SIGNS THAT I WAS AUTISTIC | Friendships, Socialising & A Sense of Justice

hello everyone and welcome back to my YouTube channel as you will see from the title this video is going to be all about signs that I was autistic when I was a child a teenager growing up that should have been picked upon but they weren't I'm gonna go through the process of sort of social situations that I was in things I did as a child and also things that were present in school and probably should have been picked upon by people in positions of power such as my parents my teachers people around me that probably did pick up on the fact that I wasn't like the other kids around me but just didn't know that they were autistic traits or actually just did nothing about it and I just want to disclaim here that if you do some of these things that does not mean that you're autistic we're all human there are lots of things that autistic people do than other people do so you might relate to these but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're autistic however these things that I did were signs that I was autistic because I have an autistic mind and I feel like this is where they came from and a lot of them now are used when diagnosing or sussing out whether somebody is autistic people just didn't know it then or they ignored it so I grew up in a very it's not a small town but it's a very small-minded town and I feel like if you grew up in one of these you know what I mean I grew up in an area that was very deprived eight is one of those postcodes that will get you on to access schemes for University because it's in the northeast of England the schools didn't necessarily do great and I feel like this did contribute to the fact that people just didn't know anything about autism or if they did it was little sister white boys you know I was sort of raised like an only child I have a brother but he's a lot older so he wasn't really raised in the family home with me but he is also autistic so growing up my behavior there was one nothing to compare it to and if there was it was another autistic child so nothing really was abnormal I would say because everything that I did was seen as the norm to my parents because that's all that they knew firstly I was a very fast learner as a child I could walk before I was one and I could speak and have full conversations before I was the age of two and hyperlexia is a big autistic tree especially for female autism I don't technically like to use that term because I am non-binary that's how I identify and also it's just very it's just a very gendered term I feel like that just refers to anybody who's not a CIS head white boy a lot of these female autistic traits tend to refer to marginalized autistic people who have masked heavily their entire life as an autistic person but hyperlexia is a massive autistic trait and that's what I was and I feel like it came down to pattern recognition I was very good at picking on letters and numbers and I learned to read very very quickly because I recognized patterns in things and I feel like I an echolalia I feel like I did a lot of that as a child repeating things picking up on rhythms picking up on patterns and repeating them in my head whether it was out louder in my head whatever I feel like that was a massive way of me learning which is a very normal and natural thing for a lot of children to do echolalia is very present in young people when they're learning to speak it's just that's followed me throughout my entire life and it's very common for autistic people to have echolia I feel like that's how I learn I was far beyond my peers when I was in nursery and early school and whilst no that doesn't necessarily mean that I was autistic on top of everything else I can see how it relates and I used to one of the things that my mum really picks up on when the district nurse would come out when you're sort of I think they come out up until you're two years old every couple of months just to see how you're growing one of the things my mom mentioned was that she was really really impressed with the way that I stacked and organized my toys I had these colored blocks that I would Stack Up in color order and they would have to be perfect I would do it upwards and then I would do it downwards and then I'd separate them into colors and I would always tidy my toys away I'd always put them into sections which when you listen to parents or autistic children talk about like their traits when they were younger and growing up that's a massive one it's a massive thing of autistic people organizing things and again I think that came down to pattern recognition things have to be in a specific order and it's it's not that they had to be that's just what felt natural that's how I felt it should be you know and that's what I did another major thing of my traits growing up was food I have always been a very fussy eater and it's mainly that I eat the same things on a cycle and that's what I did when I was younger I ate pasta pizza bread and every meal that I had with my family I'd always have a very basic version of what my parents were eating I never had veg I didn't like sauce I didn't like things in sauce I ate the same things over and over and over because it felt safe to me and I didn't like texture I didn't have school meals I took packed lunches because I didn't like anything that they served and I hated the fear of not knowing what it was going to be they didn't tell you you would just walk into the school dining hall and they'd be like you're having this for lunch and it would I would just be like I don't know what that is it looks foul and I just Panic anytime I would have to eat School dinners whether you were going on