I Have Autism But It Doesn't Have Me.

I found this on Quora and I have most( not all) of these and it describes autism and life with autism, perfectly:

Colton Taresh

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I am ADHD and autistic.14h

What are subtle signs of autism and Asperger syndrome?

Well, Asperger’s Syndrome is just autism, so we can get rid of the second half of the question.

Thus, the question I’ll answer is:

What are subtle signs of autism?

There is the clinical, medical definition of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and then there is the real, lived experiences that us autistics deal with all day, every day, and we’ve dealt with them our entire lives. And these signs are quite numerous, but be aware that not every autistic experiences these things, these are just the most common ones I’ve seen in my experience.

So, here’s 63 subtle signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

1. Wearing bright colors/wearing subdued colors. We either crave stimulation, or we don’t want to be overwhelmed, so our clothes can be bright and attention seeking, or subdued. I insist on band shirts, jeans, and Vans.
2. Hating phone calls. No, if I see a Rickenbacker bass that I want to buy, I will not call for a price, just let me know what it costs online.
3. Not realizing you’re hungry or thirsty. Sometimes you just don’t feel or notice that you’re hungry or thirsty, even though you probably are very hungry or thirsty.
4. Not replying to a text message. You want to choose your words carefully, so you think about it for a week, and then it’s too late to reply.
5. Hating seams and tags in clothing. I hate clothing with tags or prominent seams. They feel stifling and itchy.
6. Having an atypical sense of humor. Sometimes I say something I think is funny, but it just doesn’t land.
7. Always telling the truth. I have a compulsive need for honesty, so I blurt out the truth even if it’s best for everyone if I keep my mouth shut.
8. Feeling out of sync in groups. You always feel like an outsider in your friend groups.
9. You have an aversion to or an obsession with popular culture. If pop culture is your special interest, you’ll be obsessed with it. If not, you just don’t “get” pop culture.
10. Over-planning everything. You must schedule all tasks on a calendar, otherwise, nothing will get done. As someone that also has ADHD, this is a general feeling in ADHD as well, except it’s not for planning or setting schedules, it’s so you remember what you said you were going to do.
11. Always feeling tired. Masking autism is mentally exhausting, so you always feel tired. Or you just feel tired all the time for no real reason.
12. Don’t like being told what to do. We have a routine and schedule that works for us, don’t say it needs to be changed.
13. You started reading at an early age. I was taught to read at 3 and a half years old.
14. Finding comfort in repetition and routine. Routine is good. Routine is love. Routine is life. Except my ADHD wants something new and spontaneous too, so it’s a constant battle between the two.
15. Struggling with crowds. You feel overwhelmed and overstimulated anywhere there’s a crowd.
16. Seeing people as people. Because of how your brain is, you forget social expectations that other people have towards other people, and you default to treating people as people, regardless of who they are.
17. Sensitive hearing. I’ve always had sensitive hearing, but I never found music to be triggering. In fact, I found it relaxing. I love music so much I decided to become a musician.
18. High pain tolerance. I have a high pain tolerance. But the paradox is that I’m not indifferent to it, in fact, I feel pain more intensely, I just am able to tolerate it better.
19. Over-apologizing. You apologize to people way too much over an issue because you perceive it’s due to you saying something and being misunderstood.
20. Not caring what people think. The fun kind of autism where it’s just free and unmasked autism without a care in the world!
21. Being really good at something that isn’t useful. I know a lot of dinosaur facts, data, and knowledge. I can give you the 100 million year evolutionary history of tyrannosauroids from memory, and if you’re lucky, with sources, but ask me to do my tax paperwork or expense reports and I fold like laundry. Another trait autism shares with ADHD, and for me, the two are reinforcing each other here.
22. Being sarcastic. It’s not being sarcastic sometimes, you’re sarcastic all the time.
23. Preferring face-to-face communication. Sometimes, people take a text message the wrong way, so you prefer discussing real matters face-to-face to avoid misunderstandings.
24. Struggling to find appropriate gaps in conversation. You want to express your opinion on the subject, so you look for an opportunity, but none of them seem appropriate, and then the conversation moves on from that subject and you’re left there alone.
25. Constant background anxiety. Masking autism or ADHD or any kind of neurodivergence breeds a specific kind of background anxiety that only people who are neurodivergent will understand. It’s more common than you think.
