6 Obscure Signs you're Actually Autistic

sometimes if I return to the dsm5 diagnostic criteria for autism after a bit of time away I look at it and I'm like is that it is is that all that's there I think it's just because I spend so much time in this lovely Community I have here chatting about shared experiences with other autistic people I also read books about autism I read through various research papers I'm just kind of very immersed in autism you know it's a special interest can you tell and it just feels a bit like the DSM 5 is missing some really key autistic traits some things that are mentioned again and again that are almost integral to the autistic experience obviously if you've met one autistic person you've met one autistic person and not everyone's going to be exactly the same but they're just things that come up again and again and I'm just surprised that they're not bear every time so I want to discuss some of those traits here with you today I thought it might be fun it might also be helpful if you're considering the fact that you might be autistic I know just looking at the dsm5 diagnostic criteria it can feel very cold and sterile and it can be difficult to like see a real person in that like who is that actually describing sometimes while the things that I'm discussing today are not in the dsm5 OR at least not explicitly some of them are kind of alluded to in the DSM 5 I'm not just pulling them out of thin air what is thin air actually when you think about it as opposed to thick air is it like a humidity thing these are not just things that I've decided are Trace these are things that are discussed all the time by academics and a lot of autistic Charities offer support for some of these things so they are real it's important to remember that you don't even have to relate to everything on the dsm5 in order to be diagnosed as autistic you have to fit those first three social related criteria but then you don't need to hit all of the traits in the next category in order to be diagnosed so just because you don't relate to some of these doesn't necessarily mean that you're not autistic equally if you relate to a few of them doesn't necessarily mean that you are autistic a lot of autistic traits are kind of like normal parts of the human experience but with the volume turned way up however if you do relate to a lot of them or like all of them you might want to look into the fact that you could potentially be autistic a hell of a lot of autistic people are undiagnosed and kind of the older you are the more likely people in your generation are to have not been diagnosed to have not been picked up the prevalence of autism in 1966 was thought to be 4.5 children per 10,000 obviously very very different to the stats we have today a reminder that I'm not a medical professional if you are struggling with your mental health you should probably go and see somebody who is a medical professional although autism itself is a neurodevelopmental condition it's not a mental illness there isn't a treatment or a cure but autistic people can be more likely to struggle with things that are treatable like depression and OCD so number one autistic trait that I'm surprised again and again to see is not in the DSM 5 is perfectionism this came up again and again in my own autism assessment and according to the people who diagnosed me they notice a pattern of perfectionism again and again in the autistic people who come through them so today's going to be all English all day tomorrow is going to be guitar practice all day because I have my Ensemble and solo piece next week I mean what if I die or get really ill and then I just don't perform my best as early as Leo Conor's work in 1943 autistic people have been described as finding failure unbearable there has been some suggestion that this perfectionism might occur in autistic people due to cognitive inflexibility so kind of the way we're quite black and white in our thinking sometimes things are either right or they're wrong and the dsm5 does actually include rigid thinking patterns in the criteria apparently even for typical in quotation marks adults inflexibility has been linked to perfectionism if you're wondering if this describes you and you're not sure this one quote really resonated with me I found it in a study about autism and perfectionism the tendency to believe there is a perfect solution to every problem that doing something perfectly I.E mistake-free is not only possible but also necessary and that even minor mistakes will have serious consequences es that describes my whole entire life basically I can tie myself up in mental knots thinking about something if I have to make a decision I go round and round and round I feel like somewhere hidden in the universe there is a perfect right answer and if I just think long enough it will come to me and everything will be amazing forever more happily ever after and I can do this with even really small decisions if I'm not careful about my thinking I've said it before when I'm picking out clothes for my son it can literally be down to the pair of socks and underwear and there's no clear answer obviously there's no real right answer I'll go to reach out for a pair of underwear and then my brain's like what if the other one's the right one and then my hand can move at the last second and then I just get the sinking feeling about whichever decision