At what age did you realize you were "different"?

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I'm not sure. I can remember saying I was different when I was 9/10. I have felt there is something wrong with me since I was about 11, although I think depression and anxiety comes into that as well.

I think it's probably because people with more classic autism are in their own world a lot, and you need to be in the real world a certain amount of time to notice you're different.

As long i can think I know that I was different. I was even in kindergarten a loner never part of the pack.

When I discovered that I was gay (in the age of 13/14), I thought first this was caused by being gay but than I discovered that the very most gays were also very different from me.

it's hard to pinpoint when I started feeling different. In a way I've always felt I was different than everyone else. The differences became painfully apparent when I was 6/7 years old.

mmm. I had a similar realisation about people being "actually alive" (and having their own feelings) between ages 13-16... I know at 17 I still had an assumption that other people were a sort of test tube for my own experiments: not the experiment per se, but the bit you always had to get through first that was always associated with the experiment and had to be manoeuvred.

I remember distinctly thinking "actually I don't think I love you" about my family, after the word love was thrown around our family a lot. I don't think I told them though.

Probably 5-7

When i started being bullyed in high school i got very depressed and i didn`t understand what was going on. Then i had these deep thoughts and also my friends (the one or two i had) who told me that i had many "special" things: the noises i made, the stimming, etc

Last edited by GeomAsp on 17 Mar 2009, 7:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

I really gave this a lot of thought now.

I began to realise it when I was 11-14 years old. Severe mobbing was the catalyst. I stopped ignoring students a little and then TOM slowly developed somehow.

In winter when I was in 7th grade and 12 yeas old it hit me that other people might think something, all the time, about teachers, other students and even me.

I remember I started to feel watched for a couple of weeks, because the idea that others thought about me and what was going on around them was so weird to me that it felt extremely intrusive to know that my thoughts about the world weren't the only real ones. It was hard to believe. Seriously, not being the one out there but that everything was kind of shared.

I also didn't yet take that into consideration until half way into 8th grade when I was 13. The idea that anything happened when I was not there was still alien to me. I didn't comprehend that having a meltdown or a tantrum in the middle of class would bother anybody.

But then a huge disciplinary hearing happened and I successfully understood and could act accordingly. After my mom explained and after seeing how all the teachers I had were thinking stuff about me and now saying so - some being really insulting too and speaking their mind freely about how ret*d I ought to be - I realised that other would think about my every move. And that their actions would have an impact on me.

Up to this day, I don't spontaneously react appropriately to this knowledge of how I'm different though. When I asked, I spontaneously answer in a way that reflects that I don't feel that I'm the one who's different.

That's kind of the single huge advantage to deficient TOM. Makes me feel completely normal.

same here,the only 'real' difference had ever noticed is the pure torture having suffered from family-especially sister being forced to hear painfully rubbish pop music [take that,new kids on the block,aqua,britney spears, boyzone, 911, backstreet boys and so on],am could not understand how they were able to listen to that when it was so painful,am liked music that most people started listening to as teenagers [rave type stuff,that was on top of the pops and the chart show].

it's thanks to wp and other similar sites that have grown aware of self.

It gradually dawned on me - sometime between the ages of 7 & 49 (OK - I can probably say that I knew for certain by the time I was 13.) I went through a lot of teasing in my early years that didn't end until it became evident that I was a really talented musician. But for most of my life, I've hung around with people who shared at least some of my "different" characteristics - so it wasn't always apparent to me.

It's interesting to read that quite a few people shared my feeling that other people might not be real/alive. For a number of years, I toyed with the idea of Solipsism - since my mind was the only one of which I could be certain (this was long before I had heard of AS or Theory of Mind.)

not sure
I realized in kindergarten I was much much smarter than my peers

7-8 yrs old. I realized that I didn't fit in, realized that everyone else saw I was different and didn't belong. I think that was the hard part for me. Trying to fit in, trying to become a part of something, needing to be part of something and finding out that I didn't know how.

When I was about 7-8 years old. I tended to withdraw more, focus on lone obsessions, & not really have any close friends. Became an outsider & have remained one ever since.

Age difference topic

I realized I was not part of the herd at age 5, though it was not until i was 8 that I began to be excluded from said herd. I knew I was no longer safe and could not disappear amongst other kids and be left alone. So I became more secretive and quiet so they would hopefully not notice me. This did not work, and I was in for a rough ride, as other posters here have already reported.

But, somehow, if you live, you get through it, scarred, perhaps stronger, and looking back, perhaps for the best. I would never trade what I am now for being part of said herd.

Im guessing that it was when i was about 8-9 years old and pondered the fact that i would have to switch schools at age 12 (i lived in a rurall society with a small school for ages 7-12) and the fact that i was the only one who was concerned with this in my class.
Also a hint that i was different was that i was the only one who preffereed reading to playing with other kids.

9 - I remember I was playing in a playground on my own and that's when I first noticed really.

About three years of age.