Female AUTISM Checklist (The Ultimate List YOU NEED!)

Check list starts at 3:00 (for my fellow ADHD'ers scrolling through the comments to keep concentration)

Has anyone wanted to ever feel...invisible? Like don't look at me or talk to me otherwise I will have to respond. And being the centre of attention seems like a nightmare

Selective mutism is my biggest “symptom”. One on one I’m a chatterbox, but the more people are in a room or a call, I feel INCAPABLE of speaking

As an autistic female I can tell you if I had a choice between staying home and reading a book or going to a party I would rather stay home and read the book but I would feel like I should go to the party in order to keep my friendships so I would go and then I would spend the entire time there hanging out with the pet. I have multiple photos of me from high school at friends house holding their cat or dog while everyone else is mingling around in the background

Wow, that feeling of staying quiet because you feel you have nothing to add to the conversation without knowing how it will be received 🙌🏼

The "I want to socialize but I can't" moment is a huge call out for me. I really want to talk with people, but when I do get to the communication part I have no idea on what I'm supposed to do. Don't have the diagnosis yet, but I plan on going to psychiatrist if my parents let me to

I'm 62 and just got diagnosed this year- it's been a game changer. Colleagues at work now can't just keep complaining about the way I communicate, which they had been doing non-stop, and training is being put in place for me. I'm looking back over my entire life and understanding SO MUCH in retrospect

when he was talking about being introverted by nature but also being outgoing, THAT IS EXACTLY HOW I FEEL !!!! i finally feel so validated. i do like going out and doing things but it's so hard for me to do it because i get so socially anxious. and i love talking to my friends and hanging out with them but i get so reclusive that sometimes it feels like i have no one. THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS

As for eye contact, I overcompensate and keep eye contact for to long, apparently that makes people uncomfortable to...

I call myself an “extrovert with social anxiety” because I’m scared of social interaction a lot but I N E E D I T

My 13 year old has just been diagnosed. Never spotted a thing as she is a pro masker. In her assessments it was like she couldn’t hide it anymore and it became so obvious. I left the assessment and on my way out the specialist said I needed to be tested myself, so now I’m in that process at 34 ❤

I can absolutely relate to “masking to meltdown”, especially since I usually get my first main meal when I come home from work. As a school teacher, I heavily mask all day in order best focus on my students and offer them the best learning environment possible. When I come home, and something unexpected happens, it really is like a switch is flipped in the brain. Often, I can’t even explain to family what is upsetting me, just that everything is too much right now. I am also staring at my extensive book collection in silent judgement lol 😬

Had to laugh at the ‘introverted outgoing person’ part. I’m a bartender in New Orleans and one part of me was born to be social and adaptable, but the other part of me hides out like a vampire when I’m not at work. When I’m on, I’m on. Then I’m exhausted from the interactions and I need my ‘alone time’ to recover. It’s difficult because friends and family expect you to always be that social person and feel shut out when you need your alone time. I plant the seeds of amazing relationships, but they often wither away because I have an inability to maintain them. Thankfully, I have a few desert flowers in my life.

I don't have a masking to meltdown necessarily all the time, but masking to exhaustion, like I will have NO energy left at all.

I think a good thing to add would be compensation for eye contact. Yes, a lot of people have a hard time maintaining eye contact. Another part of it is the over-compensation resulting in the "delve into your soul" stare where you can forget to look away. This usually happens with people I'm very close to. In my experience, I usually switch between the two depending on the level of eye contact the other person maintains. Low eye contact from the other people, deathly demonic stare. High eye contact from the other person, trouble maintaining eye contact.

The extreme shyness/selected mutism thing made me remember a lot from my childhood. One teacher told my parents that they would forget that I existed because I was so quiet. I was pretty "gifted" at a young age, learning to read and write at a higher level than my peers. Numbers were a huge problem for me though, like my brain just doesn't do numbers. I didn't have many friends and kept to my books or video games. I was more of a tomboy and was typipcally drawn to hanging out and playing more with boys, since I found they were easier to get along with than girls, who were impossible for me to 'figure out' at times. Obsessing, collecting, masking, comfort in routines...I should probably get tested lol

3:00 eye contact 3:40 difficulty socializing 4:40 introverted personality but outgoing in general 5:51 obsessive collecting 7:19 selective mutism 8:55 masking to meltdown 10:18 shy and quiet

I was finally diagnosed at the age of 36. Finding someone who would even take my request for testing seriously was a nightmare. I was told I couldn’t be autistic because I was a girl. Then I was told I couldn’t be autistic because I have a college degree, and finally I was told I couldn’t be autistic because I have a husband. I have all the traits you mentioned except the selective mutism. Finally getting tested and diagnosed was incredibly freeing. For a long time I thought I was just crazy or a freak because no matter how hard I tried I just didn’t feel like I fit anywhere. It was so nice to realize that I am not all alone or a total weirdo. I’m just autistic and that is okay!

I’ve had many people tell me (usually at work) that they hated me when they first met me, they thought I was stuck up and too good to talk to or look at them. Then they got to know me eventually and we became great friends. I find it incredibly difficult to interact with new people, so I do my best to blend into the background until I’ve had ample time to assess and observe them and the situation, which looks like what they described from their POV. I’m also usually concentrating so hard on just existing in those moments that my mask slips and my “friendly” face goes away, making me look stern, bored, or angry. (I studied psychology in school and they called this a “slow to warm up” personality, but now I’m wondering if that’s maybe not just a sign of autism.)

When you talked about selective mutisim and masking to meltown I actually started to cry, because it's like all my live in short. And all this time I've been feeling like the complete freak and failure. Thank you so much for this video.