I make that it's maybe not the right one it's also been suggested that autistic people might overestimate other people's expectations of them so might have high socially prescribed perfectionism I feel like this definitely describes me I have a video about my autistic burnout story and how I got obsessed with studying and trying to get perfect grades towards the end of high school I feel like a lot of that was Prior it was wanting other people to say you did the right thing you got the best grades you could have possibly got which was 100% is what I wanted to get in in every single exam and got quite distressed if I wasn't hitting that it also might maybe explain why I hate being watched while I do something and I know a lot of other autistic people can feel that way as well the perfectionism could also sometimes be to do with l ual thinking like if someone says you need to put in 110% we may try to actually put in 110% even though that's impossible I remember in school teachers saying things like if you're not miserable while you're studying for this exam you're obviously not working hard enough and I definitely took that to heart and made myself miserable little trigger warning for eating disorders here but we know there is a link between anorexia particularly and I think some other Eating Disorders as well and perfectionism and we know that there is a link between anorexia and autism I think up to like 25% up to a quarter of people with anorexia could also be autistic wouldn't be surprised if it was maybe more than that as well with just the number of people who are undiagnosed I read this really interesting article on the British psychological Society recently I can only apologize to patients where I didn't recognize their autism and that article was focused on working with eating disorder patients so number two one of the major complaints that autistic people have about the DSM diagnostic criteria is that you know obviously it's a book about mental disorders it calls it autism spectrum disorder some people like to say autism spectrum condition instead it looks at autism in a very negative light and in order to get the diagnosis you have to sit there and talk about your life and your life experiences in a very negative way in order to hit the criteria and unfortunately most of us can do that because we have had a lot of negative experiences to do with being autistic but it hasn't necessarily been all negative you know this is why it really surprises me that this particular trait is not on here because it's probably the time when I would say most autistic people or at least many autistic people both feel and look their most disordered and that is autistic meltdowns there is nothing really in the DSM 5 that alludes to autistic meltdowns now you could say that's because not every autistic person will experience autistic meltdowns but as I say you don't have to hit every box on the dsm5 diagnostic criteria to be diagnosed as autistic and autistic meltdowns have been described again for basically as long as autism has been described so in 19 19 43 Cana published these case studies where he looked at autistic children the first one is about a boy called Donald who grew up to be Donald triplet who was the first person to ever be diagnosed as autistic he only passed away last year and in his case study of Donald he wrote when interfered with he had temper tantrums during which he was destructive he was dreadfully fearful of being spanked but could not associate his misconduct with his punishment so obviously we know now that autistic meltdowns are not temper tantrums as they are described here although if you look at any video online where an autistic meltdown has been uploaded by a parent of a child which I find to be very inappropriate but the comments will basically all be they're just having a tantum you just need to discipline them more so yes some people do still think this way some people are still hanging out with caner in 1943 they're probably our worst people they could be hanging out with in 1943 not going to lie personally I think rather than thinking about meltdowns as temper tantrums we're better thinking of them as panic attacks so something that's uncontrollable for the person once it started but there are things you can do to prevent them from getting to that place if you're not sure what an autistic meltdown is this is where an autistic person temporarily loses control of their behavior so this could be to do with them feeling like they've lost a sense of control maybe something goes wrong in an interest that they're intensely working on interruptions as it describes here with Donald can be very uncomfortable for autistic people too so that could contribute sensory things sensory overwhelm too much going on in your environment and also changes to your routine things happening that you don't expect in a meltdown an autistic person's brain just kind of short circuits it's just like too much information they can't cope anymore and it could present as anger it could present as shouting and screaming it could present as crying and hyperventilating and rocking in a corner there is also a more internalized version of an autistic meltdown called shutdown where an autistic person may become unable to speak or unable to say very much and they kind of just withdraw and Retreat into themselves someone on Reddit referred to this a