Trying to figure myself

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I am trying to figure out if people can tell if something is a little off about me when I talk. Some people don't take me seriously so I am kinda of leaning toward to that. I know I can easily pass for a NT if I keep my encounters minimal, which I usually do anyways. I am noticing that I am understanding how things work better than say 5 years ago but I feel like I am less confident and less social. When I observe myself in the mirror and talk, I can see why people don't take me seriously. My posture isn't straight and I am very skinny although I am handsome. I have never had anybody mention my quirks. I am trying to figure out why. I also have a minor stutter that isn't always visible but it adds to my quirks. Do you often think about this?

Much less so now, but before I was diagnosed, and especially from around my teens through my twenties, it was forever on my mind. I could always detect easily enough that people treated me differently sometimes, that I seemed to attract bullies, got odd comments from cheeky kids on the street, etc., but working out why took me a long time (I wasn't diagnosed until I was 45, though, so bear that in mind before making comparisons.)


Yes, this can be quite a problem, I've found. Mean folks will tend to mock in ways which don't make clear why they're doing it, or will do it behind your back, and nice folks tend to be too polite to mention it. There's also the problem that many people won't even know what quirks made them treat you differently. Much of their brain's processing of body-language, eye-contact, tone of voice, etc. is sub-conscious - all they're aware of is that the person they're speaking to gives them a certain "gut feeling", and they often don't know themselves quite why.

To you, the way you're standing, say, might be simply because it feels comfortable. Other people, though, will assume that you are fluent in body-language and that your posture means something. Their confidence in their "gut feeling" means that they assume they've received your "message" loud and clear, even though you weren't sending one. From their point of view, there's no reason for them to tell you anything; they think they've read you correctly, so it would be just telling you what you already know - after all, you were the one that sent the message! And because you have no idea what kind of message they think you've sent, the other person's reaction to it is rather difficult to predict sometimes!

When I've seen myself on video, which only first happened quite recently, I was very shocked to see just how much my posture, speech, and movements differed from everyone else, and are also so different from how they "feel" inside my own head. In over 40 years, not even the closest of friends had pointed them out to me, yet some of them are not exactly subtle.