Could i have autism? Not realised until i'm 18.

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Hi my friend suggested that i might have autism which before i have thought but i just thought i had social anxiety and that it would have been picked up in childhood but a lot of the signs match me ,now here are some things when i was younger my mum thought i was deaf but took my to a speech therapist i could apparently "hear the grass grow" then i started talking non stop and was rather hyper as a child. My nose has always been highly sensitive foods couldn't be cooked around me i would gag i still do, I would use the condiments on the table so i couldn't see the other persons food, I would have foods on different plates something dry with a sauce no couldn't be touching other foods the textures of lots of things I wouldn't eat I was very fussy i don't like how newly washed jeans feel on me lots or clothing textures how brushing my teeth feels cottonbuds i always have, I basically no empathy and don't get why other people are sad when a friend is crying i don't know what to do, i also can't really read peoples facial expressions my friend said would you be able to tell if someone was confused? and i said no though i could tell if they don't get it maybe but she said that's black and white thinking? i don't like lying to people ill tell you the truth and don't care if i offend, whenever i hear a noise if there is just silence then that it usually makes me jump i can always hear background noises and noises other people don't necessarily hear I'm very sensitive to touch if someone was to poke my arm i find it sore i used to also when i was younger if i heard a noise at night i would jump and make a noise i find maybe simple tasks hard to understand for example i have to watch people doing a task first if it is explained to me i don't really understand, i find it hard to explain what I'm feeling a lot of the time and if i have to explain say something twice it comes out as babble, my friend also says that when she speaks i watch her mouth and repeat it usually the last thing she says which i didn't know i did, so i can understand it, also when i was younger i liked license plates and used to play games where i would right them down and if i am in a car/bus now and see one i always look at it and try to remember it i also like postcodes and multiplying things I've been told i sound unenthusiastic and my face always looks blank i don't have many facial expressions i find social interaction horrible i hate meeting new people and didn't speak to anyone/had no friends for the last few years of high school. I find it hard to concentrate in hs i couldn't sit and listen to a teacher talking because i would forget what they had said because i would just start to think about other things i also do this when people talk to me, I just find that in social situations i don't make the right faces, laugh when other people laugh, I often don't understand what people mean but ill just nod and agree so they don't think I'm stupid but i can see them looking at me strange or they know that they don't get what they've said, I gaze a lot. I'm seeing a psychologist though i just always thought i had social anxiety would i bring it up with her? I've made a doctors appointment and the rest i just thought was normal and my mum says she thinks its ridiculous would of been picked up on. but i feel with certain family members i can be myself im just quite with other people. so i don't know if that is SA? or i could just have autism slightly.
Excuse my grammar.

Last edited by l0st0ne on 27 Jun 2013, 9:23 am, edited 6 times in total.

yeah, prolly!

Are your comma, shift, and enter keys broken? Sorry

Yeah, sounds like a possibility that you may be on the spectrum, but a professional would need to determine that.

It's late i'm tired and was trying to summarise quick my grammar is not the best tbh.

Funniest thing I read all day.

l0st0ne: Hi. It would be in your best interest to seek evaluation.

I just got diagnosed at age 17, so it's possible.

I was self diagnosed at 46.

Up until a month before that, I never had a clue, and nobody else ever thougth of it. To me, I was a functional normal person who was unlucky with the girls.

Your situation is perfectly possible, and perfectly common for the older generation.

+1

I was 40. Yet another "socially awkward" incident had me to tears over why I still couldn't figure out the most basic of human interactions without screwing it up. Led me to ask around and someone suggested it might be AS...the rest was history.

I am "functional," but I've been unable to obtain and hold good jobs, make friends, socialize effectively, enjoy the benefits of a career, etc.

It's strange because the things i listed above with food, textures,noises,facial,expressions, having to watch people to do tasks to get it ect i've never even considered that to be anything until I looked up symptoms to me it doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary.

I0st0ne; I have a long list of things I thought were ordinary and normal, but that I've discovered are Autistic qualities that others in the community don't have.

I was thinking to myself just last week, "how come I have so many non-typical quirks, yet I had no clue that they weren't typical".

The only answer I could come up with, was that so many times through school we were told "everybody is the same, and have the same needs and wants".

But the trueth is very different. Even within the NT world, I believe there is a large differnece of views, mental processing, sence of smells / sounds / taste. I believe there is far more difference among them than they are even aware themselves.

So for me, it's because we were told that we were all fundamentaly the same, and we believed them. That we 'thought' we were the same, and that everybody had these difficulties but just never bothered mentioning them because it was universal. So wrong.

Hi there,

I was recently diagnosed at 22 years old. It was actually sensory issues like yours that made my psychiatrist think that I might be on the spectrum. I was referred to a specialist and turns out I am!

You can also have social anxiety and autism together-- I am unfortunately blessed with both, which gives me double the challenge with socializing. Various kinds of anxiety are very common in people with autism.

It sounds like you have many of the issues those of us with ASDs have, so you probably should talk to your psychologist about it.

Well i said to my psychologist and she said she doesn't think i have autism because you can usually tell she said and that people with autism don't usually speak until they're 5. She said , i could possibly be on the cup of aspergers but its quite rare to be autistic/ have aspergers in general she has referred be to a place that specialize in that but said she would like to put on a bet with me saying i don't have it, she made me feel like an idiot.

I did not read your post because I can handle text like that.

I figured out I was on the spectrum at 40, so yes you could get to 18 and not know.

Try not to let what you were told get you down, sounds like a humour failure possibly.

Should we assume your apostrophe key is broken and your "t" only works sometimes?