statue mode which I quite liked some people who are higher masking may be able to kind of postpone a meltdown so kind of temporarily internalize it and then once they're in a safe environment may be able to then let the emotions out you'll hear quite a lot that autistic children can behave very differently at school to how they behave at home because while they're at school they're internalizing the emotions and once they're safe and at home those emotions come out but for some autistic people maybe particularly if they don't feel safe in their home life they may just internalize all the time and you can imagine how kind of holding those big emotions in while it may have less of an impact on the people around them it can be very detrimental to a person's mental health and obviously it means they're going unsupported because people don't necessarily know that there's something wrong I wonder what you think I wonder if you have any theories or any knowledge about why meltdowns are not mentioned in the DSM 5 the closest we get to a mention of a meltdown is extreme distress at small changes but obviously extreme distress is not very specific and that's just one situation that could potentially cause a meltdown it doesn't describe you know sensory overload or anything like that the one thing that I do think is quite dangerous about this is that we know that quite a lot of autistic people are misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder young autistic people can be misdiagnosed with emerging unstable personality disorder as well and while meltdowns are not included on the diagnostic criteria for autism what is number nine on the criteria for borderline personality disorder it's inappropriate intense anger or difficulty controlling anger EG frequent displays of temper constant anger recurrent physical fights and then it also mentions emotional instability and anxiety and similarly if you look at the diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder it mentions becoming irritated and agitated as well so I don't know do you think this lack of acknowledgement of autistic meltdowns in the diagnostic criteria for autism makes it more likely for an autistic person to be diagnosed with a mental illness or a personality disorder that they don't have obviously that can be quite serious you could be given medication and both both of these things can be stigmatizing as well so number three closely linked to autistic meltdowns and shutdowns we have autistic burnout which is spoken about all the time amongst autistic people researcher Dora raymaker who is autistic themselves has done some excellent qualitative research into autistic people's experience of burnout although autistic adults often discuss experiencing autistic burnout and attribute serious negative outcomes to it the concept is almost completely absent from the academic and clinical literature autistic burnout describ describes when an autistic person might experience chronic exhaustion they may lose skills and have reduced tolerance to stimulus if you're in Burnout it may affect every part of your life and it usually lasts for a long time 3 months or more it happens as a result of chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate support now this is obviously not a trait as such it's more of a sign that an autistic person has had unmet needs over a prolonged period of time and is in distress however maybe it would be useful to have something in there about it because I do imagine a lot of people who seek a diagnosis are probably seeking it because they have reached a crisis point and they need help maybe they've had to drop out of Education or they've had to stop work because they're in autistic burnout for me I had to drop out of Education when I was 17 due to autistic burnout and I've only recently got myself back in I'm doing a psychology degree bya home study now distance learning but yeah I've never managed to to quite direct myself back there an autistic burnout does often happen after puberty or after graduation from secondary education I think it's just that like the the pressures of life and the things that are expected of you can just like exceed your capacity which is something that is acknowledged in the dsm5 diagnostic criteria actually I did go and see medical professionals around that time in my life when I was in distress and if there had been more knowledge of autistic burnout you know maybe I would have been able to get my diagnosis then like almost 10 years earlier would have been would have been super helpful but never mind we move aside from generally the fact that symptoms must cause clinically significant impairment in Social occupational or other important areas of current functioning the only other area where I feel like autistic B out is kind of alluded to is at the bottom of the criteria it says you can diagnose a person as ASD with Catatonia katatonia is a psycho motor disturbance which affects a person's ability to speak move or respond can cause things like difficulty Crossing thresholds and completing movements and I can definitely see Crossovers and similarities with my own burn out before the end before I got to crisis point and had to drop out I would get off the college bus and I remember thinking like I do not have the energy to get myself to the front door and I would feel way older than I actually was you know like like I was