 Do you find that post-diagnosis or upon entering into the autistic community and widening your horizons, understanding about different aspects of autism, that after a while you start to get the feeling for it. You start to identify it in people around you. Now, it's not something that you actively think, it's just something that kind of catches you at times. You've sort of gone through life, you've been surrounded by neurotypicals all your life and now you have solid lists of things that are expressed on the exterior that you know about. You're obviously going to be able to pick it up and if it's something that you personally struggle with or something that's different about you or something that you're really good at and the other person has it, it kind of sets off that little radar in your head to think, they seem a little bit neurodiverse to me and although I'm talking about it in the context of autism, it can be for a lot of different neurodiversities like ADHD. So when I'm using my trusty little specter, I love that name. I find that there are a few key things that I look out for. Number one, intense or low eye contact. We either tend to be one of the other side, it's very rare to come across an autistic person who has like perfect eye contact, like knows when to make it, knows when to break it. So the majority of us tend to make either way too much or way too little. Number two is worm walking or bobbing. This is something that I see a lot, a lot on the street and there was a really funny moment when I was in the car with my lovely mother and I saw someone walking down the street and there was sort of bobbing up and down and they had some headphones on. They had a pretty long haircut for you know most most men around around my town and I was like hmm I bet that person's autistic mom because we were kind of talking about it. I was saying that I can pick up on it. Just like oh no you can't say that. You can't say that. You know you can't stereotype someone just by the way that they look on the outside and all that and then she took a look herself and it was someone that she used to teach as a special needs teacher. So that was a really funny occurrence and I find that you know bobbing when walking when you you can't really walk in a straight line you sort of worm from side to side. It's a very good indicator of some difference in your vestibular, your balance or your proprioceptive ability knowing where your body is. Bonus points for someone who knocks into things constantly. Number three processing time. How long does it take them to reply to you? Do they look like they're struggling to understand things given the pace of the conversation? Do you find that they are much better to talk to when they are one to one in a very low pressure environment with not a lot of competition for speaking like a group situation? I find that that processing time is the way that I usually find out if someone is a little bit neurodiverse, a little bit neuro spicy. I can really pick up on that and sometimes it's either that they don't reply very quickly in terms of autism or if it's ADHD, it tends to be that they start speaking and then they sort of backtrack and process what you said. It's a very hard thing to explain and I think it's very individual things so I don't like to give definitive ideas on how to spot somebody. These are just the ways that I do. Number four direct communication focus. Do you find that they are very very direct when you're speaking to them? There doesn't have to be an aggressive way. They just tell you exactly what you're asking them when you ask them. Sounds very silly. They don't really cut corners. They don't really sort of dress up what they're trying to tell you and if you ask them how their day was and ask them how they're feeling, they're a lot more likely to give you an honest answer and actually give you an idea of what's going on in their life which for most people it can be a little bit off-putting but for me, for a lot of people it's kind of refreshing and it's nice to be around someone like that. Number five sensory distress or equipment. This is another thing calling back to my little story about me and my mom in the car. Yes that person was wearing headphones. Yes that person had a cuddly toy with them. Pretty pretty good indicators that they have some sort of sensory difference. It doesn't necessarily have to be distress but if you find that you perhaps you go to a house party and this person is always in the corner somewhere in a room that's quieter, in a place that's quieter. Maybe they're a smoker and they go out for a cigarette more than most people would. It may be that they are struggling with the environment whether it be too noisy or too bright or too many people, too much touching in like a nightclub or something. That's a really good indicator for me. Number six, yes info dumping and monologues. Very easy thing to explain. Do they get really excited when you mention something that they like and do they talk a lot about it and give you a lot of information that you didn't ask for? That's basically what info dumping is and it's very very nice for an autistic person to info dump because we are very proud of what we know and how well we know things and it's always nice to talk about our special interest. On the other side it could be that we really just speak in monologues. It doesn't necessarily have to be just the person speaking for the entire time that you're speaking that you're having a conversation. It could be that one person speaks for about two or three minutes and then the other person speaks for another two or three minutes. It's a bit more exaggerated than that case but you kind of get the gist of what I'm trying to say. Number seven, cutting into conversations abruptly or clunky wise. We're not very good at knowing when it's the right time to enter and exit a situation and even if we do we often don't have the processing time in order to get ourselves into those situations. It always comes to a point where well not always but a lot of the time it comes to a point where we talk over somebody and we say sorry or they say sorry and then one of us gets to speak and it's very dictated on the people that you're around because as you can imagine if the other person wants to speak and they really like themselves a lot you're probably not going to get a much of a word of it in edge ways basically. I'm not saying that this this person that I'm talking about is an autistic person I'm just saying that for us like trying to tackle those situations and actually become a part of the conversation it can be really difficult sometimes and it's something that I pick up on a fair bit in the people I've located with my little specter. Number eight, yes we've got a couple more and then we're going to go into some more bits about sort of tricky groups to identify and why. Fixed routines. If someone's got a fixed routine it's always it's always either something to do with autism or to do with OCD or like that I'm sure that there are some other ways of being that diagnosis is that that have that as a part of of the diagnosis but for the most part you know combining all of these things together and you know taking them as like points in your brain it kind of kind of builds a full picture so all of these things are not not something to be analysing in isolation it's a combination of different things that I just naturally do in my brain when I'm speaking to somebody I'm like oh I can see that oh there it is collected together probably autistic and I haven't come across a situation where I've been wrong apart from perhaps instances where I have encountered someone who has a diagnosis that