Diagnosed with autism. Is my behaviour indicative of it?

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I'm currently 21 years old, studying medical physics at university. I was diagnosed at the age of 15 but have never really felt autistic. I will write a bit about myself in different categories.

Social skills:

I used to pretend when playing with other children, usually in the form of imaginary gunfights, swordsplay and such. I was not keen of actual fantasy roleplaying such as pretending to be another character. I was bullied large parts of my life due to my passiveness, I was always reluctant to use violence. Didn't have many friends either. Now in university my social skills seem improved to a certain extent. I can engage in small chat with difficulties, I have to force every word out of my mouth in order to keep the conversation going.

I deviate a lot when using others as a reference point. I tend to speak about subjects that are inappropriate or make harsh comments without meaning them. This causes me a great deal of difficulties.

Behaviour:

I'm mostly calm and collected. I do not function well under stress and will probably give up when it is unbearable. I have issues with my sensitive "sensors". Some sounds can make me go insane. I will start getting violent, break objects and start threatening others and perform/contemplate self harm if I'm for instance, exposed to a certain noise I deem a nuiance for a long period of time (e.g. traffic noise).

I have difficulties identifying my emotions and I mostly have to rely on my actions and experiences in order to determine what I am currently feeling. I might not realise I'm angry until I start wondering why I'm always displaying this symptom when I'm specifically angry, that is when I know I'm angry. Or I might not realise I'm entering a rage until I break something.

Intelligence:

I have never been academically interested, at least not until the age of 15. I always performed poorly on the subjects but that was likely due to my lack of interest. I barely passed elementary school and junior high school. My IQ was tested to be 87 by a licensed psychiatrist. My abilities are very uneven. Some parts of the test I scored 60, others 150. In the end I got a low mean value. My psychiatrist told me this is typical for autism, to have uneven abilities.

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Why am I creating this thread? I want to know when my problems are considered to be within the "normal spectrum" and when it is not. I don't know if my problems are specific for autists or if anyone can experience them

Last edited by Quantum on 08 Nov 2018, 11:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

An 87 IQ does not correlate to someone studying "medical physics."

Maybe, maybe not. I have speech difficulties, as in I have difficulties formulating my thoughts into words when speaking. I have difficulties thinking in "images", for instance rotating a figure in my head is near impossible. My reaction time and memory are very poor. All of this has been tested.

There are very few, if any, behaviours that are uniquely autistic; the difference is more in why we do them, and under what circumstances. For example, anyone can be driven to loss of control over themselves ("melt-down") by extreme enough circumstances if they go on long enough, but having that happen due only to exposure to particular sounds is a typical indication of autism. All of the behaviours you've mentioned are associated with autism, to a different degree in each of us, and the fact that you experience so many of them is a good indication that autism is probably the root cause of many, if not all, of them.

Another factor is that we can use self-control to engage in "typical behaviours" even when our innate instincts would lead us to do otherwise. A good example is when you say that you have to "force" every word out of your mouth in small talk. This is the essence of "masking"; the sign of autism is in the amount of self-control it takes, even if the "forced" behaviour convinces observers that there's nothing "autistic" about what you're doing.

This is very likely what's known as alexithymia (there have been a few good threads about it here.) It's not a condition in it's own right, but the name for a set of traits which make our own emotions hard to identify and communicate about (it literally means "no words for feelings"). This does occur in a few per-cent of the general population, usually quite mildly, but is far more common for autistic people, and tends to be much more severe when it occurs in autistic people. It's something that I also have a huge amount of difficulty with - to the point that people around me can sometimes tell me what emotion I'm showing before I have any idea myself.


Yes, this does seem to be very common for autistic people; it's often known as "having a spiky profile". Even two tasks which most people would think of as closely related can show extreme differences in ability. The difference you spoke about between your language abilities in your studying and speaking in conversation would be a good example of this.


This is known as visual aphantasia (again, there are threads here about it, and I'm this way myself). It's the kind of thing that explains part of the "spiky profile"; you will test as having a lower IQ in problems which require mental imagery (and it might not be obvious to you that they do), but you might still have excellent scores when dealing with problems using abstract symbols such as numbers or words. Aphantasia seems to be quite common among autistic people, but I don't know if any more so than other people. It's also quite common for autistic people to be the exact opposite; thinking almost exclusively in mental images and struggling to think using words.

I have aphantasia too; I was astonished a couple of years ago when I discovered there are people who actually mean what they say when they speak of "seeing mental images."

Following up on your comments, I wonder if somehow the extremes of aphantasia and "super-imaging" might both be over-represented in the autistic community.

PS: For some reason I had to go through a seemingly endless sequence of captcha quizzes before I could post this time. I hate it! Like "Click on all the pictures with a vehicle." What exactly is the definition of a vehicle? Does a bicycle count as a vehicle or not? Aghhhhhhh!

Definition: "Vehicle: a thing used for transporting people or goods, especially on land, such as a car, truck, or cart."

I think my troubles with captcha began because I decided that a bicycle fulfilled the definition of a vehicle.