a trip and they gave you a packed lunch or whatever so I was a packed lunch kid in school because I trusted my mom to make the food that I liked and I would Panic if it wasn't what I wanted I think honestly for three years of my school life I had tuna pasta every single day for my dinner every single day four years no wonder I have deficiencies like nutrient deficiencies because I just eat the same things that are just like full of nothing they've got nothing in them and my mom used to put smiley faces on my food to encourage me to eat so she'd buy Smarties tubes and she'd put little eyeballs on and then a smiley face and that would encourage me to eat things like sandwiches um wraps things like that I always had very strange food preferences I ate a lot of chocolate spread sandwiches a lot of chocolate spread wrapped people thought it was disgusting but to me it was safe and I still have fussy Tendencies now I have my comfort Foods I have the food that I go to when I'm stressed I have the food that I will always want to eat regardless socializing as a child I don't really remember much of this but when I was going through my autism diagnosis and my dad was talking about me as a child and the things that he maybe picked upon as being outside of the norm it was the way that I socialized as a child I had a very sociable childhood but I myself was not necessarily the most sociable person my um parents when they were together we had family friends that we would sort of rotate going to each other's houses for parties and there would be so many people I'm talking like 30 plus people at this big party they just did any excuse for a party whether somebody's birthday anniversary Christmas Halloween somebody got a new house anything and it's because they all had kids as well so it was sort of like the adults in one room the kids in the other room we would just play and I look back at this and think that it was fine but my dad said that I was a very isolated child I was a very I would play for half an hour but then for the rest of the time I would sit on my own whether I would play on my own I'd have my head in a book or I would just sit or I'd have a nap or I'd sit outside I don't remember any of this but it makes sense I think a lot of the socializing I did as a child I've sort of dissociated at the time and I don't really remember it because the only thing that I do sort of remember is feeling uncomfortable and whenever I go into the space where the adults were I didn't know how to speak to them I found it incredibly awkward I did not know how to have conversations with adults it would be to the point where I would just laugh in their faces and it wasn't because I found it funny it was because that's the only response I felt would come out of me at the time it didn't match up to the tone of the conversation but I just I I just felt so uncomfortable same with if I ever had to answer the phone for my parents because they were upstairs and it'd be like it's so and so I would just laugh because I felt so uncomfortable I didn't know what to say it's the only response that would come out of my body that was my emotional response and listening to my dad talk about the way that I was socialized as a child I do not understand how nobody picked upon the fact that I was autistic because that was blatantly obvious the way that I socialized that that's the the The Stereotype of autism is like not being able to socialize and I was that stereotype as a child in the way that I socialized and I don't understand how nobody picked up on that like I hated going to those parties the only games that I really enjoyed were the role-playing ones because I feel like I'm really great at embodying characters because I just watch and I pick up on patent recognition and I pick up on all of these things that they do and I felt like I I was really good at acting and that's what I enjoy doing but whenever it came to other games where there were rules there were other things involved I hated it whenever it came to just talking I always longed to be like the other people like I always would hope that that's how I would grow up and be because I felt like an outsider and I am baffled that nobody picked up on it I really really am and that's sort of how I was as a child in general let's get on to what I was like in school and the things that were just blatantly obvious and nobody picked up on them we need to reform the way that teachers are taught about autism and the fact that I'm pretty sure they might just not be I feel like it's optional to learn about it it's not necessarily a massive thing had they known I think I would have been diagnosed as a teenager because oh boy was it obvious in school so when I was in primary school and I was learning phonics you know the things of like how to speak come on then chicken how to speak the things that you would get where it was like how to pronounce things you know pH is f things like that and ing is in I took this literally because I was taught a rule I was taught that this is how you say things so I took it literally so I would go home and I would start speaking in a way that I had never spoken before I was saying skipping walking loving I wasn't and I'm from the Northeast okay I have a Mac and Geordie accent merged together I do not say skipping nor does anybody around me we say skipping walking the ing is not there but I got taught this as a rule in school so that is how I pronounced it even things like h i remember sitting on the sofa with my dad saying no you don't say you say because that's how I was taught in school I really really had to quickly unlearn or learn sort of the the outside rules that you weren't taught of whilst that's how you