- Signs of autism in adults.
What do the symptoms of autism
actually look like in real life?
Many of us do not look autistic on the outside,
we mask, we have coping strategies,
we seem to be "high functioning",
at least on the outside most of the time.
For many years,
I myself thought that I couldn't possibly be autistic,
because all I knew about
were the stereotypes and medical definitions.
So it's not always easy to see how behavior in real life
matches up with the official diagnostic criteria.
So today, we're going to link those two together.
We'll step through the criteria,
the seven outwardly visible signs of autism,
with tons of everyday examples
and a special focus on adult men.
Autism in women is highly overlooked
and deserves a video of its own.
So check the links for specific resources on that topic.
Even restricting the topic to adult Aspie men
is still really broad
and I'm not gonna be able to cover everything under that.
If you're new, my name is Paul
and I discovered I was on the spectrum at the age of 30.
On this channel, I make weekly videos
showing the human side of autism
occasionally sharing my expertise
in emotional intelligence and relationship coaching.
So you know what to do,
hit subscribe if you wanna hear more about that.
So let's get into it today.
We're taking the diagnostic criteria from the DSM-5,
which is like the diagnosis rule book
from the American Psychiatric Association.
The diagnosis criteria is broken into two main sections.
The first is persistent deficits
in social communication and social interaction.
And the second is restricted
repetitive patterns of behavior, interests or activities.
So there's some medical jargon there but don't worry,
this will all make sense very shortly
once we get into the examples.
Okay, so the first section.
Looking at social communication and interaction.
So number one is social-emotional reciprocity.
And what this looks like is being socially awkward,
not necessarily getting it wrong
but just awkward, unsure, unnatural.
We're often hard to engage in conversation
or talk too much with and not know when to stop.
We may forget to say things like hello
or just leave without saying goodbye.
Hating small talk is also very common,
not knowing how to initiate a conversation,
and then going like full fire hose
with information and facts,
even if it's not appropriate.
We are often out of sync emotionally
with a group or a crowd.
We might laugh at inappropriate times,
or fail to pick up when things suddenly get serious.
We often have delayed or subdued emotions,
always seeming cool, calm and collected
on the outside at the time, as if nothing fazes us,
but then much later, it comes out in different ways,
possibly in a meltdown or shutdown.
So this is part of the reason of the myth
that autistic people lack empathy.
We still have emotions,
but they're often expressed in a different way
or even delayed and come out later.
So because we don't respond socially and emotionally
to what is expected,
we're often misunderstood in that sense.
So number two is nonverbal communication.
All right so this looks like
having a strange way of interacting.
Sometimes it's not easy to put your finger
on exactly what it is.
It may be not making eye contact or overcompensating
by making too much eye contact.
It may be having some strange body language
or an odd tone of voice or an odd way of speaking,
like are you, is the person being sarcastic?
It's impossible to tell sometimes.
Facial expressions may be hard to read,
if they exist at all.
Some of us have what they call flat affect,
which means that we have very little
facial expression at all, right?
We may look like the grumpy cat
even when we're feeling good,
and that confuses other people.
And this is the main problem with this one,
what it feels like to the person we're talking to
is that they have to do a lot of work
just to figure out what we're trying to say, right?
We may look upset, but sound happy, right?
And it's hard for other people to know
what's going on with us.
This often makes
neurotypicals stressed anxious and uncomfortable
just interacting with us,
which is kind of ironically,
not unlike how many autistic people feel most of the time
trying to decipher the neurotypical code.
So number three, is relationship management.
This is the big one.
This is the one that can seriously
negatively affect our lives in the biggest way.
And then we realize we're 50 or 60,
and suddenly we've got no job
and no partner and no friends and no family
and specifically without the skills
to go back and start repairing some of these things.
So what does it look like
before we get to that catastrophic stage?
Someone who has difficulty
developing, maintaining and understanding relationships
looks like an overly logical person
who just doesn't get people.
It's hard to imagine how normal people might think and feel.
So we often get it wrong.
Social faux pas are common.
We take things literally.
We respond to rhetorical questions.
We miss the subtle complexity of social communication,
and may ask really basic questions
about social expectations,
like, "Oh, it says dress code formal.
"Does that mean I need to wear a tie?"
Like those those kinds of things.
We often object to social conventions.
Do I really need to do that?
Isn't that just a stupid social rule?
There's often a big difference
in our behavior when we're tired
and we can't keep up the performance anymore.
We may be hyper social
or even just regularly social when out,
and then absolutely crash when we get home, right?
This looks like being all or nothing
when it comes to relationships.
Periods of intense connection
followed by sudden emotional withdrawal,
which seems like it comes out of nowhere.
We shut down we go silent, we forget to text anybody.
I see this a lot in my relationship coaching.
Sometimes we go weeks or months
without making any contact at all
and then just expect to pick up where we left off.
I know I did this for a long time
not realizing the damage it was doing to my relationships.
So the second section in the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria
is restricted interests and behavior.
So number four is stereotyped or repetitive motor movements.
So this category basically covers
all types of stimming, right?
Things that we do because they feel good.
We actually need to stim,
need to give ourselves sensory input
for emotional regulation purposes,
but from the outside,
it mainly looks like
strange or repetitive movements or behavior.
Actually, the neurotypical population
has stimming behavior too.
Singing, dancing, bobbing your head to music, right?
