Trait(s) that you can't attribute to your ASD

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I like diminished chords as well. They give a certain kind of tension.

I was asking about the placement because I was wondering what aspect of the G you were enjoying. Since our modern day scale is based around 440Hz (A - above middle C). You have to know 440Hz to find middle C. (It's a ratio thing). Because of this, I was wondering what aspect of the harmonic you were feeling when you were listening to G. The first thing that popped into my mind is that you enjoyed the 5th, but I didn't want to assume, so I thought I would just ask you which of those three chords you preferred. I could have placed G in all the triads in the octave, but I thought that was overkill. In a nutshell, I am just being nosy and letting my imagination run tonight. I need a mental break. Talking about anything mathematical relaxes my mind (and to me, music is so very mathematical, and relaxing).



I think you could be right. I also though about something when I was doing the dishes. Maybe I am more comfortable with speaking to crowds (as opposed to just a few people) because:
1. I am enough of a distance away from them so that they are not in my "bubble", so I don't feel their presence as much, and
2. The larger the crowd I am speaking to, the less like people they seem. (That really sounds cold, but I don't mean it that way - I don't know how else to say it.)

I am the same way with performing in front of people. I love performing to large crowds. Only a few people? Not so much.

I enjoy reading romance novels, and much of the time spent inside my imaginary world revolves around developing relationships between my favorite fictional characters, including making up children for them, and those children's children... I think I would probably really enjoy watching soap operas...

Yup, exactly. I fear talking to someone in the grocery store checkout line much more than I fear speaking in front of 30 people about the uses of solenoid valves in hydraulic and pneumatic systems.

I like bright lights and loud music.

I don't like overly superficial people.

I like reality TV.

If I dont find scientific reasoning in something, I dont believe it.

Im extremely organized and on task. I think aspies normally are pretty disorganized.

I have poor short term memory yet very good long term memory. I have good abilities to recall things most people cant.

I structure my days but I'm accommodating. If plans change then Im cool.

Other than a 2.5 hour class twice a week and every once in a while spending the weekend at my parents',
I have. No. Routine.

I can give the appearance of being quite adept socially, but it's a "performance". (At other times I'm excruciatingly...wrong, socially.)

I have excellent balance, coordination, and rhythm.

I love touching and being touched.

I have no problems identifying and expressing my emotions, and do so freely.


If it hadn't been for a psychologist's knowledge of female-specific Autistic traits, I never would have been diagnosed.

THIS,
only about hierarchical ethics and humanistic psychology.

A sea of faces rapt in attention while I talk about things I know is a catharsis for me,
while an identifiable, singular acquaintance expecting me to respond appropriately and immediately to his or her interaction on many levels is a nightmare.

I love teaching.
I really experience joy being a facilitator for knowledge and insight while in the midst of people who are eager to learn.
It has a mystical quality to it that I find particularly satisfying.

The strange thing is as soon as I step out of that environment, the spell is broken and I am again at a loss for words, stricken with anxiety and awkwardness, darting eyes, hypersensitive, socially allergic and reclusive.

or, in better words... this:

These two things are undeniably aspie. You basically just described the "absent-minded professor" traits that many aspies can identify with.

I noticed that alot of aspies here love teaching and public speaking, leading me to believe that it's more of an aspie trait than we assume. I love teaching piano because for once in my life, I have an active listener to my monologues. I teach piano for a living and I really do like it. My best friend also likes to be "taught" and basically urges me to monologue because I know things that she finds interesting. We would go through entire lunches where I don't touch my food, just because I spent so much time telling her about my latest philosophical epiphany or whatever I just read at the time.

I was referring to the specific note, not how it sounds against other pitches.

If you're into music, you should read This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. It was a very informative book that goes over how the brain processes musical input. He discusses how intervals and relative pitch ratios are processed in the brain. There's also a few paragraphs on ASDs, but I think he was referring to more classic autism because he stated that people with ASDs don't get emotionally involved in the music. I know that's wrong. He based his research on Temple Grandin, and what he said is true for her, but not for aspies.

I can't sit around and pay attention to my special interest for long periods of time. Many days I see the big picture rather than the details.

I look into that. I am not much into books. My eyes have issues that ,make it difficult to read, but if it is interesting enough, I can get through the pages.


I know. I was trying to guess why it is a G and not a B or an F#. I was just thinking that if you liked the G because you liked it as the 5th of the scale as opposed to the fundamental, then it would be interesting.

I took a class last fall called Music, Sound and Physics. Really cool class. If you can find a university around you that offers something similar, you may want to take the class. Mine wasn't very math intensive (in fact, I knew more math than most and he kept telling me I didn't have to go through all the formulas I was (He was giving the class shortcuts), but I found it fascinating. We discussed the evolution of our modern day western scale (Pythagorean developed the original, but we don't use that one... just one similar, but still based of of A). We also went into waves and their properties (I LOVE waves!) and at the end of the class, we had to come up with a list of materials that would design an appropriate acoustically sounding hall (for lectures, a church choir, practice room,... etc) and give the proper numbers to support it. One of the easier classes I have takes, but then again, this is very close to one of my areas of interest, so that's probably why I got it.

-I'm extremely energetic
-I like socialize with some people
-I do stim, but I don't have stereotypical autistic stims
-I like loud music if I am enjoying the music

I think in the case of nearly any autistic person there will be plenty of traits they have that can't be attributed to autism. For example, I don't think I'm gay because I'm autistic, but neither is it "un-autistic" to be gay. (Yes, I know some have speculated about connections, but homosexuality is nevertheless obviously a trait shared by all kinds of people, most of whom aren't autistic.)

Most responses to this thread seem to be more along the lines of, "What traits do you have that are perceived as atypical of autistic people?" In that case I would say:

* I don't really have particular routines that it distresses me not to follow. This was not necessarily the case when I was a child, but in many ways I think I am now, as an adult, a much more adaptable/flexible person than many neurotypical people are.

* I am an adventurous eater. There are some common foods I dislike (e.g. carrots, many popular kinds of cheese) but I will try most things (the most recent unusual [for my cultural background] thing I can think of that I tried was sea cucumber) and I enjoy a very wide variety of food, including spicy or strongly flavored foods.

* I have very strong written and verbal skills. I have never had any speech or language issues. When I was a child my development in these areas was always ahead of "normal," never behind.

I'm not as repetitive and routine obsessed as most w/AS but I think both could be more due to possibly having ADHD. I can be madly impulsive and will want to go to a certain location at a certain time. It's hard for me to stay in one place for very long if I'm bored and w/o access to Internet.

Reading fiction is okay with me if I can get a visual sense of what is going on and make sense of things. I can understand Harry Potter better by watching the first film before reading the book series. If it's the kind of books, however, that have a lot of political and analytical jargon often used for literature course material then I am at a loss. The fiction books need to have a simplified plot I can get attached to and understand what the heck is going on as I'm reading or otherwise I'm screwed. I guess this is why fanfiction is so much easier for me to read because I already know the characters and understand the stories as I read them.

I am very good at explaining things to other people. A lot of people actually prefer my explanations to those of our professors. I can somehow always find a way to logically explain my own thought process to another person, who then immediately gets it.

I can easily make most calculations in my head, and enjoy doing them. I'm not sure if this is an Aspie trait but I know that it's due to the fact that my parents always pushed me to calculate stuff in my head, whereas the school system didn't really do that and most people my age rely on calculators.

I am good at both language and math (I speak seven languages with varying fluency). This is seen as weird because a lot of people think that you can only really be good at either. But I see the rules and logic in both language and math.