Am I autistic? (Long post)

I already made a similar post about this (called “Am I autistic or just adhd?”) but I wanted to go more in depth and neater on this following autistic signs and symptoms—the dsm-5 explanation of autism is too clinical and vague for me to understand fully, so this is what you get. Quick disclaimer: I’m not looking to be diagnosed online, just peer reviewed. If any of this sounds like autism then I’ll probably try to look into getting an assessment, if not I’ll stick to just getting tested for adhd as I originally planned 

• Differences in body language (e.g., gestures) or eye contact

• I do believe I exhibit these differences. I don’t often make eye contact with others unless I feel socially or emotionally pressured to. Eye contact feels too intimate and intense for me to hold and I usually only look at people’s chins when they talk. I’m not sure what they mean by “differences in body language” but I do tend to tiptoe walk when I don’t have shoes on (not for texture issues, simply because it feels natural and I like that my footsteps are quieter) and often have “dino arms” when my hands are not in pockets or holding things. I’ve also been told that I move slowly and that my eyes have a tendency to dart around when talking to people.

• Difficulty with emotional expression or interpreting others’ expressions

• I do have some level of difficulty expressing emotions, which I’m sure would be a surprise to my friends and family. I usually copy other people’s expressions and force myself to perform facial emotion in conversation. If I’m happy, I do naturally smile, laugh, stim, etc, but generally speaking, I don’t naturally express that much emotion through my face, since my natural baseline mood is flat and neutral, and this probably reflects itself on my face

• I also feel like I have some issues interpreting other people’s facial expressions, depending on the person and context. I am pretty good at deciphering expressions within my immediate family, but there are still micro expressions that I struggle to understand, and I still overthink my answers, often unconsciously inputting a negative bias onto interactions and expressions. With people outside my family, it’s harder. I can decode social cues and expressions if I’m paying attention, but I don’t feel like it comes naturally. I think I’m only as “skilled” as I am through my study of psychology and body language in years past, as well as using pattern recognition to see when a friend is down through their previous behaviors. It’s also difficult to tell when a person is laughing at a joke I made or if they’re laughing at me—often I can’t tell, and have to assume the best for the sake of my own mental health

• Not responding to their name when called

• I do respond to my name when called unless there is other sensory input that I’m focusing on (or paying attention to my own thoughts more)

• Trouble starting or maintaining interactions with others

• Yes to both. The former because I hate small talk (despite understanding its function) and am impatient to move onto the real part of conversation. So I usually hang back and listen to other people talk first before jumping in, usually when I have friends around. Or I’ll only talk to one friend. If I don’t have anyone who acts as a social buffer, I will either put on my kind of laid back jokester personality to help break the ice and make other people who might be shy like me feel comfortable making mistakes and acting childish. Otherwise I will be socially timid, quiet, and try not to draw attention to myself. Usually other people have to be the ones to say hello, otherwise I simply won’t interact with them
• Maintaining conversation is the one I struggle with more. Sometimes I’ll find a person whom I click with (often a fellow neurodivergent person) and conversation is easy, until my social/sensory battery runs out and I have to leave. But usually maintaining conversation with someone who doesn’t monopolize the conversation (so I can just listen and learn) is very difficult, because I have to pay attention to what they’re saying, think of responses, and say them in a warm, friendly manner so I don’t come off as being antisocial or disliking them. Despite this effort, most conversations (not with my close friends) are prone to awkward silences or fake-polite surface conversation and/or monosyllables, which makes me appear polite and “skilled” in social interaction, even though it’s a performance, and internally I am frustrated, exhausted, bored, melancholy, and/or nervous

• Challenges taking another person’s point of view

• I don’t actually struggle with this. I enjoy imaginative play and psychology, so I’m usually pretty good at studying another person’s perspective and understanding them that way 

