Can people just automatically sense if you are on spectrum?

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I have felt this way most of my adult life. I feel like for some arbitrary reason I am not as approachable as other people and it just doesn't make any sense to me. I've done a lot of work over the years to improve myself and not come off as completely socially inept. I have perfectly normal hygiene. I don't have anything like crazy tattoos, piercings, or a hairstyle, and I wear regular clothing like hoodies and track pants on most days. I'm also at a point in life where I'm old enough to know better for most behavior so I don't do strange things to make myself stand out like when I was in high school or a little kid.

I get that when I open my mouth and begin to talk people can start telling something is off about me. But sometimes I feel like they can sense this even just by being around me or even looking at me. Does anyone else feel this way? It can't just be me?

I can usually put the thought away while I'm at school and doing day to day life but since I've been at home on break the thought has been eating me up. I'm restless and need to know. Do non autistic people have some kind of sense for the 'other'? Can they easily detect if somebody is off like me?

I can provide more information if people want to ask.

NTs pick up on it right away and shun ASDers.

Welcome to Wrong Planet, Blutaku.

I think there is definitely some truth to what you are suggesting. I spent 45 years with no idea I was autistic, but I had noticed since quite early in my childhood that I was treated differently by people, and I am still treated differently very often. The way I see it is this...

I think that much of it comes from non-verbal communication. Most non-autistic people are sensitive to much smaller differences in posture, eye contact and facial expressions than many autistic people. The information from their eyes and ears is mostly processed by sub-conscious bits of the brain, the conscious part is only aware of the final answer, which is just "something isn't normal here". So it does seem like a "sixth sense" rather than something that takes loads of thought. It's not usually that they sense we are autistic, just that we are in some vague way not what they were expecting. If you were to ask them, I bet that most of the time, they couldn't even tell you what it was that made them feel that way, and they would say it was just a "gut instinct".

The trouble is that some of our tiny differences in body-language etc. might look similar to how non-autistic people behave when they are in a bad mood, bored, not interested or trying to hide something. How to behave when a person makes them feel a certain "gut instinct" will mostly have been learned by being around non-autistic people, and when they meet a non-autistic person their reactions are quite likely to be correct. But because autistic people behave slightly differently, even if its only in very small ways, their "gut instinct" won't be so accurate, and can set off a "false alarm" that they need to be more cautious than usual.

NTs almost instantly can tell that we are different. Watch their behavior towards you change almost instantly when they pick up that you are different. We go through honeymoon periods with every NT we meet. During the honeymoon period, the NT feels you out and decides on how they feel about you. The length of the honeymoon period depends on how often the person sees you. If you only see the person once a week at church, the honeymoon period could last up to three or four months. If you see the person everyday at work or school, the honeymoon period could end after a month or two. Most of the time you don't get a honeymoon period at all. It generally doesn't take people long to determine that I'm a weirdo and move on. My weird voice tips people off almost instantly most of the time.

We appear quite differently than we view ourselves in our heads. We often aren’t as ‘normal’ as we painstakingly try to appear.

They sensed it less as I got to my late 20s, when I was at last diagnosed, and had put in a lot of effort and gathered feedback from a trusted circle of friends. I rehearsed, watched certain movies, did speech therapy, went on dates with several women...and finally...there was a light at the end. At least, for the most part; there were a few people that I gradually drifted away from, but I explained the circumstances to a therapist and he told me that at that stage of life it's not uncommon for those "drift-aways" to happen. So that was reassuring.

Although I always remained a little bit skeptical and cynical that I was really convincing people I was just like them, I always pushed that to the back of my mind. And I refused to fall into a guilt mindset, like "I don't deserve this kind of normal interaction, I'm an imposter" because I knew that wouldn't get me where I wanted to be, and I didn't personally believe it, my self-esteem was too high (despite taking a beating on many occasions).

But, yeah, there were some emotionally painful times, like the first half of my 20s when I couldn't get a girlfriend and saw everything else taking it for granted, it was tough. People would act like I never bathed and had chronic halitosis.

So what if they can sense me on the spectrum? I'll still enjoy life as it is.

I think certain personality types are hypersensitive to our differences, and can sniff out minute differences to the point where it's scary - we're talking narcissistic personality types, a.k.a. "uber-NTs", ESPFs, extreme extroverts, whatever you want to call them...their whole M.O. revolves around the perverse need to feel superior, hence they will sniff out perceived weaknesses like a shark senses blood in the water miles away.

So, my theory has been that anyone who's more extroverted - and thus has had more lifetime experience of interactions -will be more attuned to pick up on "weird vibes" from us. This ability seems more high-tuned for women, which is unfortunate for us Aspie males who don't want to appear weird on the dating scene. It was a long struggle of trial-and-error for me, before I finally met my wife of about a decade now, and we get along very well despite my occasional eccentricities or lapses of "common sense".

Can you sense if someone is on spectrum?