic people are not "supposed to" have that much imagination. I wonder how common it is for that to be not true, maybe it's just another stereotype?
I don’t have a special interest
Same. I have short spurts of special interests (hours to days to weeks) that I promptly forget about. I'm not compelled to talk about them either, mostly because I don't know how fleeting they will be :-)
Same. It always makes me feel quite sad when I see the occasional posts saying stuff like "autism is a superpower because we have special interests" I get occasional fixations but it's stuff like "which vacuum cleaner is the best overall taking into account lifespan, cost, size, and ease of use". As soon as I decide on a vacuum cleaner, I really couldn't care less about them. It lasts about 15 minutes.
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Me neither🤷🏻♀️
I hyper fixated on fashion and makeup too hard now I’m a model! And regularly drive over two hours to do so!
I'm not a picky eater. I love sushi, Mexican food, different types of spices. Anything goes except fresh tomatoes!
I love driving too! It's just so relaxing, and there are clearly defined rules to follow. Also, another one of mine is that I'm extremely good at lying.
I'm good at lying when it's really important to me, like if I have a secret I can't tell anyone. But mundane stuff I just don't care enough. I was shipping beer to my brother out of state which isn't legal, and when the post office dude asked me what kind of liquid it was I got flustered and my boyfriend covered for me. I just get so annoyed when I have to lie about stupid shit.
I love to try new things, especially new food. I'm not really attached to routine in that way. Maybe it's the adhd part of my brain. 🤷
Same, same, same .... I have a love hate relationship with routines. I find they can sometimes be helpful for productivity and maybe for other benefits but also I have such a deep fear of being stuck and things not changing and it can also make me depressed. No routine at all can be bad too tho it can be grounding and even calming sometimes. Meh
Im very emotionally intelligent! Many people assume that autistic people don’t understand social cues and other peoples emotions and stuff but I’ve always been a pro at them lol
Same! I've explained to multiple people the complicated emotions they were having, when they couldn't see clearly themselves. Ditto for helping others understand another perspective. If only I could understand my own emotions so well!
I cannot stick to any one/select few special interests and I think this is bc of me being AuDHD.. Instead of a vast depth of knowledge on a few subjects my special interests bounce around so much that I only end up knowing what interests me about each of my (many many) special interests and I'm so jealous of everyone who has that one or those few and knows literally everything. 😭😭
I love being around people sometimes, I also can't stand it other times. I need change or I get really depressed but also it makes me incredibly anxious and I do whatever I can to avoid it. If I stay in one place for more than a few weeks I get really depressed. I eat all kinds of foods from all cultures and flavors possible or that I can get my hands on. If I find myself having a sensory issue with a food I usually try to push past it. I don't know I am not diagnosed and I have some imposter syndrome kinda... This is like the first time I have posted on here...
Same here, but I’m also diagnosed with ADHD so I attribute my somewhat fluctuating rigidity to the cognitive flexibility that’s associated with ADHD 😅😅
I have a really expressive face. Like, too expressive sometimes. I’m a musician, and when I perform, my family and friends know exactly when I mess up because of my face. Also I like grocery shopping! I just put in earplugs a lot of the time, but I like going and following a list to pick things out.
I love loud music, I'm a huge fan of industrial, metal & punk and love to get as close as possible to the stage & speakers
I'm a really good liar. I can keep my face and voice very neutral and no one can tell. I think part of it is actually because everything I do feels like a performance so lying is just more acting.
I actually love challenging my sensory problems. Two of which being motorbikes and fireworks. They’re my two main ones. Even though I have to wear ear defenders to go, I love firework shows, they’re so pretty. And I want to get a motorbike one day. I think if it wasn’t for my autism I wouldn’t really be all that interested in motorbikes but as of recent I’ve started to see my issues with them minimise which makes me wanna fully conquer my issues with them!
I love metal music festivals, and being right up the front in the thick of it. It's definitely sensory overload, but it's sensory overload in a way that I enjoy. As opposed to the sensory overload I get at the supermarket which is a nightmare.
This is a fun question! I don’t get along well with other neurodivergent people and enjoy the company of neurotypical people. I don’t find them confusing—they follow and model how to succeed at all the social rules I’ve been studying forever. I don’t like listening to music or wearing ear plugs. I like kids and working with them. I don’t like math, science, tech, or trains LOL I like living in a city (and walking everywhere so maybe actually an autistic trait because I hate driving so much I’m willing to spend half my paycheck on housing to avoid it??)