26. Being overly empathic. In contrary to a popular myth, we autistic people actually have too much empathy and it becomes overwhelming to the point it comes off as overly literal or logical. We have so much empathy it creates so much emotion, that we have to use logic to make sense of it. That comes across as overly cold or logical, even when we may understand you and your situation more than you think we do.
27. Relating to animals more than people. We love animals! I love all animals, but cats, dogs, lizards, and turtles are my favorites! They are completely non-judgmental, dogs and cats especially.
28. Avoiding trying new things. Part of the rigid thinking pattern of autism. My routine works so well for me, why should I consider something new? That said, for me, it’s a constant battle between the autism wanting and craving the familiar, and my ADHD being curious and spontaneous and wanting something new and exciting. So how that ends up is that I spontaneously try something new, and if it works, I will make it a part of my routine, rigidly, and hate deviations from it.
29. Eating the same food every day. We found the food we like, and it works for us. Some of us can be picky eaters, but again, my ADHD loves to try new things, so I’ve made food one of my special interests. How that looks is unless the food is meant to be mixed, it won’t be mixed and the food remains separate on my plate. That way I can try each individual thing on my own time. I’m like an autistic food critic. And yes, I loved the movie Ratatouille, why do you ask?
30. Finding inappropriate things funny. I love Chris Tucker, Dave Chappelle, Monty Python, and Richard Pryor. I’d repeat their jokes, never understanding why repeating their jokes as a young, white, autistic and ADHD kid wasn’t appropriate. But I found them hilarious. Still do as an adult, quite frankly only now I learned there’s layers to the jokes they were telling that I didn’t see as a kid.
31. Not liking to be touched. Only my wife, my family, and close friends can touch me. Everyone else must keep their distance, and stay out of my blood circle. For those that don’t know, the blood circle is a Scouting term that describes the area within the radius of the arm plus the length of a knife. Only a few people are allowed within my blood circle.
32. Tendency to notice small details. For me, these are random, because, hey ADHD and autism linked up, so the small details I notice are small sounds that my brain fixates on and I have to respond to it.
33. Hating florescent/down lights. I hate florescent lights. Even when other people don’t notice a flicker, I do, and it’s bothersome and overstimulating.
34. Stimming. Flappy hands are happy hands. For me, my stims are cracking my knuckles, moving my leg rapidly, chewing my tongue, playing with my fidget cube, and squeezing my fists over and over.
35. Always wanting to understand why. This is me with everything. Because of my logical thinking brain, everything happens due to some mechanism or reason, so my curiosity leads me to constantly ask questions. My ADHD side of me is also insanely curious, and since there’s no self-control, the two are reinforcing this curiosity.
36. Enjoying repetition. When that dopamine hit from that new song hits, that song gets played on repeat for hours before I let Spotify continue on. Happened recently with the Zenith Passage’s song, “Synaptic Depravation.” That was on repeat for no less than three hours when I first heard it.
37. Thinking in pictures. In other words, you’re a visual thinker and visual learner. You like to see something happen before you understand it. I’m an auditory thinker and learner myself, which isn’t shocking as I am a musician. But weirdly, I think in color when writing music, and unless music and optics are your special interests, that’s just going to seem weird to you, and a strange rabbit hole to fall down in. By the way, the note A is orange, and I won’t accept any counter-arguments on the matter.
38. Having a flat affect. Otherwise known as “resting bitch face.” You have this look even if you’re just vibing. I don’t have this, personally.
39. Preferring to pace around the room rather than sitting. Sitting can sometimes be weirdly painful, so we get up to move around. This is something that can overlap with ADHD, and in my case, having both, it just shows itself as that I can’t sit still and need to stim more.
40. Imitating other people. Sometimes you learn something fun when imitating other people. I don’t do this anymore, but I did it as a kid all the time.
41. Having a favorite thing. This thing you carry with you everywhere, no matter what. For me, it’s my fidget cube, but it used to be my $75 double action OTF knife, because I tend to always carry a knife on me, but it was confiscated when I went to my niece’s graduation, which bothered the hell out of me. I rather liked that knife a lot. There’s a whole other reason why I was bothered, but that’s personal stuff.
42. Getting excited and interrupting people. Yeah, this is another trait autism and ADHD share, and yeah, the two don’t help each other out here. This leads to me info-dumping about my special interest for hours on end.
43. Thinking over previous social interactions. You overthink about previous social interactions all the time.
44. You see patterns in everything. Yep. For me it’s sonic patterns as I’m attuned to sound pretty strongly being a musician, so I perceive things as musical when they’re really random.
