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Lavender33
Butterfly
Butterfly

Joined: 1 Nov 2016
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Posts: 9
Location: an x & y coordinate

03 Nov 2016, 8:09 pm

Hello! I'm Hailey! Can I be done with introductions now?
I need a little help. I identify with a lot of the "symptoms" of autism, but there are some I don't... I need help figuring out if I really am autistic or my mind has convinced me of something untrue. I need to know. Please help!

Here are some lists:

YES:
-I stim, by rolling something around my fingers, grinding my teeth, biting my fingers, and all sorts of things
-I flap when I'm excited or nervous or happy or if I want to generate some joy
-I rock a lot
-I see all major facial expressions, but miss the subtle shifts
-I see all major body language, but miss the subtle shifts
-I hate phone calls with, to quote AutisticHoya, "the burning passion of ten hundred thousand flaming suns gone supernova"
-When placed in a group, I rush ahead on all the work and hope the other people can catch up.
-Pressure is great!
-Light touches give me a horrible crawling feeling, so I try to avoid them at all costs
-Human interaction drains me. I measure how good of a friend someone is by how much energy it takes to talk to them.
-I can count the number of facial expressions people I don't know have to me on my hands
-I get nothing done unless on a schedule
-I HAVE NO SENSE OF TIME
-The world is made of tiny little pixels. That isn't normal?
-I use past experinces + reactions in books to know what to do during most human interaction. When I'm at my best friend's house, I never know how to interact with her parents, so I default to overly polite, because those rules are clearly drawn out.
-I talk louder and louder when excited
-I apologize for everything so I don't accidentally offend someone
-I freak people out by becoming overly attached to them when they show interest in talking to me
-I don't get the point of teasing. It's just mean!
-I interpret things literally. I've found myself trying to figure out what someone means by some odd saying, only for someone to come along and tell me, "It's just an expression." Like "knock yourself out". I thought it meant go take a hammer and hit yourself until you pass out or something. I thought the character in the book I was reading had suddenly snapped at the other character, and read it over a million times in confusion. Similes are easy. Metaphors and idioms I don't know? Not so much.
-Incredibly clumsyyyyyyyyy. I trip over the bare floor. Plus, there are these times where it's a struggle just to keep myself balanced enough to stand/walk.
-I talk so fast that no one understands what I'm saying.
-Some words are inexplicably hard to pronounce.
-I can memorize anything I read really quickly, but spoken words disappear fast.
-I hate vague instructions, and ask lots and lots of questions so I know exactly what to do.
-When I wake up at night, I NEED to know the time. Just need to.
-Have these random times I don't realize I'm in pain until I see the cut. It usually happens when I'm not expecting pain, like when I cut myself without seeing the sharp thing. Especially when I'm engaged in something.
-HATE HATE HATE FLASHING LIGHTS, loud noises, car headlights, high-pitched noises, TAGS, certain types of fabric, the lining behind sequins or similar things on shirt, tight clothing, the smell and taste of cilantro, the smell of truffles, certain textures of food, and crowds.
Like earlier today, we were watching a video in math class, and my ears were in SO MUCH PAIN because the projecter makes a high-pitched buzzing noise whenever it's on.
-Have shutdowns and meltdowns at times
-Catastrophize
-Freak out when some small detail isn't right. Like, say, if I can't find the Halloween bag I use every year, I'd be ready to not go trick-or-treating at all just because IT'S NOT RIGHT!
-Detail-orientated
-When I trust others, I overshare everything
-Often feel like I'm looking in at people
-If someone, even my best friend, changes something about their look, I will be unable to recognize them from a few feet away.
-Eye contact makes my eyes burn and makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. People I know well are ok, but strangers and aqquaintences... just no.
-I have times where nothing happens. Nothing. I don't do anything I need to. And other times where I do everything! I can do, like, five projects during those times.
-I DUN CARE ABOUT APPEARANCES! Seriously! My mom insists I wear matching clothes (I can't even tell what IS matching or not) and brush my hair, when really, I DON'T CARE. I don't see anything wrong with wearing the same clothes for a week! What's the big deal? Ugh, people in society!
-I have a hard time telling right from left unless you give me enough time to process it.
-Can't do maps. I can't read them. Just can't.
-Get intensely interested in s ubject for months or years. I've loved dogs since I was one years old.
-Sometimes I feel like I can't talk, even though I know I'm capable. My voice just shuts down.
-Talk too much about things I'm interested in.
-Might be hyperempathetic? I jump around and flap when a character of a good show does something awesome and things go right, run from the room when they're embarrassing themselves, and pound random things when things are going wrong. I do the same for books, just a lot more subtle. I also tend to get their feelings stuck in me. Like, I can't feel sad at the news of a school shooting, but if I see one of the parents of the killed students talk and cry about it, I feel a crushing sense of despair. Or when, for example, JaidenAnimations unloaded her new bird cage and she had to put it together, I looked at the pile of parts and felt almost exhausted, like I had SOOOOO MUCH WORK TO DO when really, it was just her. *shrug* I dunno.
-Don't care whatsoever about gender or sexual identity. Really. Not one bit. To me, I'm female, and that's fine, but I don't particularly care that I am female and someone else is male or transgender or whatever. I. Don't. Care. Makes no difference.
-My friends are all really odd people.
-Kinda suck at generalizing. Some things I'm ok at, but it took me forever to finally get that I shouldn't have large birthday parties with my whole class because they stressed me out and made me lock myself in my room.
-In second grade, the only girl in my class I knew became my friend. I grew attached to her... and then she took it too far. She threatened to tell on me if I did anything wrong-- and by wrong, I mean things like I didn't sit next to her at recess. She never left me alone. I'd go hide from her whenever I could, but she'd find me and cry and tell me I was a horrible friend. I'd hope I'd lost her. But nope, she always came back. Lucky me.
At times, I thought she was a great friend. At others... not at all.
-Never felt the pull to make friends. If someone likes me enough to come to me, sure, ok, but I won't ever go try to make friends.