• Having an unusual tone of voice, for instance, sing-song or flat

• Unsure what they mean by unusual, but I don’t think this applies to me

• Difficulty making or maintaining relationships with others

• Not usually difficult to make relationships with others, but I do have some difficulty maintaining them. Either because the person I met and fixated on in our first meeting is not the person I thought they were upon the second meeting (the fixation wore off), or because I get the impression they don’t like me as much as I like them, or because I misjudge our relationship to be casual and polite and they interpret our relationship to be “best friends”, maintaining them is hard for me to do. I’m also a very forgetful person and don’t tend to miss people, so I can go weeks without communicating with them completely by accident. Sometimes I’ll just get bored of the relationship and struggle to maintain it that way, or accidentally ghost people and end the relationship through that. Even with my closest friendships I struggle to communicate with them if they aren’t physically present with me every day, simply because I can forget they exist otherwise. There are a myriad of reasons why maintaining friendships is hard for me to do, but I’ve forgotten the rest

• Early challenges with pretend or imaginative play

• Not really. I think my older sibling taught me how to play pretend (though in our case it was more like roleplaying, since they would sit and play in the dirt as I stood and acted out our melodramatic scenes) and since then I’ve had little to no issues with it

• Repetition of certain words or phrases

• Internally, yes. Externally, no. I used to have a “word of the day” when I was younger that I would read and become fascinated with for the rest of the day, rolling the sounds and meaning around my mind. Even younger, I used to quietly make letter sounds until it felt right, simply because my thoughts—also being very visual and image oriented—also had running dialogue and certain letters sounded too soft in my head, so I’d repeat them until they sounded right. I still sometimes do that in the back of my throat, so no one hears. And I do tend to pick up words and phrases from other people and use them as my own for a while until I get bored of them or find something else that’s new and shiny to play with

• Repeating certain body movements, like flapping hands, spinning, or twirling fingers

• Yes, I definitely stim and fidget a lot. Not in a disruptive or overly noticeable way, but I do repetitively move a lot. Not to say I can’t sit still, but I just tend to wiggle a bunch

• Fixating on a specific subject or topic with high intensity

• Yes, definitely. To the point where it’s all I think about, to the point where I sometimes put off eating, drinking, hygiene, or using the bathroom when I need to. And often to the point where I’ll actually have dreams about my current fixation. Schoolwork is impacted by this, as I often cannot get myself to work on something that doesn’t interest me unless I link it to my fixations somehow. So yeah, definitely got fixations

• Trouble transitioning in situations

• I’m unsure about this. What kind of situations?

• Strong focus on routine or rituals and may be upset with changes to routine

• Not particularly, I don’t think, though that could be due to my adhd. I prefer having a routine but I can’t maintain it on my own, and I can even get a bit burnt out from routine if I can’t occasionally be spontaneous or if I’m forced to endure sensory input for too long. School class routine is perfect for its stability and predictability, but horrible for sensory processing, boring work, and never ending monotony. But if the schedule changes unexpectedly, the world just feels… off, and weird, and different. I don’t feel like myself and other people don’t feel right. I don’t shut down from this, but I have that feeling of wrongness the whole day until I go home or go to sleep

• Focus on parts of toys or objects

• Unsure what this means but I don’t think it applies to me

• Hyper-sensitive or hypo-sensitive to sensory input (e.g., light, sound, clothing texture, temperature)

• Yes, sensory issues. To the point where occasionally I will have a shutdown if I’m not allowed to leave, stim, or use sensory aids. It makes going outside difficult if I don’t have my just-in-case bag full of sensory items, and depending on whether it’s a good or bad sensory day

Things this didn’t mention:

• Literal thinking— yes, I think so. I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, but I do tend to take a lot of things literally, which leads to some social difficulty, and makes me look more naive and dumb than I actually am 
• Feeling different—as a kid, I often didn’t feel like a human. I actually had a furry/werecat phase because of this in late primary/early secondary school. It was not great
• Trouble with vague instructions—I enjoy creative freedom but give me some guidelines, d*mmit! I can’t work without emotional distress unless instructions are clear!
• Inappropriate responses—I tend to laugh in response to stress. Which makes news of family deaths very interesting to say the least. Forgive me father for I have grinned (more regarding this but I forgot)
• Trouble with directions—I cannot for the life of me tell where people are pointing, and I also sometimes struggle to determine right from left
• Clumsiness—I’m very uncoordinated and clumsy. I don’t often get hurt because of this (I’m a slow mover by default and worry about physical harm so I usually have time to adjust right before I bump into something) but if I’m not paying proper attention I will smack into a table or doorway or something of the sort
• Thats all for now