 Hello everybody, welcome back to another video. With me, Mr Thomas Henley, on the Aspergis growth channel. Today we're going to be talking about Aspergis and Girls. What are those mysterious, independent, unique, sexy creatures that roam this earth? Yes, the Aspie Girl. Very strange intro. Due to the fact I want to make this a concise and quick as possible video, right to the point, I have made a list that is completely tailored to the female autistic person, rather than the male autistic person, because of this I will not be going over the general traits of autism. However, if you would like to have a look at those traits and you would like to refresh your knowledge on autism, head over to this little link over here and check it out. So now that you have possibly clicked that link and gone over to another video and checked out and come back, we're going to be talking about the specific differences between males and females. Whether you're coming onto here just to find out whether you could be autistic or not, maybe you have a little bit of an inclination, maybe you connect a little bit with what I'm saying about autism. You've seen a few other videos thinking, hey, I could be autistic, but I'm not sure. If you're a girl and you find yourself in that category, this is probably the video for you. But if you are a parent or a friend or you're just generally interested in autism, this could also be a very interesting video for yourselves. One of the problems with autism in girls is that it's extremely underdiagnosed. There are generally a few differences between males and females. First of all, females tend to be more emotional, more social. So they find emotion connecting with people a lot easier than guys. And because of this, the traits and signs of autism in girls is a lot more subtle, a lot more harder to see. And therefore, they go underdiagnosed quite a lot of their life and can even go their entire life without ever knowing that they're autistic. Guys tend to be diagnosed a lot more frequently than girls because we tend to be a bit rubbish at social interaction for a good portion of our lives. Whereas the girls, you're a little bit more adept at that. One of the reasons why girls tend to be underdiagnosed is because you guys, girls, you engage in social mimicry. It's a form of masking where basically at its core, you are copying other people in order to fit into a social situation, group, whatever. And it's a very good way of masking the fact that you're autistic and masking the fact that your brain is a little bit different to everybody's. The typical traits of autism in girls are very hard to spot. So it's a lot to do with more of the way that they conduct themselves, their behaviors and their thoughts, their thought patterns, the way that they interpret situations. The way that you can tell that you are socially mimicking is by looking at your social interactions. Do you get exhausted after maybe one or two hours of talking to people, maybe you've gone out, you've gone into town with your mates, and it's been maybe one or two hours, you've had quite good conversation of people. You're doing really well, you've got friends, you're popular or whatever. Sorry. But you find yourself extremely exhausted and afterwards you feel like you have to go hide in a hole for a day or two or a week or a month. Some extreme cases. This is because it takes a lot of mental energy to mimic. It takes a lot of mental energy to mask in general. Masking is more of a exam sort of style approach to social interaction. Most people who aren't autistic will go about their daily life interacting with people without much thought. Sure there'll be situations like job interviews where they have to act in a certain way and they will probably feel quite exhausted after that. But when it comes to us autistics it's pretty much every single conversation that we have. Sure after a while it's going to get a little bit easier and it's going to flow a little bit more but you tend to use a lot of energy sort of dissecting the situation, understanding how you should act and how you should respond, trying to understand the whole dynamic that's going in a group. And that's a very exhausting thing to do. You will also find that you are very good at fitting in. You will copy facial expressions, copy speech patterns and even copy body language. The typical example that I use to demonstrate this is a schoolyard. So if you have an autistic guy, an autistic girl, if one of one of their friends comes up comes up to the autistic guy and says hi there would you like to play a game? The guy will respond in a sort of monotone voice saying yes I would like to play with you or something along those lines it's a little bit exaggerated there but you get the picture. But when it comes to the autistic girl if one of her friends comes along and says hi there would you like to play a game? She will respond with yeah that sounds really good. She will copy the speech patterns, she will fit in and that does a lot for building connections with people and it also does a lot for masking the fact that they're autistic. Honestly if you've gone your whole life thinking that this is the way that most people conduct themselves it's going to be pretty hard for you to think of it in another sort of light. One of the other ways that you can tell that you are masking or mimicking is that you will find that you'll have quite large differences in your communication style in different situations. If you're going to a sports club you'll find that you'll have a different personality and way of behaving for that situation if you go to school and it's in your inner certain group you'll have a typical way of interacting in that group and these situations differ quite drastically. They are different