say ing that's not always how it works in practice and not exactly how language always works so there was all of these outside rules that you were just expected to know that I did not pick up on and I had to learn how to do I took things literally and I think my accent as well I would pick up on words I would pick up on the way that people would say things because I could see that that's how they would speak and sometimes it would be adult language I don't mean swear words but sort of words that were beyond my age and I would say them and people would laugh at me and I didn't understand why and it's because it was language that was sort of above my years but I was trying to pick up on what other people were doing so my accent was weird the language that I used was strange and I tried to obey my rules in language that didn't always apply to real life you know that didn't get picked upon even though it was a massive thing I was very impressionable in school because I wanted to be liked I sort of got taken advantage of when I was in primary school by a specific person and I didn't have the language to tell people so I got it was essentially bullying in an abusive relationship but this person was also a child so like don't really want to call it that but it was very manipulative she would bully other people and then blame me and I I didn't know how to get out of it because she was my only friend and I was like if I don't have her as a friend then I'm not going to have any friends is this what friendship is because I didn't understand how socialized so I didn't really realize what was wrong and what was right until people told me that it was so I was very very impressionable because I didn't understand the rules and the laws around friendship that was something that I had to learn and I think now looking back whilst that's not necessarily specifically an autistic trait I can see how that manifested because I was autistic you know personally I think that I can see a point in my life where I heavily started to mask I do think there were points in primary school where like it sort of dripped in I definitely did mask but I think when I hit secondary school that's where the mask went on it was on and it was tight and it very very rarely dropped and I think that was because I moved into an environment where the social expectations the social constructs the social rules was so different when you get to secondary school and I don't want to talk about it now because I don't know what it's like it's been a long time since I was in school but it's so different when you hit secondary school this the socializing in secondary school and UK secondary schools is just it oh it terrifies me it really does all of these sort of the popular kids the cool kids that's that's embarrassing you shouldn't do that those are the Nerds those people are embarrassing we don't talk to those people those people are cool that's great you do that in class if you like that no all of these different things just like bombarding my brain I did not understand and the only way that I could blend in was putting on a mask and it was definitely not a conscious thing I think there's a misconception with masking that it's a always a purely conscious thing that you're doing and I think if you if you do it for so long it's a survival mechanism that just clicks in when you consciously or subconsciously feel like you're an outsider you switch it on to blend in and hope that nobody notices and it just becomes a subconscious thing that you do and I did that I realized pretty quickly that I was not like other people and I did not know why so I was trying to mimic other people and weirdly I was sort of in with the popular kids when I was in year seven which is the first year of secondary school in the UK or in England at least I was in with that group but I felt like the outsider within that and I tried to get along with that I tried to mimic what they were doing I tried to mimic their fashion their tone the people that they would speak to what they found funny what their likes were I hid what I liked I was a theater kid I had intense special interests sort of word what the popular interests were at the time I was a nerd I was geeky but I hid it and I ended up moving School in year seven because I could not blend in properly I again was very impressionable I got dragged along with people that I ended up getting involved in things that I should not have been getting involved in getting in trouble in school for things that I hadn't done but I didn't didn't know how to say no and whilst I had such a strong sense of justice I think that battle of I know that this is wrong but if I say something I'm gonna lose my friends I'm gonna lose what helps me blend in so I ended up leaving and moving to the more Central Secondary School in my area where I had friends from primary school there but they weren't my best friends so I ended up having to move to a brand new school and at that point who my anxiety I did not realize it was anxiety looking back I know that it was I was the most anxious little kid everything walking to school going to the shop doing anything looking at people going walking from one classroom to the next I was riddled with anxiety everything every interaction made me feel sick to the point where I is pretending to be sick so I didn't have to go into school I got severe migraines as a child because I was riddled with anxiety I was overly masking I got oral migraines to the point where I would go blind you would see auras in Your Vision that would just get bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where it would just Encompass my entire vision and I wouldn't be able to see for like a day or