 Hello everybody, welcome back to another video. I'm Thomas Henley from Asperger's Growth and today we're going to be going through 10 signs that you may have autism. Before I get started on the video, I just want to introduce myself to you guys for anybody who's a new subscriber or just someone finding this on the internet and saying, oh this looks pretty good, this is what I'm looking for. I was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome when I was 10 years old. I still remember it to this day. I went to this psychologist's place. It was pretty fun. They asked me lots of questions. After the whole assessment and stuff, my mom took me to McDonald's. She sat me down. It took a bit of a while for her to explain about it but she told me that I had autism and I had Asperger's syndrome and at the time I remembered feeling an overwhelming sense of relief. I was relieved because I had felt different for a very long time from the rest of society and just normal people. I didn't feel like any kids at that age, definitely not any kids at that age, understood me and I felt like a lot of the kids were very illogical and they were just... I didn't completely understand them. For the most of it I was feeling very isolated and when my mom told me, even at the age of 10, being so young I could explain why I was feeling like this. So this is the reason why I'm making this video. Many people out there will be thinking, oh you're just diagnosing people willy-nilly. You're going to cause more harm than good. You shouldn't put labels on people. But in this case it can be a very good source of relief and understanding about yourself. Let yourself know that there are people out there like you who have experiences like you, who think like you. It's a very nice thing to be a part of. Number one, you find that when people tell you to follow your intuition, follow what you feel inside, generally it doesn't have the same effect that it would have on a lot of people. Apart from just being logically driven, most human beings, most people who aren't autistic, they have some sort of emotional intuition about people. Autistics don't have the best sense of telling non-direct communication and we don't get a lot of input from our emotional environment. Learning is very logical and follows a linear path and needs to have evidence for things. Just go with the flow. I don't want the flow. I want to direct this flow. I want it to be a nice, steady stream down the stream, down to wherever I want it to go. And I don't want to follow the flow. I want to have control over myself and I want to know why I'm doing stuff. Number two, you are a direct talker. You communicate directly with your voice to another person. Now, you may be thinking, hey, this is not a trait that's just for autistic people. You know, you've got those confident, direct type of talking people as a mouthful and they talk directly and they get straight at the point. The difference with an autistic person is that this is our only way of communicating. When you have autism, your ability to comprehend body language, facial expressions, tonality and context is very low and you don't really pick up on a lot of things and because of that, you don't generally learn anything like that when you're a kid and a lot of your communication is very direct and there's no sort of hidden message and no sort of, you know, if you say something like, yeah, I like you. You wouldn't say that, you just say, I'm not really sure if I like you or not. It's kind of a big difference, you know, you once talk directly or that's the only way of you talking. So if you find yourself more in this little category over here, it could be that you're autistic. Number three. You are a direct, I've already done that once, you think about everything like you are a scientist. You think about stuff for a long time and you think about stuff in a lot of detail from different angles and basically anything that you take an interest on or is important to you or forms your opinions. You will spend a lot of time thinking about every factor, every little nook and cranny that goes into that thing. This is because autistics generally tend to be very, very hyper-analytical. A lot of people who don't understand autism will view us and the way that we communicate and the way that we talk and the way that we go about ourselves is very over the top and unnecessary. We need to understand stuff to feel comfortable in what we're doing and the reasons for why we're doing stuff. And that can lead us to develop a sort of progressive way of learning human emotion and human communication or just anything in general and that can transfer into your adult life and make you very hyper-analytical about everything. If you find that people are not really understanding why you think about stuff so much and telling you you're just overthinking, you've got anxiety, you've got depression, you've got low self-esteem, if you don't have all that, you might be autistic. But if you do, there's some other traits that you can look for. And that brings us on to numero four. You fit one of the two ASPY stereotypes. Now, for anybody who doesn't know, if you don't know what ASPY means, it's an abbreviation of aspergis, which is a type of autism, type of high-functioning autism. Generally, most people who are... most of you guys that are Googling and YouTubeing this kind of stuff will have a degree of functioning that makes you uncertain about whether you're autistic or not. And these people are usually ASPYs or people with aspergis. High-functioning autism, if you're looking at the DSM-5. I have got a good consensus of, you know, two types of aspergist people. I'm not saying that everybody fits into a singular category or that there is only two categories. So the number one stereotype is the confident ASPY. So if you find yourself to be very direct talking, you tend to feel comfortable being alone. You may not have anxiety. You may not have any of the other mental health problems or issues. But you find yourself sort of lacking in understanding of the world. You tend to be very hyper-focused on something. You don't tend to take in other things that are happening and other people's needs. People generally have a bit of a charm associated, a bit of a charm around you being, you know, apparently very confident in yourself. Your quality of life is alright, but you kind of sense that something's