I watched a interview with melanie sykes where she explained that she discovered by chance that she had autism at 50. I couldnt process how she could be autistic as i had just spent 5 years looking after my nephew whos autistic and i thought the symptoms should be obvious from childhood if a person was autistic. I looked further into symptoms of autism and discovered level one autism, and watched several youtube descriptions of autism in adults. There were descriptions that i didnt really experience but there were many that really struck a chord with me personally and seemed to express many aspects of my own personality or what i thought were my personality traits.
I know i have always had difficulties and always been unusual, and i have learned to mask many of my peculiar interests that others are not interested in or think are weired like my interest in other wordly things such as UFO contact or other planets etc. I also have extreme social anxiety which has shut my life down effectively since childhood and im now 46 and still shut down due to social anxiety which i though was an isolated issue but now im beginning to wonder if its related to autism spectrum. I have had learning difficulties all through life too, finding it hard to process information, sometimes really simple information too, i also experience high emotions sometimes but not necessarily meltdowns as described by other autistic people, but events seem to stick for weeks when others get over it by the next day. I often find it perplexing how people who just met are able to just lock into each others thought stream and start talking and sharing info and im left wondering where they got that information and idea to talk about those things and sometime i think why thats relevant to talk about? I have always had sensory issues, particularly with my face and facial hair, not able to shave clean as the sensation just overwhelms me with discomfort, i cant stand my face touching the pillow for example if i have clean shaven in the morning, plus sevral more sensory issues that i thought were just my own thought process causing it. I had OCD like behaviours when younger particularly with my hair being straight where i would repetitively check it, i find it comforting when i have a heavy blanket on me at sleep time which i learned was an autistic trait, i always have heavy blankets on top. I have more sensory issues and behavioural differences , those are just a few examples. I always make express weired sounds or impressions of people at home when watching t.v for example which i thought was just me being silly but wheni think of it, its really bizarre and i think it may be a type of stimming too as i always feel some degree of anxiety without necessarily being aware.
There are many things that i relate too strongly with autistic descriptions but there are also many things that are not my experience at all which is why i wonder whether im not autistic and i may just be over exaggerating some similarities i have? Yet i will listen to an autistic describe how sound affects them and i may not experience the exact same level of disturbance but i do experience the same sensitivity. when people talk about how sound affects them, they describe it in a way that i do not experience yet sound and noise is a continuous bother to me, noisy engines, loud bangs immediately grate on my nerves and i react much stronger than normal people but not as strong as autistic people, so what i was hoping someone could answer is if its possible i could be autistic based on my description or could i just be at a low level of level one autism or maybe im just mistaken. Some autism descriptions just dont seem like my world but many seem to be the same but i experience at a lower rate. Any help?
