 Good afternoon chaps and chapesses. Welcome back to the Asperger's Growth channel with me, Mr Thomas Henley. Today, we're going to be talking about the eccentricity of the autistic mind. Have I said that right? I don't know, but I'm going to keep going with that. Going to keep it going. A lot of socially advanced autistic people can usually slip under the radar of any sort of professionals, autism detection radar, and sometimes even autistic people. For the most part, for most people in general, wider society, these people just seem to be a little bit eccentric, a little bit strange, quirky, unique. And today I'm going to give you a personal story about someone that I know that I like very much indeed and I think they're great, but I'm going to explain just how this occurs and give you sort of a personal story side to it so that it's a bit more understandable. Asperger's syndrome to many people in research is classified as the invisible disability. So a lot of people on the autistic spectrum, they don't even think it's a disability. Where am I? I'm sort of in the middle, you know, there's good things and bad things. But that's beside the point. Autistic people can learn social skills. We can learn what to do in different scenarios. It's just that we find it a little bit more stress provoking, difficult, uncontrollable. We find socializing difficult. We do. There are some things about socializing that we can't always grasp. But if we spend time in an environment that we know very well, we do some research or we learn about people and critically analyze ourselves. We need to do it in order to get ourselves out in the world, get friends, have relationships, have good work relationships as well with our colleagues, you know, going about and getting money and not really feeling like you want to hang around them. Great relationships. But although we do struggle, a lot of people see autistic people as being sort of linked in very heavily with not being able to socialize, being outcasted, being alienated. And for a lot of autistic people, this rings true. It's just that there is a small, you know, not a small and minority of autistic people who have wets on these things. And for a lot of people, they can't tell. Because a lot of the signs are very socially visible, you can see. Of course, there's that other stuff, you know, just being a bit more single minded, being a little bit sort of unemotional and robotic and wanting to dissect everything that's meaningful in life into cold logic. But those things sort of get swept under the rug when people read about what autism is about. Because a lot of the problems come from the social stuff, as well as the sensory stuff. But that's more of a childhood issue for most people. Not most people, but you can't see it. We deal with it on our own, spinning around in a little bedrooms. Satisfying those sensory needs. So without rambling too much on as I do when I keep going on and saying words and other words and making links and associations, let's get into some concrete example of this eccentric, very well socially developed person. One of my friends, one of my friends that I'm very close to, he's awesome. He hosts parties, you know, he's got a girlfriend, he's got loads of friends, he's got people that he's very close to, he's very socially active, and he's got a job and is very well stable. When I met him, I wasn't too sure about what he was about. I wasn't sure whether he was just eccentric or autistic. It only came to, you know, only came to light when he actually told me about this. And I was partially surprised, because I'd never come across someone who had such a high level of social understanding, and also being autistic. Very much cognitive dissonance in my mind at that point. But it was very interesting for me. One of the things that I first noticed was the very robotic, rigid eye contact. So this means, although the eye contact was very good, and he could sort of look around and when he was talking to people, when he was, you know, telling a story to a group, he would look around and he would do all of the things that are really important for telling a story. When it came to situations where the eye contact was not there, it was very robotic and fleeting, meaning that it was more like, rather than sort of smooth transitions. And that was one of the first things that I was very confused about. The second is that he's very strong-minded. But one of the issues that I've found with that for other people is that it can sometimes be misconstrued into being rude. He will regularly tell people that his opinions, whether it's the norm, or whether it's, you know, something that's away from the norm. That's a very admirable thing to do. But it's not something that everybody does, even the people who do express their opinions. Because it was to anybody, it was to anybody in the group, in the place, he would tell them their opinion, his opinion, which is good. It's not bad. The centricity of this character, this person, this amazing man, lovely guy, comes in different forms. There's someone else that I know that's on the autistic spectrum who is fairly socially active and does sort of the same thing, but is a lot more relaxed about it. There are a few things that they share in common. Firstly, they have interests in things, and they are not afraid to show that they are interested in it, whether it be collections of pillows or, you know, obsessions with, I don't know, rocks, could be. They want to display that they like it. They'll buy things that are related to it, they'll display them, they'll wear things that are related to it. But most people wouldn't sort of gravitate around that just because it's not cool, or the norm. Which is a very cool thing, I think. Don't you? I'm sure you do. If you don't, get off my channel. You losers. Now, I'm just kidding. I love you. I love you dearly. Another thing is very repetitive body movements. So if an autistic person has gone about learning how to use their hands and their body posture and their eye contact, then it will always be in a very sort of similar fashion all the time. Meaning that if they are talking to somebody in a bar with a mate or something, it will look very similar to how they would do a presentation, or how they would talk in an interview, all of these areas of their life, which most people differentiate into different ways of acting, they act the same throughout. And that is something that I've come across with recently, not recently, about a year ago, but in general terms, in terms of the entire lifetime of the planet, it's a very short time. This also comes out in the fashion. I know I've said about the, you know, t-shirts relating to things that they like, but they will often dress in ways that they like as well, not being confined to the average way that someone should dress or the proper and attractive way that someone should dress. They'll put on what they want to put on and they'll run with it. Now, if you think of the character, if you think of the eccentric man, okay, you know, sort of a rich guy with a cane and a top hat and a fancy colorful suit with a bit of a mustache and a monocle who very much like studying birds, you can kind of see the comparison to an autistic person in these two accounts I've talked about. You'll also find that that particular stereotype of that eccentric rich man also comes in his mannerisms, so he will speak in a way that seems a little bit over the top or have opinions that are a little bit over the top and well not over the top but different and he will explain that and he will talk about what he wants to talk about and be upfront about things and direct. That sounds very much like an autistic person, if I'm going to be honest. It's just that not all autistic people fit that stereotype of quickness and weirdness, uniqueness, eccentricism, eccentric people. This eccentric behavior is very tightly linked to autistic people in general. It's just that those who you don't pick up as being autistic but are eccentric, maybe they are autistic, maybe they do have Asperger's syndrome. Not everybody, of course, and that is not a signal for a diagnostic tool of yourself or anybody around you. I'm just making this work because I thought it was interesting. Thank you very much for watching this guys. Social media accounts down there. If you want to leave a like, you want to leave Old Tommy Boy a like and try and push his videos out into the world, go ahead and do that. If you don't like it, give it a dislike. I don't care, son. I don't care. And if you want to give me your opinion of this, maybe you've got some stories about people that you know or some stories about your own eccentric behavior or strangeness, your uniqueness, embrace it as I do. Notice that you are strange and you're weird and you are quirky and just live your life. It's fun. It's good. Everyone's so boring nowadays with their big puffy coats and their burberry hats and sportswear. The impending nihilism is entering my mind once more. Again, thank you very much for watching. Hope you guys are doing good. Let me know what you think of this video and I'll see you in the next video. See you later.