Did you recongizes symptoms?

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Did anyone here recognize symptoms of Autism alone with no one telling you directly that you are autistic?

i didnt know what autism was, i thought it was a form of mental retardation so i thought i was autistic and no one was telling me and i didnt know i was actually ret*d. I only thought that as a joke though because i had a hard time making friends.

I recognized that there was SOMETHING different with me and of course this has to do with the symptoms. I found out information about autism later on my own and connected it with my feelings. On this way I recognized the symptoms as what they are and came to the conclusion that I may have AS.

I've never felt differently than other people, but I realized I was treated differently in social interactions. I had heard of autism but wasn't familiar with it and would not have been had it not been for two of my friends suggesting I look into it (one already a member of WP and the other working in publishing who's dealt with books dealing with autism). Beforehand I did identify my literal thinking, inability to read social context\non-verbal communication, and my lack of expressiveness.

I recognized several things about myself that were a bit odd, but never knew they were symptoms of autism until a year ago.

I believe that there are many WP members who went through that experience, including me.

I'm yet to be officially diagnosed. I only found out about true autism/AS last year.

Before that, I only knew something was wrong with me most likely by birth. I just didn't know the name of it. My two uncles and aunt seem to have (had) the same condition. They were called selfish, crazy, weird, friendless. At least one of them was highly intelligent. I knew somehow I got their blood. For years I was wondering why I never connected with peers, can't drive, argue with people about their "music", can't help being extremely detail-oriented etc. I accidentally came across an article or something on the Internet that mentioned AS/autism and finally realized that was what I had always had.

I had known "autism", but I was one of those ignorant people who thought autism = Rain Man, and I never thought I would have anything to do with it. When I was a child, there was a family in my neighborhood who had a severely autistic child and I was always thinking that was autism.

Nobody has ever told me that they think I'm autistic, but one guy who works with autistic children as his job suddenly asked me if I had been diagnosed with it in the middle of a conversation.

I am someone who figured it out all on my own, if it helps,
But like people are saying, you don't just know the definition of what Autism is without being taught; so you have to encounter the information somewhere, and that usually triggers a flash of insight.

Although, a couple years ago, I had a conversation with a girl on OkCupid who I almost dated, who said she thought maybe I was an Aspie (which was a positive for her actually). But I didn't think much of it at the time, and forgot all about it. Probably because we never talked about it as a potentially negative thing that could be having a noticeable impact on me. So to me it was more of a minor curiosity like being double-jointed. You just kind of go, "oh wow, neat" and then it's out of sight, out of mind.

So basically, when I figured it out just this year, it was like I was starting fresh with virtually no prior knowledge.

I started suspecting it when I was 14 because I recognized the signs I had in my childhood like wanting everything to be the same in my environment, always wanting to play with my toys and computer games the same way over and over. Also not understanding other people and seeing they had feelings and they were like objects. By then I had outgrown these things when I started to notice. I didn't even know why I had these things if I wasn't autistic. Then I find out Asperger's is a form of autism so it explained the signs I had. My mom worked hard with me so that is probably why I grew out of these extreme at a young age. I always knew at a young age I had strange behavior and I didn't know why I was like that.

seeing as Autism is my interest, yes. I noticed the similarities from the time I was 9 (first googled Autism) and just thought that since my family has a history of Autism (why I googled it) I probably just had some traits. I told my parents I was sort of "Autism Symptomatic" and they basically said, yea, kinda. Then I found our what AS was when I was 12 and had an AH HA moment.

Yes, and I read tons on Aspergers. The difficulty was getting family to believe me.

Two of my closest friends from my school years had autism/aspergers and I am very similar personality-wise to my sister's boyfriend who also has autism. So it was definitely something I thought a bit about and was asked about by other people. But I didn't really consider it to any great extent until I went to see a Doctor for issues relating to depression and social anxiety last year and he told me that I displayed behaviour that was very common in people with autism and referred me for diagnosis.

I didn't think they were symptoms of anything (and for the most part, I don't think they are--it's just current society that I'm not made for. I know this because the symptoms of such aren't bothersome when I'm left alone).

I didn't recognize the symptons until I was told that I was diagnosed before my teenaged years. then I started to think about all the actions in my past and sorted of started to see everything.