Are You Autistic? 25 Questions To Ask Yourself! | Patron's Choice

Trying to understand if I'm catching everything correctly and not making false comparisons to myself is the hardest part of this video.

This video is hard because every one of these questions makes my mind say “I bet that’s something absolutely everyone experiences at some point, it can’t be just me”

When you asked "do you struggle with communication with other people?" I just caught myself thinking "no you see, for I have a system!" and I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

I often struggle in social situations when a conversation involves more than one or two other people. It seems as if everyone else knows when to talk and fits their responses into the conversation without talking over each other. What usually happens in groups of more than 2-3 is I just observe and don’t speak or I accidentally talk over people, generally responding to something after the topic has moved on. It’s really embarrassing. It takes so much energy to be in social situations unless I have one safe person to talk to.

When half of the questions make you go "That's not normal...?"

I'm not normally concerned when I get 100% on a quiz...

I only started to really take notice of possibly being autistic last year. I needed to get a flight from my home country to another, it was my first flight and I found myself looking for videos of the inside of each airport so that I could pre-plan where I needed to go. Then I realized that most people don't do that, and started to look at my other behaviours. Never had any friends, always felt like I'm watching people from afar, never knowing how to join social groups even if I wanted to, always feeling disconnected from the world. Struggling to find a job because I'm told I always seem 'disinterested', 'unengaged', or whatever, even if I feel like I'm making a ton of effort to be chatty and upbeat. It's so tiring and I think I could probably be diagnosed with depression as well because no one fucking believes me.

I have ADHD and most of those also apply. It helped me notice that despite being different kinds of neurodivergence, they are actually pretty similiar in many regards.

This list is me almost 100% Bonus question: in conversation do you often feel that you don’t know when the right time is to start talking- either that you are always starting to speak at the same time as someone else, you find yourself talking over the top of people accidentally because they weren’t finished, or you never get a word in.

I feel like the youtube algorithm is trying to tell me something...

When you asked "Do you find dealing with the outside world difficult and stressful and makes you anxious" I just started crying. I still am not diagnosed although I feel I need a diagnosis, cus dealing with the outside world is killing me while everyone seems fine and see me as a drama queen when crying for such thing.

As a doctor, diagnosed at 39, I found the biggest camouflaging factor was that I was extremely good at understanding emotion, far better than my peers. Whilst all of the other factors on this list were largely true, and with a reasonable education in psychiatric medicine, (and of course with 20 years of health care and personal depression/anxiety experience) I would be quite sensitive to acute but subtle changes in tone, macro and micro-expression. Plus I could use my misunderstanding of the disconnect with what was being displayed and what was being said as a form of 'intuition' to ignore reported affect and focus on effect. Since my diagnosis I have felt at liberty to offer a quick disclaimer that I will likely be blunt due to being neurodivergent and then drilling through the 'bullshit' to the point, where we can start dealing with it. It seems to resonate with people. They come back I guess... On the more important note, coming to terms with neurodivergence also made the experience of depression and anxiety a thousand times less distressing. And now my wife has a better understanding why I come home from a day seeing people and need to jump straight on a computer game or have extended sleeps. Much more than when I worked in procedural medicine such as Emergency or Anaesthesia, where the risks and decisions were much higher but the interpersonal requirement was much lower. Fascinating it took this long to be diagnosed in hindsight....

its crazy when i lived my whole life not knowing i was any diffrent because i just stayed away from people lol

I want to see a doctor or I want to talk to friends or family about it but I’m terrified that they’ll think I’m faking it and making it up for attention

My father was diagnosed with severe ADHD as a child. After watching many of your videos and evaluating my own life and my father's; I am certain that it is not ADHD. My father was given Ritalin at a very young age and it's led him down a life if addiction. That coupled with his defiant behavior towards anyone in authority over him has led to him living on the streets. Maybe if he was given therapy for his behavior, rather than drugs, he'd be a lot better off. He's very intelligent and creative, but he is horrible socially. He's quick to anger and absolutely refuses to accept anyone in authority over him. He refused to have me evaluated as a child, because he didn't want me to have a life like his. I know he did it because he thought it was protecting me. My life is not impacted the way his is. I may come accross as rude from time to time because I don't know when to be sympathetic; and I may have a strict routine I stick to everyday; and I may have given up on trying to fit in; and I may not like socializing most of the time, but I am able to accept the world works the way it does and I'm not raging against it, trying to make it change for me. I'm sorry dad. I hope you're okay out there.

After researching this for awhile, I’m convinced that I have Aspergers. Unfortunately I didn’t find out until much later, I’m 48 now and to be honest my life isn’t too good. I have a lot of depression from loneliness and constant rejection and therapy has never helped. Thank you for your channel it’s been a big help to me.

I was 25 when I finally figured out that when someone asks 'how are you', that they really didn't want to know - that is was basically a social nicety. I always got odd looks when I would tell them exactly how I was and why, good or bad. I found this extremely odd - why ask someone how they are doing if they really don't want to know. I thought to myself hey if I missed that, there must be other things I'm missing.

Now to find out if im answering yes because I’m on the spectrum or if it’s just my anxiety

I am 30 and have wondered if I was on the spectrum since I was 25. Mainly because I am awkward socially and have enough emotions for 10 people when I'm emotional. After watching your videos I no longer think I am on the spectrum and have a so much greater understand of autism! Specifically your points on childrens experiences on the spectrum and I had absolutely no feelings like that growing up. I think I'm just awkward and tend to be a little more introverted and that's okay! ❤️ Thank you

I don't have a diagnoses, but I definitely relate to many of the things that people on the spectrum experience. One that I am growing very tired of as I get older is masking. I am not a very expressive person, so I put on for people all the time. If I don't they think I am sad, or they offended me in some way, or just that something is wrong. When I tell them that nothing is wrong, they never believe me. I can't imagine explaining masking to them. It makes me feel very manipulative.