Can people just automatically sense if you are on spectrum?

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Blutaku
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13 Dec 2017, 9:11 pm

I have felt this way most of my adult life. I feel like for some arbitrary reason I am not as approachable as other people and it just doesn't make any sense to me. I've done a lot of work over the years to improve myself and not come off as completely socially inept. I have perfectly normal hygiene. I don't have anything like crazy tattoos, piercings, or a hairstyle, and I wear regular clothing like hoodies and track pants on most days. I'm also at a point in life where I'm old enough to know better for most behavior so I don't do strange things to make myself stand out like when I was in high school or a little kid.

I get that when I open my mouth and begin to talk people can start telling something is off about me. But sometimes I feel like they can sense this even just by being around me or even looking at me. Does anyone else feel this way? It can't just be me?

I can usually put the thought away while I'm at school and doing day to day life but since I've been at home on break the thought has been eating me up. I'm restless and need to know. Do non autistic people have some kind of sense for the 'other'? Can they easily detect if somebody is off like me?

I can provide more information if people want to ask.



HistoryGal
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13 Dec 2017, 9:17 pm

NTs pick up on it right away and shun ASDers.



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13 Dec 2017, 10:42 pm

Welcome to Wrong Planet, Blutaku.

I think there is definitely some truth to what you are suggesting. I spent 45 years with no idea I was autistic, but I had noticed since quite early in my childhood that I was treated differently by people, and I am still treated differently very often. The way I see it is this...

I think that much of it comes from non-verbal communication. Most non-autistic people are sensitive to much smaller differences in posture, eye contact and facial expressions than many autistic people. The information from their eyes and ears is mostly processed by sub-conscious bits of the brain, the conscious part is only aware of the final answer, which is just "something isn't normal here". So it does seem like a "sixth sense" rather than something that takes loads of thought. It's not usually that they sense we are autistic, just that we are in some vague way not what they were expecting. If you were to ask them, I bet that most of the time, they couldn't even tell you what it was that made them feel that way, and they would say it was just a "gut instinct".

The trouble is that some of our tiny differences in body-language etc. might look similar to how non-autistic people behave when they are in a bad mood, bored, not interested or trying to hide something. How to behave when a person makes them feel a certain "gut instinct" will mostly have been learned by being around non-autistic people, and when they meet a non-autistic person their reactions are quite likely to be correct. But because autistic people behave slightly differently, even if its only in very small ways, their "gut instinct" won't be so accurate, and can set off a "false alarm" that they need to be more cautious than usual.


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ladyelaine
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14 Dec 2017, 12:29 pm

NTs almost instantly can tell that we are different. Watch their behavior towards you change almost instantly when they pick up that you are different. We go through honeymoon periods with every NT we meet. During the honeymoon period, the NT feels you out and decides on how they feel about you. The length of the honeymoon period depends on how often the person sees you. If you only see the person once a week at church, the honeymoon period could last up to three or four months. If you see the person everyday at work or school, the honeymoon period could end after a month or two. Most of the time you don't get a honeymoon period at all. It generally doesn't take people long to determine that I'm a weirdo and move on. My weird voice tips people off almost instantly most of the time.



Dvmartin24
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14 Dec 2017, 12:47 pm

Troglodite wrote:
I think there is definitely some truth to what you are suggesting. I spent 45 years with no idea I was autistic, but I had noticed since quite early in my childhood that I was treated differently by people, and I am still treated differently very often.


Here, here.

I wasn't diagnosed until I was 31 (I am 32 now), and I felt the same way. The reason I got tested in the first place was because I couldn't get a FT job in the teaching field and had assumed there was something wrong with the way I interacted in interviews. I couldn't understand how with a master's degree and years of PT experience I was still being treated as if I "wasn't a good fit." Although I am new to understanding how my ASD effects my life, there were definitely a lot of things that suddenly made sense. The fact that NT's are inflexible with getting to to know aspies is one of those things.



ScarletIbis
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14 Dec 2017, 6:12 pm

We appear quite differently than we view ourselves in our heads. We often aren’t as ‘normal’ as we painstakingly try to appear.


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Lintar
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14 Dec 2017, 6:26 pm

HistoryGal wrote:
NTs pick up on it right away and shun ASDers.


Yes, but how?



Lintar
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14 Dec 2017, 6:34 pm

ladyelaine wrote:
NTs almost instantly can tell that we are different. Watch their behavior towards you change almost instantly when they pick up that you are different. We go through honeymoon periods with every NT we meet. During the honeymoon period, the NT feels you out and decides on how they feel about you. The length of the honeymoon period depends on how often the person sees you. If you only see the person once a week at church, the honeymoon period could last up to three or four months. If you see the person everyday at work or school, the honeymoon period could end after a month or two. Most of the time you don't get a honeymoon period at all. It generally doesn't take people long to determine that I'm a weirdo and move on. My weird voice tips people off almost instantly most of the time.