Going on a swing or going on a roller coaster,
getting a relaxing massage,
but autistic stimming
is basically anything that is uncommon enough
to look weird or seem strange.
It could be things like
singing or humming or beatboxing to yourself,
constantly quoting your favorite TV series,
moving your body because it feels good,
clicking, tapping, pacing around, rocking, bouncing,
stretching playing with your hair,
clicking, I probably already said clicking,
scratching with your skin, watching a lava lamp.
The list is absolutely endless.
So to give you a specific example for me,
you may notice in some of my videos,
I do this kind of twitching thing with with my shoulders.
And I do that because it's like they're never comfortable.
They always wanna be stretched.
They always wanna be moved.
And it looks a little bit odd
because it's something that most people don't do.
Another personal example
is I often rock my legs and like to bounce my head a bit.
So if I'm in public,
I put on earphones, pretend on listening music,
and then all of a sudden it's socially acceptable.
Okay, number five.
We're on the homestretch now.
Insistence on sameness and inflexible adherence to routines.
In other words, someone who loves rules and routines, right?
We all have habits, we all have routines,
and sometimes autistic people take them to the extremes.
We may eat the same food every day, I did a video on that,
wear the same outfit for years at a time,
organize our time down to the smallest detail
or just dislike change in general,
because our routine is so awesome
and meets our needs so well,
that something new
is probably not gonna be as good as what we've already got.
An insistence on sameness
is often highly correlated to anxiety
and the desire to live in a safe and predictable world.
We just wanna know what's going to happen
so that we can deal with it.
No unpleasant surprises.
We love rules because we can understand rules,
not like the complicated and dangerous social world
which often does not make any sense to us.
Okay, number six is highly restricted, fixated interests.
In other words, having an uneven skill set.
We often have intense interests
and excel in a number of specific areas
at the expense of knowledge and skills in other areas,
especially common things
that apparently everyone else knows.
So, we may leave you thinking something like,
how could someone so smart be so stupid?
It looks like having a fantastic memory for some things,
but not others,
needing constant prompts and reminders
for seemingly basic things like saying hello, for example.
We often notice small details,
sometimes getting fixated on those small details.
And we also often find it hard
to switch between tasks, right?
We have a very long transition time oftentimes,
preferring instead to hyper focus on one thing
and do that one thing again, at the expense of all others.
So you can see that things that we like, things that we do,
things that we put in our routine,
we tend to be really good at,
and other things that are more difficult,
like the social side tend to get poorer and poorer
because we don't practice them and don't like to do them.
Number seven, the final one, hyper or hypo reactivity
to sensory input.
Most of us have a highly atypical sensory profile.
Common examples include eating only plain food,
a dislike for fluorescent lights,
or annoying high pitched noises,
an aversion to touch or strong smells,
often coupled with very high tolerance for other things
like spinning forever and not getting dizzy,
or other things like that.
I personally avoid shopping centers
due to light, sounds and smells, for example,
especially and increasingly,
the video billboards
that they've put almost everywhere these days
flashing at me from every direction.
That's terrible.
And the worst for me personally
is the perfume fragrance holes
that they have at big shopping centers.
I make no apologies for covering my nose and mouth
and breathing through my shirt
if I ever have to cross one of those.
Okay, so.
There you have it, seven outward signs of autism,
according to the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria.
We had being socially awkward,
having a strange way of interacting,
being overly logical and not getting people,
stimming, loving rules and routine,
having an uneven skill set with intense interests,
and finally, sensory sensitivity.
Now, a quick note on a very important topic before we go,
do not try to convince someone
that they are on the spectrum.
I do not care how obvious it is that he's autistic.
It's a deeply personal thing
to realize you're on the spectrum, right?
It's highly tied to our identity as a human being.
It's something that we can discover for ourselves
in a positive way,
not something that can be forced on us
by an unqualified friend.
I personally have friends
who are obviously on the spectrum,
obviously tick all of these seven categories
and I do not tell them
because it is not my place to tell them.
If you do that, the message you will likely unwittingly send
is something along the lines of,
there is something wrong with you, everyone knows it,
you know it, everyone else knows it.
And this disorder explains what it is, right?
That's not a very helpful message.
I actually get this a lot in my relationship coaching.
How do I get him to realize he's on the spectrum?
Most of the time the answer is, don't go down that path.
There are much, much more effective strategies
for creating the intimate relationship that you want,
that do not involve forcing him to accept
the fact that he's on the spectrum.
Almost all of us have trouble
with maintaining healthy relationships, right?
It's the number three criterion in the diagnosis list.
We all struggle with it.
The good news, though,
is that we can actually learn these things, right?
My solution, the one that worked in my life,
and the one that I teach others
is essentially learning emotional intelligence, right?
I could go on forever,
the world could use
a lot more emotional intelligence, right?
Because learning these skills allows us to manage ourselves
and build healthy relationships.
That's exactly what emotional intelligence is.
So, I wanna encourage you,
you've probably tried generic advice,
it probably didn't work.
We are unique individuals
and we need to find our own unique solution.
So if you're struggling with these things,
or you're dating an Aspie,
and you need help with your relationship,
you can find more information at emotionsexplained.com.au,
and learn how to build the relationship you want.
Okay, so I should really stop there
before I launch into an entirely new topic.
Criteria number one,
saying goodbye, I've never been good at saying goodbye.
So thanks, I think is what I'm supposed to say.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
Remember to subscribe if you liked it,
and I will see you next week.
Bye.