The Core Traits I Have That Taught Me I was Autistic

Last April I was in the midst of my Autism assessment so I wanted to reflect on how I began suspecting I was Autistic and what started me on my journey to diagnosis now 1 year post official diagnosis. 

Every day I make new discoveries about myself and what it means to be Autistic as an Autistic person as well as what it means for others including how to assess and diagnose Autism.

If someone came up to me today and asked me what the core Autistic traits that they should look for in themselves (if they are suspecting they are Autistic) or what the traits I think were the most indicative of being Autistic, I would sum it up like this (this is NOT diagnostic, this is just my experience):

#1: Issues with relationships from an early age and to the point of being problematic for you or others (problematic meaning distressing, something that bothers you, etc). That doesn’t mean you couldn’t mask this aspect of your experience but you had some awareness of it being there and being an issue. Social cues, understanding what people mean, what their intentions are, what to do in response to them are all hard for you.  

#2: The way you experience the world is markedly different than non-Autistic people, as in you explain how you process information or perceive and understand the world and people think it’s odd, weird, unrelatable. You have intense interests that people think are excessive or strange or if they are interests that are socially appropriate or even seen as desirable (eg special interest of finances or crafting) then it is something that takes over your whole life at times, that is above and beyond what is typical. 

#3: You have trouble with new things or it takes a while to get used to things and then you never want them to change. Transitions are hard for you, the unknown, the unexpected is very hard for you. You may not realize this because you’ve masked and/or suppressed your discomfort but this aspect of yourself is there if you go looking for it. 

#4: You don’t feel comfortable most of the time and when you do, it is a miracle. Or you have become so dissociated (due to always being uncomfortable since childhood so you just numb yourself somehow/suppress/ignore/shut off) that you have no idea how you feel. Or you may have interoception issues like not realizing you are hungry or sad or embarrassed or uncomfortable. Either way, you experience the felt sense of being alive vastly different than most people around you, if you told a therapist not well versed in Autism, they may pathologize you and maybe that already happened and you got misdiagnosed. 

#5: You probably have trauma due to either growing up in an undiagnosed Autistic/otherwise neurodivergent family with parents who didn’t know how to mitigate the effects of them being unsupported, unaware Autistic/otherwise ND people or you have trauma from learning quickly (or slowly) that you do not perceive reality and social rules/interactions/social structure the same as most humans and get bullied/discriminated against due to this and/or you felt so uncomfortable since birth that you numbed yourself using substances and/or destructive coping strategies and/or you’ve had harmful relationships due to being unsupported, unaware of risks/problems/red flags, and on and on. I can’t give enough examples, I think you will see the point. No, trauma is not part of the Autism criteria but most have it, late diagnosed or early. 

Honestly, all of that is enough unless it can be reasonably explained by something else. Or there is no evidence for it in childhood. There is more of course in how people express being Autistic or their internal unique experience of it and what parts of their experience it affects such as speech, body movements, stimming, proprioceptive/interoceptive/vestibular needs of each person and how they try to meet those needs or mask them or suppress them, etc. 

If you read all of that and you think, hmm maybe I am Autistic. There is no right or wrong way to move forward with that realization. You can get a diagnosis although that can be cost prohibitive. You can do your own research. You can move on and forget you ever had the realization. The possibilities are endless. I am not here to tell you what you should do. For me, I wanted a doctor to assess me and stamp “officially Autistic” on my forehead. I tend to want external confirmation, perhaps due to growing up feeling like I was missing something vitally important that most people seemed to have naturally and therefore, I distrusted myself. Who knows but I am not here to say that is the only path. Learning I was Autistic was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I always had an inkling but I pushed it down and it was hurting me, the truth has helped me heal in ways I never knew I could.