NO:
-I do see some facial expressions/body language
-I am not particularly attached to the truth
-Don't get overwhelmed by my sense much. Maybe that's because I do a good job of removing myself when it gets to be too much.
-Play/ed imaginitively. Although... It's always role-play with substantial things. I've always hated playing house and such, but love doing a Warriors roleplay or a game where my sister and I are dogs. Thing is, EVERYTHING MUST BE EXPLAINED. NO DETAIL IS LEFT UNSOLVED.
-Have always had friends. Straight from preschool. I still have my preschool friends, although they've changed a LOT and I don't like them as much now. My friends were never GREAT friends until fourth grade, but people seemed to like me enough to become friends with me and put up with my endless chatter. I never kept them long, though, and their sense of humor was way off from mine.
-I don't have meltdowns/shutdowns very often... ok, that's not true. I have them a lot, but not really in the normal way. Shutdowns for me are refusing to talk, comepletely ignoring people, curling into a ball and staying there, creating some precious silence, or hiding away. Meltdowns are more violent; crying, running, hiding, refusing to eat or something else, shoving away anyone who touches me. Are those meltdowns at all? I don't even know.
I don't have many "explosion" meltdowns, though. I can only remember one recently, and that was last year.
I was at a friend's birthday party, and I just got sick and tired of people. So I ran and hid, and ran and hid, for hours. My friends searched everywhere, but I would just slip away into new spaces. Finally, they found me. They cornered me and yelled at me. My friend was crying, everyone was mad. I put my hands over my ears and curled into a ball, trying to escape the intense emotion, but they forced me to listen to them. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I burst out crying and ran, pushing past them. I scrabbled at the front door, shoved at anyone who came near, and sprinted away again. I then plopped on the ground and tried hard to stop crying, but I could barely breathe.
That was a horrible birthday party even when that was resolved...

Anyways, what do you think? Am I autistic, or not?



Lavender33
Butterfly
Butterfly

Joined: 1 Nov 2016
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Posts: 9
Location: an x & y coordinate

03 Nov 2016, 9:09 pm

Oh yeah, add some more things:

-I love, love, LOVE spinning/walking in circles. LOVE IT!
-If my foot isn't jiggling or moving, then I feel like I can't find my legs. It's weird. I need to feel my legs underneath me or have them moving to really feel them there.



heiress
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

Joined: 3 Aug 2016
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Posts: 4
Location: toronto

04 Nov 2016, 11:36 am

hiya ! ! m'autistic, and i don't have 'explosive' meltdowns either!! a lot of autistic people have something called internal meltdowns where our meltdowns are "crying, running, hiding, refusing to eat or something else, shoving away anyone who touches me", like you described or even just shutdowns, so that's ok ! ! not all autistic people have trouble with facial expression or body language, and i lie alll the time, so that's ok. it's possibly to be undersensitive to senses, so it could be that, or it could be that you do a good job of removing yourself when things start to be overwhelming, or you could just have minimal sensory issues. i love roleplaying and do it all the time, and i do a lot of "imaginative" play, which is actually an atypical trait of autism, so you're good there as well.

i've also always had friends! you don't need to have no friends to be autistic.

i definitely think you're autistic, but i think you might have enough atypical traits that even if you were to get an evaluation, they might not diagnose you because you don't fit the typical autistic stereotype. hope i could be helpful!



heiress
Emu Egg
Emu Egg

Joined: 3 Aug 2016
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Posts: 4
Location: toronto

04 Nov 2016, 11:39 am

-I love, love, LOVE spinning/walking in circles. LOVE IT!
-If my foot isn't jiggling or moving, then I feel like I can't find my legs. It's weird. I need to feel my legs underneath me or have them moving to really feel them there.


oh! i forgot to add this part- this part is definitely definitely definitely vestibular and proprioceptive hyposensitivity (vestibular is movement and proprioception is kind of the sense of feeling the parts of your body and stuff like what you described). hyposensitivity just means undersensitive and a lot of autistic people, contrary to popular believe, are undersensitive rather than oversensitive to some senses.



Lavender33
Butterfly
Butterfly

Joined: 1 Nov 2016
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Posts: 9
Location: an x & y coordinate

04 Nov 2016, 10:29 pm

Thank you so much! That was really helpful! =3