How many of them apply to you?

Hi everyone, Paul Micallef here

from Autism from the Inside.

I make weekly videos sharing the human side of autism,

so make sure you hit subscribe to get the latest content.

So it's pretty hard to pin down exactly what autism is,

but if you get a group of autistic people

in a room together,

then suddenly there are certain patterns

that tend to emerge.

So you ask the room a question

that sounds kind of innocuous,

something like, who likes socks?

And suddenly you'll get a slew of very enthusiastic answers

in either the affirmative or the negative

to otherwise fairly basic questions.

So I've compiled a possibly over the top list

of 63 things you didn't realize were autistic traits.

Let's get stuck into it

and we'll see how many apply to you.

So in no particular order,

always wearing bright colors.

Hating phone calls.

Not realizing you're hungry or thirsty.

Not replying to a text message,

but thinking about it for a week

until eventually deciding

that it's kind of probably too late to reply anyway.

Hating wearing socks or just seams in clothing in general.

Having an atypical sense of humor.

Telling the truth even when you probably shouldn't.

Feeling out of sync with everyone else in your group.

Having an aversion to or an obsession with popular culture.

Over-planning everything.

Not having a strong sense of gender.

Feeling tired all the time for no good reason.

Not liking being told what to do.

Did you teach yourself to read

before your first day of school?

Finding comfort in repetition and routine.

Struggling with crowds.

Seeing people as people

and kind of forgetting about social class and expectations

and all that kind of stuff.

Having super sensitive hearing.

Having a high pain tolerance.

Over apologizing and assuming everything must be your fault.

Not caring what people think.

Being really good at something that is completely useless.

Being deadpan sarcastic all the time.

Preferring face-to-face communication

to avoid misunderstanding.

Struggling to find an appropriate gap

in group conversation.

Constant background anxiety.

Being overly empathic.

Relating to animals better than you relate to humans.

Avoiding trying new things.

Eating the same food every day.

Finding inappropriate things funny.

Not liking to be touched.

A tendency to notice small details.

Hating fluorescent lights and downlights.

Always wanting to understand why.

Enjoying repetition.

Enjoying repetition.

Enjoying repetition.

Did I mention having a terrible sense of humor?

Yeah, okay.

Thinking in pictures.

Having a flat affect, also known as resting bitch face.

Preferring to pace up and down instead of sitting still.

Liking to imitate other people.

Having a favorite thing that goes with you everywhere.

Getting excited and interrupting people.

Going over social interactions again and again in your head

even after they've happened.

Seeing patterns in everything.

Having a very, very good memory for some things

and a terrible memory for other things.

Preferring nonverbal forms of communication.

Hating to brush your teeth.

Having a monotone voice.

Difficulty identifying your emotions

because they feel like they're all jumbled together.

Getting overwhelmed by too many tasks at once.

Watching the same movie or TV series over and over again.

Feeling awkward in groups.

Loving to think outside the box.

Having brilliant ideas that no one else

seems to be able to understand.

Struggling to read between the lines

in complex social situations.

Preferring written communication

because you can spend hours and hours perfecting

and saying exactly what you wanna say

in an attempt to try and avoid miscommunication.

Two-speed productivity.

Either super fast, super efficient, or nothing at all.

Compartmentalizing experiences

from different parts of your life.

Feeling comfortable being alone.

Being happy with very few material comforts.

Always finishing what you start

even when you should probably stop.

Scripting conversations in advance

or spending hours thinking about what you could have said

even after the moment has passed.

And finally, being the kind of person who people think,

how could someone so clever be so stupid?

Anyway, I could go on, but you get the idea.

Taken on their own, any one of these traits

would not be that uncommon in the general population,

but when you put them all together,

there's a certain magical quality that emerges.

And the only way to really experience it

is to hang around groups of autistic people.

You may have found that you were the exact opposite

of some of the traits that I mentioned,

which is in itself also a trait of autism

because we tend to be constantly either too much

or not enough in any given area.

For example, for children,

not talking by the time you go to school

is a sign of potentially autism.

And similarly, talking in full sentences at the age of two

is a sign of, well, possibly autism.

Anything outside of what is considered normal

is a sign of atypical development.

So anyway, after listening to this list,

if you're thinking, oh, maybe this might be me,

maybe I'm autistic myself,

and you'd like to explore that a bit further,

I recommend coming along to one of our social events

to see what a group of autistic people look like,

to see if you feel like you fit in

and try and get a sense of that undescribable

autistic quality for yourself.

Our online social group has regular Zoom catch-ups,

multiple every week,

and there are also fortnightly in-person events in Melbourne

that we host on meetup.com.

If you're not in Melbourne

and you'd like to start your own autistic meetup

in your city, then please get in touch.

It's a lot easier than you might think,

and I'd be happy to promote your group

on the Autism from the Inside Facebook page

so that others in your city can get to hear about it as well.

Well, that's it.

I might leave it there.

Let me know what you think of this video

and which traits resonated most strongly for you.

So thanks so much again for watching.

I'll make sure to put all the links

to the social activities I've mentioned

in the video description,

and I will see you again next week.

Bye.