two I lost the they would make me lose the ability to read I would have these severe migraines and nobody looked into why and thinking back it was because I was so and I was so anxious I was overworking myself in school because on top of all of my studies I was trying to find friends I was trying to blend in I had anxiety I I was so unwell I was so unwell as a child and I feel so sorry for my younger self because nobody picked up on it because I was masking so I blended in and I thought I was doing a good job but I wasn't I feel so sorry for little Ella because I hid the fact that I was going to theater classes after school like the theater Club after school I hid the fact that I was doing that from other people in school because I didn't want them to know I very quickly learned to not bring up my special interests because I would just get laughed at and secondary school for me was really hard really hard and I didn't admit it at the time but looking back it was terrible it was horrible it was such a horrible experience a misconception with masking is that because we use the term blending that we think it means blending so that you're not seen my way of masking to blend in was I tried to mimic the popular kids I tried to mimic the loud ones because they were liked they were the ones that people found funny they had friends so I tried to mimic the class clown so my version of blending in was blending in with that type of person and it didn't work because I was autistic I wasn't understanding social situations so I was trying to mask and whilst I did seem like one of those kids I was the annoying one I was perceived as the weird one the annoying one the one that people didn't want to have anything to do with because I was I was trying to be the class clown and it wasn't working I did end up having a friendship group but again I felt very much like the outsider and I lost a lot of friends and I felt like I was floating I was one of those floaty people that had I was sort of friends with everybody but not close you know and it wasn't until year 910 that I really found a solid friendship group and I think that's because that class clown masking technique disappeared a little bit because I realized it wasn't working cool yeah I was annoying I can see why people didn't like me but it wasn't me it wasn't me it was fake then I can see where the sense of justice came through a lot of autistic people talk about having a sense of justice and me I think it's because we have such a social Constructor if something is wrong especially British people oh my God you just ignore it it's not it's not your role to get involved if something's going wrong you just ignore it and I don't understand that construct if something is wrong if I see something wrong I say something I'm like whoa that's if somebody was getting bullied in front of me I would say something if I thought that a rule in school was undermining students I would say something and I could not keep my mouth shut and it's because I don't understand that social construct of you just have to grin and bear it because why should we so having to say sorry for something that I'd not done you know that thing where it's like somebody does something to you you retaliate then the teachers I both apologize to each other I would refuse I got into so much trouble at school for refusing to say sorry for things that I hadn't done because I didn't understand it like I I don't understand why that's a social construct and why that's a rule and people be like it's polite it's not polite it's rude to ask somebody to apologize for something that they've not done and I I was constantly calling things out in school again to the point where people found me really annoying and insufferable and I get it I really do I think the biggest thing that my teachers should have picked up on but just didn't was the way that I learned and the way that I come on feel like I'm Not In Focus the way that I learned and the way that I would take notes the way that I would ingest information was very very different to other people I had one teacher I basically had a teacher that I had throughout my school years off and on who had a very specific way that he wanted us to display our work and I hated it it didn't make sense in my mind it didn't display information in a way that I found useful for me so I didn't do it I he would always be like you want I want you to stick stuff here write the title there and write your work like this and I just refused I was like sir that does not work for me and he went he he punished me for it I had to go to a lot of after school lessons that I didn't need to be at I had a lot of detentions I had a lot of having to stay behind after class to change my work because it didn't work for him and I just kept saying it was also that sense of justice in me as well it's my learning it's my exams it's me that needs to retain this information I should be able to do that in the way that works for me and that just didn't cut it for him he got angry with me I would get wrong for things and that happened in a lot of different lessons it wasn't until I got to sixth form where you have a little bit more freedom or you did in my school with the way that you displayed your work you didn't have to use School notebooks you could use your own I had a little bit more freedom with it and I realized oh I don't learn the way that other people do and sort of the way that I recalled information I was very good at learning facts I was very good at learning things that had a pattern to them I was very good with you know your basic numbers I really really focused on the subjects that I loved so I was a big art student I was a big drama student and I was