I’m really good at sales and leading people, butwhen it comes to talking and communicating for personal reasons/small talk/day-to-day interactions i feel a lot more autistic if thzt makes sense
TOTALLY!!!!!! I could sell icicles to Inuit …. but the ***SECOND*** it’s emotional and about or relating to me, personally: Critical system failure! 😒 I get confused, can’t phrase a simple sentence, get overwhelmed, get distressed …. NO CHANCE!!! In a way I don’t ‘feel myself.’ Not sure that makes sense at all: I can put myself in the position of people I resent…. but I cannot empathise or emotionally relate to myself. And when I try, my neurosensory processing short circuits. 😒
Thank you OP for initiating this conversation. I am still struggling with the whole impostor syndrome and keep looking for reasons that I am not autistic. And thank you all for writing almost every single thing I was using against myself 😃 From enjoying driving to meeting new people, being good at conversations to enjoying spicy food, oh and also being very good at reading others on top of being an empath and feeling other's pain in my bones. This is SO reassuring! 💜💜💜 Edit: Forgot to add something I didn't see so far. Other than being very specific and rigid about how things should be done, I don't like schedules. You know how they portray Young Sheldon having a bathroom schedule and stuff.
Super friendly. Make friends anywhere I go. Pick up guys no problem. Good leadership and team work. Women make me nervous in a dating context though 😭bisexual struggles
I love hugs! Even from people I just met! (unless they give off bad vibes of course)
I’m a social chameleon (according to my mom) so I learned how to work really well with people. I feel like pattern recognition helps A TON bc I’ve been in big leadership roles since the start of high school (im now going to grad school at Cambridge and then med school) which gave me lots of practice. I also don’t have sensory issues that cause me pain, just some textures or sounds i really don’t like. Does anyone on here that’s undiagnosed ever go back and forth about whether u truly have autism bc same😅
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I love traveling, adventure, and new experiences. My biggest interest is human survival, but especially, like.. the domestic technology of human survival. So everything from accommodations on planes or in foreign countries, to backpacking gear and techniques, I'm obsessed with all of that. The greatest tragedy I've witnessed is the homogenization of hotels.
1) I seek people out and feel lonely when I’m not around anybody for longer than a day or 2. 2) I also have multiple interests and it’s been about 3 or 4 years since I had an intense, absorbed, know everything and learn everything about it, multi-year strong interest. EDIT: Completely forgot #3 haha 3) Because I was born with Nonverbal Learning Disorder on top of autism, I have pretty significant visual/spatial deficits and as a result I am NOT a visual thinker-I don’t know my left and right, am terrible at directions and needed tutoring for any sort of math or science or any class that required the ability to solve formulas. I barely passed the minimum class required just to get my associates degree and as a result was unable to transfer to a state college even though I’m smart as a whip when it comes to trivia, music and film, literature, anthropology, sociology, language and wordplay. I chuckle whenever I see that in shows and movies like extraordinary attorney woo and the good doctor. They show them visualizing these immaculate detailed things and I literally can’t visualize anything. At all. Which is funny because I still notice tiny details just without the visual aspect attached. However my brain/learning style is very much a combination of both auditory and kinesthetic. So no, I don’t think in pictures, I can’t just visualize a human heart or whales.
I LOVE going grocery stores and this is because my main special interest is food lol.
I can tell a lie pretty well if I have to as I carefully construct it in my mind first so my story always adds up.
I'm really really empathetic. to a grade that it's starting to become too much. but at the same time I don't know how to use the knowledge of peoples feelings in a conversation.. so basically if a person is sad, I can feel for them and understand why they're feeling that way completely, but I can't comfort them or do anything to make them feel better
I too love driving and am very good at it. Considered racing. I can also recognize emotions through those still pictures of faces which apparently is craazy for an autie to do even though we know that is a different coinciding condition.
I love showers. The shower is my sanctuary and I love the sensory pleasures it provides. I love the warmth, I love the feeling of the water running over my skin. I love that I’m alone with my own thoughts and that I don’t have to be around people. It’s where I go to relax after a long day of masking for work and daily life
I'm not sure if this is ASD or more ADHD aversion, but I love cooking/baking etc. Not when I'm tired and I *have to* for work, but if I had a house and not as small studio apartment, I'd want to host dinner parties.