in non-autistics but it's a lot more dramatic so for example you could be quite outgoing and chatty and bubbly in your group at school but when you come home you could be quite sort of withdrawn, quiet, shy, focused on your interests and that is a good way of telling that you are engaging in social mimicry. You'll also find that due to the stress, natural stress that autistics have from social interaction you'll find yourself staying on the periphery of groups. You'll find yourself finding little corners sort of hiding and interacting with people in your own time. You'll also find that you have a little bit of a delay in your processing and responses during a social situation. These responses will be very detailed and long and this is why we call it monologuing and the tendency to go into extreme detail and monologue for hours and hours and hours bit of an exaggeration is quite an autistic trait. You may also find that you have special interests now although a lot of people have hobbies and things that they like autistics tend to gravitate around a set few or maybe one special interest that you have and this special interest is likely to be not involved with the group that you're in for example at school all of the girls are into trading card games. I'm just giving an example I'm not saying they are going to but it's more of a typical guy thing but if all of your friends are into trading cards sure you'll join then and you'll you'll get in on all the action but in your own time you'll have something that's quite important to you, something very different, something that people wouldn't expect you to like and you'll be very good or have a lot of knowledge about it. One of the more typical autistic stereotypes is that we tend to be a little bit more intelligent and verbal. A lot of autistic girls actually learn to read before they go into school this is called hyperlexia. They tend to have a lot more of an advanced vocabulary they tend to have a lot higher of an intelligence and they tend to excel in a lot of subjects that they are passionate about like really excel. If you find yourself consistently at the top of the class or you find yourself getting a lot of compliments from your friends or family or teachers that you are quite intelligent and bright for your age it could be a sign that you're autistic. One of the other traits of Asperger's syndrome is a tendency to deviate from social norms. This is because autistics don't generally understand the points of social norms. We like to go with what we like rather than what everybody else likes and although there are a lot of people who feel the same way and may not be autistic if you find that your opinions and interests and dress sense and whatever is quite different to the the normal sort of dress or interests of other people this could be a sign that you may be autistic. One of the common stereotypes of Asperger's in girls is that they tend to be a bit more bossy and controlling than your average person. They may quite often be described as a teacher's pet in school talking in a somewhat adult-like fashion to their fellow students. This is generally down to two reasons. One is autistics have a problem with mind blindness. Mind blindness is a concept where if you know something you expect other people to know it because it's right rather than the fact that they don't know it. For example if you know that the amount of things that I'm holding behind my back is two there's two here you will expect everybody else to know that what you have behind your back is two just because there is two behind your back. This is because you don't take into account other people's experiences you only focus on what is true and what is the fact rather than what other people may know. This can be quite a problem as if someone on the playground you know at school or given a school environment again does something that you don't like or something that you know. There may be more likely to create rules or boundaries to situations in order to feel more comfortable. We generally have a very inflexible mind meaning that we need boundaries for our creativity. Children play in order to grow their creative minds and to develop their social skills but in autistic people we need rules we need set boundaries. The autistic kid will likely create some rules before going into sort of a place scenario and going about and you know playing whatever and they will get very annoyed if someone breaks these rules and that comes across as being quite bossy or controlling. They may also adhere to the rules of the school so if they're in a classroom and there is a set amount of rules that their children have to follow and rules that everybody knows they are likely to try and enforce those rules hence the tying in of the teacher's pet into the aspergist world. So those are the basic sort of signs that you can look for signs of asperger syndrome in girls. There are some other signs but they're a little bit more on the tentative side that's the right adjective. Mood disorders in adolescents tend to be quite an across the board norm for autistic people. It's very highly likely that autistic girls or autistics in general will have an anxiety disorder. Second to that is a major depressive disorder or depression and it's very likely in kids and this may be down to the differences in our biology but it may also be down to our likelihood to be bullied and have a negative experience at school. If you imagine growing up and you know sort of fitting in all your life and not really having much problems getting to teenage hood everybody's changing and you just can't understand why and why people are changing and what the difference is in in the social dynamics around you it can be a very scary and unpredictable place hence the