Yes, this is definitely true. At first most people will be more than willing to socialise, and their behaviour will not seem at all odd, but after a while (like a month or two), they will start to distance themselves from you, until eventually you no longer see them anymore. To me it happens about 99.9% of the time, so I just don't bother with, and no longer care about, so-called friendships.



Vertetuesi
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14 Dec 2017, 7:22 pm

Dvmartin24 wrote:
The fact that NT's are inflexible with getting to to know aspies is one of those things.


And then they say that aspies are the rigid ones? Lol.

How often do we hear it said that aspies intrinsically find it difficult to make friends? What this thread is increasingly highlighting is that it's typically NTs that are the ones that find it hard to make friends with aspies - the latter are actually more willing and aren't anything like as put off at the outset.



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14 Dec 2017, 7:29 pm

Vertetuesi wrote:
Dvmartin24 wrote:
The fact that NT's are inflexible with getting to to know aspies is one of those things.


And then they say that aspies are the rigid ones? Lol.

How often do we hear it said that aspies intrinsically find it difficult to make friends? What this thread is increasingly highlighting is that it's typically NTs that are the ones that find it hard to make friends with aspies - the latter are actually more willing and aren't anything like as put off at the outset.


OMG that's so true!! ! So many times as a young 'un, I'd get rebuked by adults for "not making more of an effort", and taking this literally, I pretty much did the opposite of what would get me friends. I showed I was very willing, but that showed desperation. In hindsight, of course, I realized what they really meant is to learn their unspoken customs and non-verbal norms...put more of an effort in there...of course, the big challenge was trusting someone enough to show me w/o abusing me, or even finding someone willing to do so in the first place :(



Vertetuesi
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14 Dec 2017, 7:34 pm

Jayo wrote:
Vertetuesi wrote:
In hindsight, of course, I realized what they really meant is to learn their unspoken customs and non-verbal norms...


And what this means is, not simply learn as in know what they are, but yourself religiously conform to them as an inalienable precondition for friendship they will accept as such. Imagine if aspies insisted that every NT they would befriend had to imitate them to within a hair's breadth in terms of fiddling with their knife and fork before eating or whatever their particular aspie quirk happens to be.



Jayo
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14 Dec 2017, 7:38 pm

They sensed it less as I got to my late 20s, when I was at last diagnosed, and had put in a lot of effort and gathered feedback from a trusted circle of friends. I rehearsed, watched certain movies, did speech therapy, went on dates with several women...and finally...there was a light at the end. At least, for the most part; there were a few people that I gradually drifted away from, but I explained the circumstances to a therapist and he told me that at that stage of life it's not uncommon for those "drift-aways" to happen. So that was reassuring.

Although I always remained a little bit skeptical and cynical that I was really convincing people I was just like them, I always pushed that to the back of my mind. And I refused to fall into a guilt mindset, like "I don't deserve this kind of normal interaction, I'm an imposter" because I knew that wouldn't get me where I wanted to be, and I didn't personally believe it, my self-esteem was too high (despite taking a beating on many occasions).

But, yeah, there were some emotionally painful times, like the first half of my 20s when I couldn't get a girlfriend and saw everything else taking it for granted, it was tough. People would act like I never bathed and had chronic halitosis.
8O



ZachGoodwin
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14 Dec 2017, 8:55 pm

So what if they can sense me on the spectrum? I'll still enjoy life as it is.



EverythingAndNothing
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15 Dec 2017, 6:33 pm

ScarletIbis wrote:
We appear quite differently than we view ourselves in our heads. We often aren’t as ‘normal’ as we painstakingly try to appear.


I think this sums it up for me. I try really hard to appear normal, but people can always tell that there's something weird about me. They normally notice during the first conversation and give me a strange look as if something's unexpectedly "off". I wish someone would explain to me exactly what they notice so that I could work on it, but as of now, I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing wrong and it's very frustrating.

I can also definitely relate to the initial post in that I feel like I've gotten rid of all my weird behaviors and yet it doesn't seem to be helping. I can only assume there's more weird aspects of myself that they're picking up on that I haven't yet managed to notice and cover up.



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15 Dec 2017, 9:22 pm

I think certain personality types are hypersensitive to our differences, and can sniff out minute differences to the point where it's scary - we're talking narcissistic personality types, a.k.a. "uber-NTs", ESPFs, extreme extroverts, whatever you want to call them...their whole M.O. revolves around the perverse need to feel superior, hence they will sniff out perceived weaknesses like a shark senses blood in the water miles away.

So, my theory has been that anyone who's more extroverted - and thus has had more lifetime experience of interactions -will be more attuned to pick up on "weird vibes" from us. This ability seems more high-tuned for women, which is unfortunate for us Aspie males who don't want to appear weird on the dating scene. It was a long struggle of trial-and-error for me, before I finally met my wife of about a decade now, and we get along very well despite my occasional eccentricities or lapses of "common sense". :)



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16 Dec 2017, 1:08 am

Can you sense if someone is on spectrum?


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