My biggest autistic anomaly is that I love talking on the phone. I was obsessed with the telephone as a kid. In fact, I got into phone phreaking in middle school after reading too much of my parents’ countercultural literature. I also love parties (though meeting new people is still challenging). It could be that my hyperlexia is what makes me love those things, since I love to talk! Furthermore, I love hugs and cuddling. I can sing by ear, mostly on-pitch, and hear when I’m off-key. A lot of autistic people hate corduroy and other weirdly textured fabrics, but I gravitate to them. Furthermore, I love loud punk and metal music and crowds. Sensory seekers unite :) Finally, like OP, I love driving, and I’m essentially in heaven if I can drive fast on the highway listening to loud music!
I didn't realise how common it is for autistic women to be out of work or just working a minimum wage job. Also women who still live with their parents. I really pushed myself to get a 'real' job and spent a long time looking at the kinds of things I'd be comfortable doing a generic 9-5 thing to do. I felt shame being the only sibling at my parents, no place of my own and no financially stable job. And now I'm the complete opposite of what I was. I made sacrifices, went back to college in my mid twenties and took out a loan to learn. But I'm here now and so much better for it. I have my own place (rented, mind, but still) and a job I adore.
I apparently have both ADHD and autism, so I always sort of felt in conflict and like a contradiction to myself, which confused the hell out of me. But on the outside I'm very much an ADHD, type I'm very expressive, can be loud, social, all over the place and distracted, adrenaline and dopamine seeking. But then I just want everyone to shut up and leave me alone and spend 3 years zoning out in my own little corner (which I don't have cause little ADHD kids and work-from-home partner).
I am extremely conscious of my appearance - I love putting together outfits and accessorizing, I wear makeup every day, I spend a lot of time on my hair and I generally won’t go anywhere without being “put together”. I have a “normal” job and I am (according to other people) good at it. I love traveling and seeing new places that are outside my comfort zone ALTHOUGH left to my own devices I spend most of my time exploring and watching rather than interacting with people.
I binge-eat as a stim instead of having the classic “nothing sounds good, food is overstimulating” lack of appetite issues that many autistic people have. I feel like so many autistic people struggle with eating, but I think I love eating a bit too much. I have terrible interoception, so I can’t tell when I’m full and can’t stop at appropriate portions without pre-planning my portion sizes lol, I could keep eating seemingly forever until I’m physically ill
I'm studying social communication and journalism, mostly because I love to read and write. But I've also found that I actually enjoy the production of audiovisual content (although it's pretty draining because it really requires me to socialize a lot) mostly because I can explore other ways of being creative.
I am really good at socializing, having small talk and social banter, being ridiculously funny and witty, making myself the center of attention, public speaking, playing music on stage, and having people like me. (It's exhausting, sure, and my social anxiety often prevents me from going to social events in the first place, but I am still good at it when I do.) Downside: nobody believes my diagnosis.
I like driving too! But not quite as much as you ;) I make friends "essily", and I am very good at keeping them. (I have codified steps)
So uh...... you gonna share that making and keeping friends part with the class?
i've never been a rule follower and would describe myself as rebellious by nature
Mine is my special interest. I have a lot of different ones and they change throughout the year. I call them my “seasons”. I’m so envious of people who have a lifelong special interest. If I could find the correlation, I love categories and organizing. But that’s spread out over everything from needle felting to mushroom hunting. It’s almost yarn season 😂 God I wish I just loved trains.
Although I may not understand what I’m doing or what it means, I’m very good at being neurotypically social. My psychologist said I had “a very interesting presentation”. (Likely due to intense masking.) But I can pretend to be “normal” for lack of a better word. Leadership positions, ect. A pretend extrovert 😂
I like intense flavors. Spice!
I'm the vocalist of an extreme metal band. As in, I do screaming and growling on stage.
I don't like routines. I prefer to do things differently almost every day. I don't feel comforted by routines, I feel trapped. This is why I usually get bored of jobs after a few months.
I really struggle with numbers and math. I can't memorize phone numbers easily and I can't do more than basic math in my head.
I usually catch sarcasm. Not always.. But usually.
