Hi.
So, I think I'm autistic, but I guess it doesn't feel like all the descriptions that you read.
A lot of the descriptions I read are about communication and understanding people. But to me it feels like I'm trapped in my head. I do like hanging out with friends, but even when I do that I'm half in my own internal world.
I have this habit where I fiddle rapidly with bits of torn up card, twirling them between my fingers. I do it any chance I can get. I don't know if my friends notice because I try to hide it but it's probably obvious. I remember meeting a young boy when I was young who I think had autism and lived in a care home. He said he was out looking for 'fiddly sticks' and I related to that, thinking "I do that!".
I get easily overwhelmed, for example by supermarkets and I can't really follow logical reasoning unless I do it very slowly. I also continually get lost when walking because I always enter a kind of hypnotic state.
The thing is: I have learned social skills, and I think they're quite good. I'm good at reading people, and I'm good at communicating when I need to. But it often takes it out of me emotionally. So by a lot of descriptions that would mean I'm not autistic, but I'm pretty sure I am. It's confusing!
Here are a few things I think make me autistic. I'd love to hear people's thoughts.
- I'm always living in my head and prefer this state of mind (although I do enjoy hanging out with friends)
- I'm very single minded, only focusing on one thing at a time, often quite intensely
- I either have very intense attention to detail or I'm scatty and all over the place
- I get lost easy
- I hate talking on the phone, it makes me feel trapped
- I find daily tasks like cleaning my room, getting out of bed and taking a shower really difficult and actually painful in a way
- I use lots of cliched phrases to create sentences, unless I'm concentrating
- My voice is often very flat and monotone
- I am extremely sensitive to negative emotions
- I struggle to deal with my own feelings of anger
- I often feel like I have very subdued emotions
- I think I've suffered from depression and sleep disorder since a young age
There's more stuff that I can't think of now but I hope you get the gist!
- I get very fixed ideas in my head I struggle to shake
- I really want labels and descriptions to understand myself (maybe this means I'm not really autistic. As I say, it's confusing)
- I love working on my own and don't like talking to people who aren't my friends. I setup a writing business so I would be able to work completely alone.
- I'm very tired of pretending to be a "normal" functioning adult and need people to acknowledge I am neuroatypical.
Do people relate to this experience? I think if I could just tell people I'm autistic it would be such a relief. It's not like my life isn't functioning, I just need a way to communicate that my mind works differently to most people.
Thanks for reading and I'd love to hear your experiences and thoughts on my post.