really having to drag my feet to get myself to the front door and it was literally about a 2-minute walk if that and then I also had quite a bad period of mental health around the time that I found out that I was probably autistic it really kind of rocked my life and made me feel a lot of things and my husband was doing a placement for his degree and he was super busy so he wasn't really there to offer the same amount of support as usual and I remember going to drop off my son and then coming home and I remember just standing at the bottom of the stairs just looking up the stairs and thinking right I'm going to go up stairs now I need to move I'm going to go up the stairs and just standing there and staring and it must have been minutes must have passed before I eventually did manage to move myself up the stairs I just didn't have the energy to do it so just take this if you are an autistic person watching this just take this as an important reminder to look after yourself I know it can be hard in this capitalist Society but you know for number four I've said issues with motor skills so a lot of autistic people struggle with learning to ride a bike or learning to tie their shoes and they may have a diagnosis of dyspraxia as well as autism sometimes called Developmental Coordination Disorder which is a diagnosis that I have been given as well if you've not seen the clips of me epically failing at PE at school you're in for a treat so disaia is thought to be a neurological condition which affects your physical coordin but according to the dyspraxia foundation around 10% of people with a dyspraxia diagnosis show signs of autism whereas 80% of children with autism have movement difficulties consistent with the diagnosis of dyspraxia and there are numerous studies which suggest that dyspraxia could be a core feature of autism itself in my video about the theory of monotropy which is my favorite Theory my favorite way to describe autism I spoke about why I thought so many autistic people might have this dyspraxia diagnos as well and might struggle with movement that makes sense to me through a monotropic lens because movements and particularly learning new movements involves coordinating different parts of your body and making them do different things at the same time but maybe it is kind of in our best interest to have them listed as two separate conditions when it comes to accessing support maybe it just makes it kind of clearer and it's an easier way to express to somebody that yes I do have these differences with movement that's why I'm so bad at PE please be nice to me and don't shout at me and tell me I'm not trying which happened to me quite a lot maybe it's a bit similar to how differences with our attention can be seen as quite inherent to autism you know the dsm5 does describe having intense interests and abnormal focus on these interests still a lot of autistic people are diagnosed with ADHD as well in the past you could only be diagnosed with one or the other but now you can be diagnosed with both an estimated 30 to 80% of children with autism M also meet the criteria for ADHD and 20 to 50% of children with ADHD meet the criteria for autism as well so scientists are sometimes looking for this kind of common biological route between the two but it's just really complicated I think and we can't quite figure out you know where autism ends and ADHD begins and are we looking at two things that just can present similarly or are we looking at the same thing basically kind of but like different presentations of the same thing I don't know it's really confusing at number five I have autistic inertia some people might feel that the DSM 5 describing difficulties with transitions is sufficient enough to kind of include this one maybe it is I don't know but as a 2023 study stat although autistic inertia is a part of the autistic community's everyday lexicon it has received scant attention in the academic literature so autistic inertia comes from Newton's law of inertia an object at rest stays at rest an object at motion stays in motion as a constant velocity unless that state is changed by a force and apparently the term inertia was adopted by the autistic community in the 1990s so it's not new but in this 2023 study autistic inertia was described as some as being like one of the most disabling parts of being autistic I might kind of agree with that I think if I lived alone it would be pretty difficult for me to stop what I was doing and remember to go and feed myself I was thinking about that the other day never lived alone I was like I wonder how I would cope with that I think eating enough food would definitely be one of my major struggles if I had nobody to ever interrupt me and remind me to go and do something else as much as I hate interruptions I feel like I need it sometimes so autistic people can really struggle with getting started with tasks you may find that you sit in a car for ages when you arrive somewhere or you might find it very difficult to get out of bed in the morning then also once we've started something particularly when it's an interest when it's something we're have to fixate it on it can be really difficult for us to stop and then that's when we can forget that we have other bodily functions and to forget to look after ourselves or to clean our house and things like that that are also important to do in life someone