about us. The second ASPY type is somebody who really, really, really, really, really, really wants emotional connection with people. And they do not like being alone. They don't like to feel alone. They don't like to feel alienated. They don't want to be alone. These types of people generally find themselves in childhood, accumulating a lot of emotional trauma and emotional issues being bullied. You know, if you're a direct ASPY, you may just say, oh, he's an idiot, and we're going to listen to him. But for some of us, we're very hurt by people's actions. When we're a kid, because kids are so illogical in general and they think more of their emotions and they don't really think about what they're doing and why they're doing it, it can be very hard for an autistic to comprehend that stuff when you're a kid and it can lead to you making a lot of assumptions about people in general, about yourself and generally just feeling very sensitive and hurt by everything. However, on the flip side, you do find that you very much try in a lot of social situations. You try and put yourself out there into the world. You try to find people that are like-minded and understanding and just generally make you feel like you're part of, you know, you're part of the human race. Number 5. High 5. Panic and anxiety seems to come out of nowhere. It's not just constrained to anxiety or, you know, being scared or being fearful. It can be anything. It can be anger. You know, you could just have random outbursts of rage that you have no idea where it came from. And here's the thing. People around you may notice that you're getting stressed. They may see that you're getting stressed. You may even think, oh, maybe I'm getting a bit stressed. I'm not really sure. For example, if you're working on a project or something, you're doing some homework. Anything. And you get this looming feeling that you're a bit stressed and you're not really sure if it's going to be stress or whether it's increasing or decreasing. So you carry on what you're doing despite these emotions brewing up in the background and then suddenly it all just becomes too much. You don't know what you're doing. You can't use your brain. Your brain stops functioning. This can come out in different ways. You can have a panic attack. You can have an intense burst of rage. I haven't really heard of anybody having a meltdown, which is the technical term, over being happy. But, you know, I'm open to anybody who may have experienced that. But yeah, if you find yourself getting overwhelmed and not realizing that your emotions are building up and not doing anything about it, it could be autistic. Number six. Yes, we've passed the halfway point. And for this next point, it is... You get hyper-focused when there's something that's interesting you. You'll go into scientific, logical, machine mode when you find something interesting and you will not stop reading about that thing. You will not stop trying to understand that thing or working on that thing until you're dead. You get so, so, so interested in something that it becomes hard to steer away from it for regular functioning. You may just neglect all areas of life in order to focus on this one important, interesting subject. Almost to the point of obsession. People like to label it with obsession, autistic obsessions. I like to think of it as really intense passion and concentration. Which I think is a very useful tool. Maybe you're interested in being a super skilled, super hacker and you're going to hack all the banks in the world and take all the money. I don't know what you're into, but you find it very interesting. There's another side to this. You may find that you're not having this stable obsession with something. For a lot of people, it might not be just one thing. It could be multiple things at the same time, different times of day, different times of the week, different times of the year. For example, maybe at one point you watch a movie and you see someone who is amazing at maths, who's amazing at physics and builds a rocket or builds a robot and you're saying to yourself I could do that. I'm going to do that. So you plunge yourself into the mathematical world and physics world and work at it straight for about two or three days and then something else comes up and you're like, oh, this is fun. This guy came from nothing. He was physically damaged and now he's an athlete. I could be an athlete. So if you find yourself in either of these two groups, it might be autistic. Number seven, you find the general public, the media, people in general to be very logical and sometimes very annoying. Autistic people generally are very narrow minded, meaning that you're not very easily swayed by emotion. You're not very easily swayed by different people's points of view. Your point of view is from logic and that makes your point of view superior to everybody else's. And it's very hard for someone to convince you unless they use solid logic. Now because of this you can feel very much like you're surrounded by a bunch of gorillas or just some very emotionally driven creatures. If you find yourself falling into these four patterns of just looking at the general media and just being like voice happening just in every single aspect of it hey, you were there why are you watching this? It's stupid. How can you find this entertaining? Number eight you do not like or use non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication being context, facial expressions, tone of voice and just anything that isn't direct communication of words. And people just generally don't understand that when you want to say something that that is the extent of your opinion or the extent of how you feel on something. You know if they say something in words and assume something else from their body language or facial expressions that you haven't noticed other people will understand that but for you if someone says something verbally to you and that's not true it can be very hurtful because that is the only way that you really find comfort in communicating even if they look visibly sad and they're saying that they're not sad it can be very confusing for you and you know you can you can either take it as they're lying to you or you know you just boggled by the confusion of it all and it can be a great endurance to your ability to socialise and make friends and make relationships because people