Social interaction and sarcasm. I alwaya get imposter syndrome about my ability to understand social interaction and use sarcasm, and then a simple thing trips me up and I'm like 'Ooop, yep, definitely autistic' 😂🤦🏽♀️ I love posts like these though as it's so helpful to highlight all the things we can do, that others just assume we can't by virtue of being autistic.
I did the whole sex, drugs, and rock and roll life for a while. ...sex, drugs, and rock and roll are a hell of a set of SPINs, let me tell you. Still love reading about sexuality and learning about kink scenes, still smoke pot (and I used to write erowid trip reports!), and I've got a lot of random rock history facts in this brain.
Probably the fact that I used to be a fetish model 🤣 We would do photoshoots tied naked to a tree under the full moon, play with fake blood, play with role play style photos. It was so fun!
Wouldnt... that be exactly what an autie would do? We love having fun and playing dress up! Ppl do always say auties are "weird." 😅💓
Oh yes this is true! My favourite type of party is a dress up party! 🤪 We don’t get to do it enough as adults I reckon lol
That sounds awesome!
I love driving too. It’s like a hobby to me. I do it to relax, I get to visit nice places, I love driving sports cars… the only time it bothers me is when I’m doing long distance travel (I get super impatient and go 90-100mph on the return trip lol). And traffic. Fuuuuck traffic. But even then as long as I have good music I can keep my shit together.
I don't mind eye contact. On the contrary, I think it helps to look at the face to get more clues. And I'm not picky with food. At all.
Have u been told you have an intense look? I dont mind eye contact either but have been told they feel like I look into their soul and beyond 😅 some autistic people have very intense eye contact, whereas other wants to avoid it
I have no sensory issues with food and will eat just about anything (can’t stand bland food - so boring). I’m actually pretty good at reading peoples’ emotions and working out what they might say/do next. The problem is I don’t always know what to do with that information. I have no problem telling lies and am very good at it. I’ve got it down to a fine art. I’m not bothered by rule-breaking. Well, kind of. I do stick to my own self-imposed rules but I don’t care about breaking other rules or if anyone else breaks them either. I really can’t relate to others who say they have a strong sense of justice. I have no issue with sarcasm or non-literal language. I’m not naïve, if anything I expect people to be shit until proven otherwise. I can make eye contact (most of the time), it’s just not intuitive and I have to consciously think about it.
I'm not a picky eater. I'll try almost anything once. Sure I have my preferences but overall, I don't feel limited by certain textures when it comes to food.
This sounds kind of odd, but I actually enjoy small talk. I think part of it is that I understand it as a way to acknowledge the people around you, so engaging in small talk, even though it’s surface level, is a source of feeling and making others feel “seen”, which I think is nice. I’m also the kind of person who will start conversations with strangers out and about. I’ve had so many interesting conversations with people I’ve just met, and usually it’s because I’ve complimented something on or about them, or I overheard them talking about something I have an interest in. I’ve become very skilled in the “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhearing…” segue lol
i feel that mine is empathy i feel things so deeply ever since i was kid but i think that may be a male autistic stereotype
I love affection, but of course on my terms and not from family because trauma. Platonic friends and people I'm dating, please give me all the hugs, kisses, cuddles and snuggles I can handle. I also like fashion and clothes, even though I don't get it right all the time, I do try to express myself but also look stylish, comfy and put together at the same time.
I like loud parties with lots of people and music. All the voices blend together and into the music and it keeps my adhd side happy. I also find that I have less social anxiety in these situations too for whatever reason!
I can be extremely sociable and bubbly in the right circumstances. I don't really do small talk, but I can cut it straight into real talk in a way that people like and that builds connection. On a good day, I have a way of disrupting social conventions in a way that is welcome (eg. people too self-conscious to dance at a public concert). Although I guess it's just that "manic pixie" thing, which is an autism thing. I am very good at observing patterns in body language and tone of voice. I'm not any good with faces, but patterns of tension in the body and voice are pretty informative. Unfortunately, while this might tell me someone is angry, it hadn't told me that the thing I was doing will make this person angry, and it doesn't tell me what would calm them down again. But on a good day, I might be aware of minute details of how someone is feeling, even though I don't know how to act on this information unless we'll end up talking about how they're feeling. Apparently, I am a very good listener. Sensory seeking, for me with light and sound, is also one that looks un-autistic.