anxiety. A long-term experience with anxiety can cause depression as it is quite written about in the literature but it's also a result of feeling quite isolated and feeling like you don't really fit in with society and there's nothing more autistic than not feeling like everyone gets you or not feeling like you get other people. It's also quite highly linked to eating disorders in girls. Eating disorders being like anorexia, bulimia, overeating all of those things are a little bit more common in girls than guys and this is typically because girls have a lot more of an image problem they focus a lot more on how they look therefore eating disorders are a lot more common in autistic girls. Another one of the frightening statistics is that there is a shockingly high amount of sexual abuse in girls. It's not very fun for me to highlight this and talk about it but I think it is important for you to know the higher likelihood of sexual abuse could be down to a number of factors possibly due to the their appearance of being quite socially immature or naive through a difficulty in understanding social interactions and having a lack of stranger danger and built in them they can also struggle with getting hints from other people and so for example if you were going to a club or something and you were just there to have a nice time and dance and someone asks would you like to come back and watch a Netflix or something you would think hey that's you know Netflix I'd like to do that in a matter of fact it could be for another reason and some people might not get that if you have emphasized with any of the things that I've been saying today on the video that you're watching you may be autistic but the only real surefire way to know is if you try and get a diagnosis you can watch some of my other videos about me talking about different aspects of being autistic and if you find that you feel a little bit more connected and you empathize with what I'm saying a little bit it might be a good shout to look into it more and try and try and dissect your own brain to you know figure out whether you you want to go and get a diagnosis or not it can be a little bit of a stressful situation to be analyzed by somebody but in the long run it can have a lot of benefits for yourself in terms of help at school help at work and just general understanding of yourself your flaws your strengths how to play to both of them to make your life um a little bit more easy and to help you get the most out of your time on this earth the last thing that I want to say before ending this video is there is a lot higher of a likelihood of being bullied there are differences between male and female bullying males tend to be a bit more physically abusive girls tend to be a bit more emotionally abusive sort of going for character attacks in order to embarrass people um or you know spread stuff about someone to devalue them in the eyes of other people and affect their social lives if you find that you have been you know bullied quite a few times at school you find that you seem to be the target of a lot of harassment and uncomfortable situations it could be a sign that you're autistic it's it's very unfortunately quite a synonymous thing with autism being bullied being misunderstood and alienated but hopefully learning a little bit more about yourself and a little bit more as I've said about your strengths and flaws it's going to help a lot so I hope you enjoyed this video I hope you found it helpful you have no idea how many times I have tried to shoot this video I am definitely not in the right mindset for making a video today I'm not in the in the flow of talking I'm not in the flow of conversation today and it's um I've probably redone this video about 11 or 12 times so I hope it came out as well as I think it has and I hope that you have took something away from this video and it's been inspired you to look into autism a little bit more hopefully this will help you on the way to getting a diagnosis if you're pretty sure that you are autistic if not um I hope that your understanding that you get from this video about autistics will help you communicate better and um generally have a better relationship with any autistic people that you come across or our friends with if you like the video please make sure to like it then I will know that you like it and I will try and make more of these videos if you want me to make some more videos on autism in girls please let me know I can make some videos that are a little bit more tailored a little bit more specific to each individual trait but in general I will mostly be going back um to my usual content unless you guys really smash that like button then I will I will try my best to make more if you want to see some more videos from myself make sure to smash that subscribe button just absolutely pound it into dust only joking you need to be tender and then let's give that little bell next to it a little bit of a ding a little bit of ding that bell ding it ding that bell and then you will get notifications when my very infrequent videos come out and if you have any questions about Aspergers and girls maybe you have some stories that you want to tell me so that I can you know sort of dissect your traits and try and help you a little bit in your journey to diagnosis please put it down in the comments I'm always very open to having a dialogue I'll just want to show you story go for it do it it's very overused meme it's very very very late meme not good meme bad meme but anyway this has been very sweaty very tired and annoyed at myself tom for some reason cut seemed to string his words together properly today and if you find yourself struggling with stringing words together maybe you're autistic maybe you're not see in the next video goodbye