don't understand how much your brain works like this. Number 9 we're nearly at the end of the video hang on with me and if you like this video like and subscribe and let's get rid of that stuff let's stop that YouTube why is that happening? Anyway, you find routine part of your general well-being you feel at your best when you have routine and you know what you're doing and you fulfil that routine you feel a sense of accomplishment and you can rest easy at night knowing that you've completed this routine that you've set yourself now it doesn't have to be in words it doesn't have to be like a structured list or anything of things but it's something mental that you've you know I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do this and then this and that gives you a good grounding it makes you feel good and stops your mind from racing over to random subjects I'm very bad at setting routines but I also like routines it's a very complex relationship that I have with routines and when somebody that evil person wants to change your routine it's you know you might let it slide because you know this happens in life and you realise this but it makes you feel so horrible inside you have a plan, you know what you're doing today and your mum comes along or your significant other comes along and say I've planned to do this I want to do this today I want to do this today and if you don't want to do this I'm gonna be sad if you find that that happens quite a lot and you get very stressed and annoyed when people trying to disrupt your routine even if it's just something simple like you know something and someone says well can you just come do the dishes with me or can you just pop and get me a tea or go do your room go clean the room you find it very destabilising and it's very hard to come back from those kind of things you find it hard to get back into your routine and you might go to bed feeling quite bad about it my god it's been a long video it's been a long time here sitting down and punching over right now but there's this little annoying light in the corner that I can cover like that but I'm sure it's annoying you as well so I'm very sorry about that if that's detracting from the quality of the video and that sounds really sarcastic doesn't it but it's not it's not sarcastic I'm very sorry number 10 this is the most important thing for me do you find complex emotions very very hard to understand maybe even simple emotions and do you find that it's very hard for you to notice when you're in a specific emotion the only way that I can feel what emotion I'm in unless it's very extreme so if I'm very sad then obviously I can feel it but it has to be very strong for me to feel an emotion in general if I'm in a bad mood or I'm sad or I'm happy it's very hard for me to understand what that means if you feel like all of your emotions the only way that you can tell that you're in a certain emotion is through physical feelings if you're anxious then you might get a tense feeling and that indicates that you're anxious basically what is it people we don't have a very good consciousness of our emotional brain it doesn't have as big of an input into our decision making and how we're living our life because there's a lot more heavy influence from the logic end of stuff which makes it so hyper analytical and explains a lot about our behaviour can make things very complex people like myself who really value emotion and human communication this can be a very difficult thing because how can you relate to somebody when you don't know what it feels to have the thing you're trying to relate to someone I'm not working that very well but I hope you get the gist of that we can't we can't communicate our emotions and it can be very hard to understand people when they don't explain their emotions to the extent that we do you generally feel a lot of empathy with people and a lot of people don't recognise that in you it's an emotional awareness disability and it's an emotional communication disability in both ways both outwards from yourself and both inwards from other people and it can make social communication and understanding emotions extremely difficult for autistic people so it's the end of the video I'm so sad to see you go I hope you'll stay on my channel you'll watch some other stuff and if you're a new person watching this thank you so much for just watching it and I hope I really do hope that if you're coming from the standpoint that autism is bad and autism is not a good thing just do a bit more research and a bit more soul searching if you have found out that you're autistic and you're very pretty much sure after this list that you are make sure to get a diagnosis first or it's alright and it's okay and if that's too difficult make sure that you reach out to other people and try and talk and communicate and sort of come to a conclusion about that sort of stuff there's lots of valuable information out there on autism and there's lots of social media sites and groups and forums that can offer a lot of support especially when you you don't know you're not really sure you don't know if you're autistic it's not a case of trying to label people labelling helps in this case because it makes you feel it makes you understand the ways that you're different from other people and understand the ways that you're like other people and you can communicate you can accurately find people who may be very similar to you and have very similar experiences and emotional experiences that you can relate to actually have this information that you are autistic you can do a bit more work you can do some work on your social skills if you're lacking in that and you can find some way of removing this horrible light effect that's going across my face and again I'm very sorry about that you go away but anyway, as I said if you find this video helpful please give it a like let me know that you found it helpful if you're experiencing the comments I'm very open to communicating with my subscriber base if you want to talk to me subscribe comment down below, tell me what's going on if you don't feel like that's too much you can go over to my facebook channel channel, page, whatever and you can like that and send me a message a personal message, I will get back to you on that I'll be very, very excited to have you as a new subscriber hope you find it useful and I'll see you in the next video