good at it and it meant that other subjects fell behind I just wish that somebody had picked up on that because all of those things everything that I have just listed behind this should have been enough for somebody to go hmm I think there's something going on there and it's because most teachers just didn't know their view of autism again was a CIS hat white boy that like naughty school kid somebody that's really great at maths all of those stereotypes of autism they just didn't know or if they did they didn't apply it to somebody like me because I was seen as a woman I was just an awkward anxious school kid it was an Autism but it should have been picked up on and I think back school I know I've said it but it just it was so hard I was exhausted 24 7. I was exhausted the weekends were not long enough I would have to prep myself going into school for the Monday I hid in the art classroom so the Friendship group that I managed to develop when I was like end of year nine going into year 10 a lot of them who I'm still friends with now they are my main friendship group all of us neurodivergent in some way because neurodivergent people flock towards each other because we feel safe we just didn't know it at the time it's just a bunch of Korea neurodivergent people hiding in the art classrooms I bet you haven't heard that stereotype before yeah we hid in there break times and lunch times that's where I would hang out I'm very rarely went into the cafeteria space and if I did we stuck towards each other and that was our friendship group and that is how I survived in school it was hiding away and trying to focus on the subjects that I did love and I actually did really well in my gcses and it's because I would go home and revise in the way that worked for me I didn't go to revision sessions at school I tried not to do the extra classes and that got me in trouble because they thought that I wasn't doing the work but it was because it didn't work for me it just did not work the way that they would lay things out I'm very visual in the way that I learn cue cards and doing those tests did not work I needed to create visual things with color codes I've got synesthesia so like I needed to do it myself because if somebody else color-coded things and it was wrong oh it just threw me off so I revised at home and I ended up doing very very well in my gcses I got six A's and Four B's I did okay in my levels but I was going through a lot of trauma when I was 15 16 17 and 18. there was a lot of going on in my life that meant that I got thrown off in my exams basically I would have done a lot better you can see because I got an A in drama and then something happened and then the rest of my exams followed and I ended up just getting C's um which is still great but it's not where I should have been I had teachers always saying to me you're quite odd you're a bit weird oh you're strange solving a jokey way because I do have a great sense of humor so there was a lot of teachers that I did get on with who would joke with and it would always be taught I would always be a little year old you're a strange one that's weird yeah nobody nobody went you're autistic you're autistic and they should have it wasn't until I got to University and my routine was completely thrown off because I don't think anybody talks about the fact that I'm gonna speak from the UK here when you're the age of four when you go into school that pattern stays with you up until you're 16 to 18. you literally have that for 12 to 14 years of your life you are in that Monday to Friday nine till three pattern exit except for the holidays that's how your life is growing up and then suddenly when you go to university unless you're doing a full-time degree like medicine you your routine is completely different it's just completely thrown off and that with me that really really with me and that's when I started to realize this difference in my brain I think it's a lot more than just being the weird one there's actually a label for this and I ended up having to figure out the autism all by myself and when I tell people like when I told my family they'd be like oh yeah that makes sense and I guess it does make sense yes it does and you should have figured it out you should have figured it out being undiagnosed as a teenager and as a child oh it's hard it is hard you feel broken you feel like there's something wrong with you you've you feel like everybody's in on this joke some inside joke that you've just not been told you feel like everybody's part of a game that you don't have the rule book for and it's exhausting trying to figure it out trying to blend in like you're gonna get eliminated if somebody figures out that you don't have the rules or you're the Imposter here one big game of Among Us it's hard and to be honest I I don't think that's listed I think this list could go on and on and on of things but the big one for me was the way I was in school I hope that this video has been helpful what were your autistic traits growing up if you were late diagnosed that people should have picked up on what were the signs in your childhood that you were autistic and were ignored or weren't picked up on let me know in the comments let's have a conversation about it let me know what you want to see from my channel this is the first sit-down video I've done in a very long time I've got a new camera so it's kind of helping I want to Vlog more I want to share my life more so let me know what you want to see and I hope you enjoyed this video bye

Channel: Ella Willis

Views: 2,959

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Id: F8sZWna9sus

Length: 29min 55sec (1795 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023