I also have a *lot* of difficulty with unnamed expectation changes, to the extent it can make me nonfunctional; e.g. if we have a meeting to talk about x and then we chat about things that aren't x without explicitly stating we're not talking about x, this is extremely upsetting
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Some things are like, does everyone have this problem and I just notice them more? I don't like physical contact or hugging from friends, but I'm okay with it from strangers if it's in a structured setting like social dancing. I don't like being comforted or touched when sad. 6/
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I remember as a teen telling my mom it felt like everyone else had access to some social script that I couldn't see, like they were tapped into a telepathy I'd never figured out how to do. I have a *lot* of difficulty talking to strangers, is why I built askhole.io
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I don't know why people do conversations and often spend the first part of the conversation with someone asking why we're having the conversation. This feels normal to me but seems to be abnormal for others? I feel much more at ease typing than talking.
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I have a *weird* relationship to facial expressions, like I've only recently started feeling like I wasn't moving my facial muscles consciously. I feel like I'm supposed to do things with my face in order to not freak people out, so I've learned to do them correctly
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And of course, the obvious one, I seem to have a bad sense of/don't integrate deeply that things I say make other people mad at me. I kind of get, but am still regularly confused by why I'm not supposed to say certain things. I seem to be kind of culturally immune in that way.
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I tried to get an official diagnosis once and it was really terrible; I finally got on the phone with a doctor and he was like "why do you want to know if you have autism" and "you are a sex worker so I don't think you're autistic." He didn't ask me *any* diagnostic questions.
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I tried to be like "but here's my reasons for thinking I might-" and he was like "nah, you sound normal on the phone to me, like we're having a normal conversation. You had a bad childhood and then became a sex worker so any symptoms you have are just cause of that"
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All of this in general is confusing to me; am I just overfocusing on minor details? Am I blowing things out of proportion? How severe does a difference have to be before it "counts"? How much of autism is just a trendy label for people, or am I being too self-doubting?
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My point is that reaching a definitive conclusion about my autism feels pretty hard to me here. When I'm around rationalists I feel really not-autistic, normal, fluid, skilled, but then I go into the outside world and I'm like 'oh god I am extremely different holy shit'.
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But I find myself using the phrase 'probably autistic' in order to quickly convey to someone that they can predict my behavior better if they model me as someone who has autism.
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Are you familiar with Gabor Maté’s work? Scattered Minds in particular. It’s about ADHD but applies remarkably well to autism too. His thesis is that the innate trait is “sensitivity”, and it’s the collision of sensitivity w. parental/peer attachment that creates the “disorder”
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ADHD, autism, and “giftedness” are frequently co-morbid which I think lends credence to the hypothesis that these are all downstream of something else
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So many states we don't have words for yet. Unfortunately many of these words are reserved for medical diagnosis of disorders which divides the world into normals and neuroatypicals when it's really a bunch of nested spectrums everyone is on.
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Autistics should not have to be in crisis to be considered Autistic.
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I have many similar problems that you do. I was told I'm not autistic by a psychiatrist because eye contact is easy for me. I can do it, I just don't see the point.
It's not that I can't see social cues, it's that they don't make sense.
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My pet theory is that the “autism spectrum” is just one end of a spectrum that goes all the way through humanity. And on the opposite side are people who are crippled by an inability to understand patterns or by overly integrating with social norms.
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I have a lot of the same quirks as you, and an excellent psychologist who evaluated me once labeled it “autistic features.”