45. You either have a good memory or a bad memory. You don’t have “normal” memory. Again, this is a trait autism shares with ADHD. For certain things, my mind’s like a steel trap, and nothing gets past it, but my working memory and executive functions aren’t the best, so I can lose my keys all the time and forget where I placed them.
46. Preferring non-verbal communication. Some autistics are non-verbal, and may prefer to use other forms of communication, even if they can speak. I’m like the opposite, I can be a real motor mouth.
47. Hating to brush your teeth. I hate to brush my teeth. I do it twice a day as dentists and doctors recommend, so my dental hygiene is good, but that doesn’t mean I like it. Admittedly, my Philips Sonicare toothbrush actually massages my gums, so that feels nice, but it still is part of the routine that is my least favorite. Showers? Love ‘em. Heeding nature’s call in the morning? Best part of the morning. Brushing my hair and styling my beard? Not as fun, but necessary, otherwise it gets unruly. But brushing my teeth? Nah, not the fun one, but I know it’s necessary.
48. Having a monotone voice or a strange voice. Our voices can be strange at times.
49. Difficulty identifying emotions/emotional dysregulation. A trait that autism also shares with ADHD. Our emotions can be overwhelming because it’s usually a combination of emotions at once, not one feeling. Worse yet, in my case, the ADHD leads me to be emotionally impulsive, so I just express emotion with no filter. The emotion is logical and rational, but there’s just no filter on it. This can make shutdowns and meltdowns worse, and easily, my least favorite part of being neurodivergent.
50. Getting overwhelmed by too many tasks at once. This is an executive function challenge, something autism and ADHD share in common. The solution I’ve found is monotasking rather than multitasking. Focus on one task.
51. Watching the same movies/TV shows all the time. There’s comfort in familiarity. There’s certain shows I go to that are comfort shows that put me in a better mood.
52. Feeling awkward in groups. Social awkwardness is one of the quintessential autistic symptoms. Not that you’re not social, not that you don’t have friends, not that you’re introverted, you’re just a little socially awkward, and that can lead to misunderstandings.
53. Thinking outside of the box. This is one of my favorite things about being autistic and ADHD is divergent thinking. Because the autism loves details my brain can come up with a detailed plan of action, and because the ADHD has millions of thoughts at once, those plans come out quickly, fully thought out, and detailed. Really a boon to creativity too, important for my job as a musician and songwriter.
54. Having unique brilliant ideas. Same thing with problems, that divergent thinking also works with new and innovative ideas as well.
55. Struggling to read between the lines. Socially, people don’t just say what they mean. Often, a lot of times, there’s a lot being said that’s not being said. I miss these all the time. For us autistic people, it’s a struggle because we think very logically and literally when it comes to communication. We’re assuming you’re saying what you’re actually saying, we don’t know if you meant something else between the words you said.
56. Preferring written communication. Because it takes time and thought to write something out, some autistic people feel more comfortable with written communication.
57. Two speed productivity. You’re either insanely productive you get 3 months worth of work done in 8 hours, or nothing gets attempted. There is no in between. This is a trait autism shares in common with ADHD.
58. Compartmentalizing life experiences. We autistic people are really good with compartmentalizing everything, including our own life experiences.
59. Comfortable being alone. You love the sweet embrace of solitude, because you can finally be yourself, no masks required.
60. Happy with few material comforts. You love minimalism. You don’t need much, you don’t want much, and are happy with having few material comforts. Not a thing with me, as my autism came with ADHD, so my impulsivity came with special interest projects that… still need completing.
61. Always finishing what you start. Hyperfixation and perseveration is real. This is something that autism shares in common with ADHD, when we’re hyper-productive, the project must get done start to finish, even though you should probably stop and take a break.
62. Scripting conversations in advance. You have scripts that you practice for specific social interactions, or you think about hypothetical social situations and arguments and practice your responses to them.
63. “How can someone so smart be so stupid?”. This isn’t what you think, but what others think of you. With my autism and ADHD I also was intelligent as a kid, and I still am intelligent as an adult, yet, there are so many strange and weird quirks about me, that my loved ones constantly think, “You’re so smart, why is this such an issue for you?” This points to the fact that, despite the positives of autism and ADHD, they really are disabilities, and they come with invisible struggles that no one sees.