I don't really know about like for example my girlfriend at the moment has dyspraxia and it's not as well documented as autism and it does seem to have some of the traits that are related to being autistic but it's not exactly autism it's very very strange that's not saying that she's well she is a bit strange but so am I. The last thing that I want to talk about is mirroring speech and behaviour. Do you find that the person you're speaking to if you if you perhaps have a softer voice if you perhaps a female if you perhaps a more femme than mask and they're speaking to you and they have sort of a high-pitched voice and they kind of copy things that you're saying sayings that you're saying that you you know don't expect other people to say and you're like oh who's well why are they why are they doing that or like you you start having a different facial expression or you go to take a drink and the other person does the same it could be that they are mirroring you then you're trying to compensate for poor social skills or poor cognitive empathy or you know anything like that and so they are mirroring your behaviour and speech in order to get on with you better it's something that autistic people do but it's also something that some manipulators do for their own nefarious reasons but as I said in combination looking at all the different aspects you can have a pretty good idea of who's autistic and who isn't. So knowledge of these traits obviously it's more of a fun it's more fun than anything unless you're a teacher unless you're actually working with like children or working with adults or like in the mental health fields like psychotherapy counseling things like that it can actually be quite helpful because some people do do slip under the radar um everyone's spec radar basically and you might be the person to actually identify it and bring it to light and possibly make a massive change to their life but for most of us to sort of going throughout the day um it may also be a way to make friends because there's a highly likely if they're undiagnosed and you know they're similar to you that you're probably gonna get on or understand certain things about about each other just innately just like neurotypicals do with each other so it's you know it can sometimes be a really positive thing it's not a positive thing wait if you go spec doors off spec doors off you put a mark on them and then you like shove them into the psychotherapy like hey this gb i found 10 different people on the streets that i think are autistic and there's like an old man just like oh my god i haven't been out my house in like 10 years like i don't want this like no i like my life i'd be like oh i don't care you'll have to experience the same positive things that i have yeah we don't want to do that i guess one of the the next things to talk about is what are some tricky groups to identify uh where have i gone wrong in terms of knowing if someone's autistic high-level maskers yes if you've heard of masking it is the axe well it's basically autist autistic masking is the act of hiding your autistic traits right a very nasty thing it can sometimes be beneficial but it does always leave you feeling extremely disillusioned with life not really connecting with people on a deep level and you know just sort of a lot of mental health issues basically and people who mask a lot hide their autism very very well and so it's not always easy to tell if they're autistic makes sense the second one is people with multiple neurodiversities you may come across different channels different uh social media people different online people different people in person and um you know you try to get advice about autism and you try to you look at all the posts that they create and you're like you know some things some things they they kind of resonate with me a little bit and then they say another thing like they're not and you kind of feel like you're a bit of an imposter but having multiple neurodivergencies is is very very well you can imagine the very variability between autistic people and then adding another another condition or another state of being or you know things for some another neurodiversity like ADHD uh there's going to be some conflict in the ways that those traits sort of appear and sometimes it's quite hard to kind of tease out exactly what it is you can kind of tell the different but you you don't know if they're autistic or ADHD or just some strange individual that you've you've never really come across another group is those of a different culture yes it's going to be even more difficult to connect and understand each other because not only do you have differences in your brain to the other person but you also have cultural differences you know having having those things it kind of makes a bit difficult to to to build a good sort of long lasting friendship and relationship because there's so many barriers in the way but it not not saying that you can't do it you know your spectrum may be off because you're not calibrating it to the culture you know perhaps if you lived in Germany for two years perhaps you'd be a bit more acclimatized to the culture you kind of know what most people are like and so you'd be able to pick out the people who don't really fit that mold so sometimes it's very difficult in that sense another thing is all the people it could kind of tie into masking but if you grow and you matured and you've experienced a lot of bad things and you've learned and you've become tough and strong and mentally mentally you know mentally very strong um happy to be by yourself kind of going about through life always feeling like a weirdo but not really caring those kind of people they can be a really really hard spot um especially if you're not aware of you know what it's like for someone to be late diagnosed the last thing is if they have developed their social skills if they've gone online if they've whipped on cognitive empathy which you can actually improve quite a lot if you didn't know you can you can actually understand indirect communication you just need to practice it both theoretically wise and practically wise and then you also have all those stuff around body language and actually expressing it on the outside and sometimes learning those social skills can really hide some of the traits that you would usually you would usually pick up on things like processing times inside that they they still seem to stick but in general but they you know overall these these are the kind of tricky groups that I've identified and I guess something to to say is that not every single autistic person is easily picked up and although you know there are some caveats to it I've actually been surprisingly accurate with my specta and people I know people I talk to I've helped them sort of understand their brains a bit better I've sort of well not not exactly helped but I've raised it as something as a possibility and sometimes that can be really really beneficial for people so as you understand more of yourself it becomes easier to spot those differences and you know I I want to ask you a question now do you do you have a specta how good is it and have you actually seen any use out of it have you found used it to find friends find find dates find traits in your friends and connect with them on them and you know let let me let me know down in the comments and while you're there please like and subscribe I'm such a small channel I need your help but yes I hope you have enjoyed this video and I hope that you put your spec down to good use because with great power comes great uh spect spectra mobility spec spectrum ability yeah that was awful see you later folks