described being in that hyperfocused state as like riding a bike down a very Steep Hill you just keep going not eating not drinking trying to avoid going to the toilet overriding everything not being aware of time passing I think that's an excellent description of what it's like so this is kind of alluded to in the dsm5 with highly restricted fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or Focus Cas but maybe if this description of autistic inertia was more explicit in the dsm5 diagnostic criteria more people might be able to see themselves in it and get diagnosed hatred for interruptions would probably be a good point to include there too number six is masking so masking is acknowledged in the dsm5 diagnostic criteria it says at the end may be masked by learn strategies in later life and that's really great that's really helpful for autistic adults who are seeking a diagnosis because obviously autistic people we can pick up skills we can learn we can grow we're not not always going to present in exactly the same way we did as children but one thing that does surprise me about the DSM 5 is how socially focused it is when I've spent some time away from it I'm like oh yeah in order to be diagnosed with ASD you have to fit all three of the first criteria which are all connected to social difficulties or deficits as it calls it now obviously you know socializing is typically pretty hard for autistic people and I'm not saying we don't have difficulties with social izing even the people who do mask being autistic are still going to struggle socially masking doesn't mean that socializing is coming easily to you on the inside but you may appear more competent than you actually are on the outside which can be fortunate sometimes but also unfortunate because again it means you can go unsupported but I don't know yeah it's it's so weird like you have to fit the social criteria but then you only need two out of four of the remaining criteria but I don't know the things that make me feel more artistic I suppose with the ability to hyperfocus and maybe my sensory experience and that kind of thing so it's just interesting that there's such an emphasis on it maybe it's because I work for myself and I have done for like the last how long eight nine years you know like I have spent a lot less time having to socialize and sometimes when I do it is a bit of a shock so maybe that's why but yeah every time I look at the DSM 5 I'm like oh yeah there's a lot of social stuff on there but maybe some more specifics about masking would be a good addition because I hear from people despite the fact that there is the bit there about learn strategies and later life I hear from people again and again that they've been told that they didn't get a diagnosis because they seem too sociable because they made eye contact with this diagnostician in this onetoone appointment setting which is quite different from a lot of social scenarios and also if you're an adult you're an adult you've learned stuff it doesn't say that you can't be diagnosed autistic if you make eye contact in the DSM 5 it describes abnormalities in eye contact as one example of a social difference that you might have some want just see people stare and make very intense eye contact because they've been told all their lives you need to make eye contact which would be then a form of masking and I do think a lot of medical professionals have this idea that all autistic people will have zero ability they will not be able to learn any social skills no matter what they go through in life they'll have zero ability to make any friends and form any relationships and it means that a lot of people end up slipping through the cracks I don't say these things to put anybody off going to get a diagnosis but I do feel like maybe at least medical professionals should be a little bit more educated about autistic masking if you enjoyed this video I do as I say have a video about signs that you're masking autism so if you do feel like you're somebody who's a bit too social to be diagnosed as autistic that one might be useful to you and I also made one of nine signs you're not autistic which might be interesting to you as well kind of talking a little bit about the differences between being introverted and being autistic in that one cuz I'm surrounded by a lot of non-autistic introverts in my life if you would like to support this channel if you'd like more videos like this if you like them to keep coming then you can do so over on on patreon and if you do even if you join the lowest here which is $4 per month you get two exclusive videos every month and you also get access to the Discord server where you can chat with other neurod Divergent people as well thank you so much and I'll see you very soon bye Al I have snakes on my shirt you can't really see it and look it's got these little fancy twisty Lacy strip I don't know what you call it strings ribbons on the arms and you couldn't even see that either so [Music] [Music] sorry [Music]

Channel: I'm Autistic, Now What?

Views: 422,466

Keywords: actuallyautistic, autism, autistic, signs of autism your doctor wont know, signs of autism, traits of autism, autism in females, autism in males, 6 signs of autism, signs you might be autistic, signs of autism not on DSM5, DSMV

Id: eT_IUs_fzdg

Length: 24min 22sec (1462 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2024