How many of these 63 autistic traits apply to you?

This was posted recently on the 'Autism From The Inside' channel and I found myself agreeing to so much of it. It's light hearted and worth a watch, far better than any pathological lists of autistic traits.
  1. Always wearing bright colours.
  2. Hating phone calls.
  3. Not realizing you're hungry or thirsty.
  4. Not replying to a text message, but thinking about it for a week until eventually deciding that it's kind of probably too late to reply anyway.
  5. Hating wearing socks or just seams in clothing in general.
  6. Having an atypical sense of humour.
  7. Telling the truth even when you probably shouldn't.
  8. Feeling out of sync with everyone else in your group.
  9. Having an aversion to or an obsession with popular culture.
  10. Over-planning everything.
  11. Not having a strong sense of gender.
  12. Feeling tired all the time for no good reason.
  13. Not liking being told what to do.
  14. Did you teach yourself to read before your first day of school?
  15. Finding comfort in repetition and routine.
  16. Struggling with crowds.
  17. Seeing people as people and kind of forgetting about social class and expectations and all that kind of stuff.
  18. Having super sensitive hearing.
  19. Having a high pain tolerance.
  20. Over apologizing and assuming everything must be your fault.
  21. Not caring what people think.
  22. Being really good at something that is completely useless.
  23. Being deadpan sarcastic all the time.
  24. Preferring face-to-face communication to avoid misunderstanding.
  25. Struggling to find an appropriate gap in group conversation.
  26. Constant background anxiety.
  27. Being overly empathic.
  28. Relating to animals better than you relate to humans.
  29. Avoiding trying new things.
  30. Eating the same food every day.
  31. Finding inappropriate things funny.
  32. Not liking to be touched.
  33. A tendency to notice small details.
  34. Hating fluorescent lights and downlights.
  35. Always wanting to understand why.
  36. Enjoying repetition.
  37. Thinking in pictures.
  38. Having a flat affect, also known as resting *** face.
  39. Preferring to pace up and down instead of sitting still.
  40. Liking to imitate other people.
  41. Having a favourite thing that goes with you everywhere.
  42. Getting excited and interrupting people.
  43. Going over social interactions again and again in your head even after they've happened.
  44. Seeing patterns in everything.
  45. Having a very, very good memory for some things and a terrible memory for other things.
  46. Preferring nonverbal forms of communication.
  47. Hating to brush your teeth.
  48. Having a monotone voice.
  49. Difficulty identifying your emotions because they feel like they're all jumbled together.
  50. Getting overwhelmed by too many tasks at once.
  51. Watching the same movie or TV series over and over again.
  52. Feeling awkward in groups.
  53. Loving to think outside the box.
  54. Having brilliant ideas that no one else seems to be able to understand.
  55. Struggling to read between the lines in complex social situations.
  56. Preferring written communication because you can spend hours and hours perfecting and saying exactly what you want to say, in an attempt to try and avoid miscommunication.
  57. Two-speed productivity. Either super fast, super efficient, or nothing at all.
  58. Compartmentalizing experiences from different parts of your life.
  59. Feeling comfortable being alone.
  60. Being happy with very few material comforts.
  61. Always finishing what you start even when you should probably stop.
  62. Scripting conversations in advance or spending hours thinking about what you could have said even after the moment has passed.
  63. Being the kind of person who people think, how could someone so clever be so stupid?

I have counted 53 which apply to me, including the last one Grin

Feel free to add your score, discuss any of the items or suggest new additions to the list.

Parents
  • Thanks for all the responses everyone. Very interesting mix.

    I just want to say to those who have reported lower scores that this isn't supposed to be any sort of scientific or medical test. It wasn't my intention to trigger any kind of imposter syndrome!

    Some of the items can still be considered an autistic trait if you are the complete opposite. For example having a low pain threshold, not thinking in pictures, being less empathetic, etc.

    Always wearing bright colours is a weird one. My holiday clothes are bright, perhaps because that's when I can be myself. However day to day at home I tend to wear the same drab dull colours, nothing to risk drawing attention to myself.

  • Oh no worries I wasn't maade to feel like an imposter, I know I'm autistic, I just found it quite interesting actually that it kind of coincides with something I already knew, that on the outside I get percieved as "high functioning" by the NTs I encounter. But that's just because they only see me for a few mins at a time, they don't see that my issues as an autist aren't just pot holes I'm trying to dodge in my daily life but actually more like mine shafts into the centre of the earth. There may be less of them than some other people but if I fall in I can fall very deeply very quickly into exhaustion or melt down.

    25,  the number seems less than other people but I did notice the ones that do apply are very intense in the way they impact me. A good handful at least are or are almost debilitating without significant support and strategic planning. Maybe that's my trade-off: I get get less traits but the ones I do have are stronger?
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