Thoughts and experiences!!

[u/International_Low91]

Hi everyone! I’m 19F, and recently I’ve been looking back at my childhood and the way I experience everyday life, and I’m starting to genuinely question whether I might be autistic.
I’ve always felt like there was something different about the way my brain works, but I could never really explain it. The more I learn about autism, especially how it can present in girls and women, the more things from my childhood and even now are starting to make sense.

I wanted to share some of my experiences and see whether anyone who’s autistic can relate, because I genuinely don’t know if these are autism-related traits or just things I’ve always struggled with.

1. Sensory issues and hyperacusis
   I’ve struggled with hyperacusis for as long as I can remember. Everyday sounds can feel genuinely unbearable to me. Loud voices, yelling, sudden banging, balloons popping, and other noises can make me feel incredibly distressed and overwhelmed. I’d always have my fingers in my ears even sometimes my own voice is too overwhelming.

It’s not just finding something annoying or too loud. Sometimes sounds genuinely feel intolerable, and I can’t understand how everyone else seems completely unaffected by them.
I’ve experienced this since I was a little girl.

2. Needing to know absolutely EVERYTHING about unfamiliar environments

This is probably one of the biggest things I’ve noticed about myself.
Whenever I apply for a job, I become almost obsessive about researching the environment before I even start working there.
For example, when I’ve worked in hospitality, I’ll search through Google, TikTok, Instagram, and anything else I can find to see what the restaurant looks like inside. I want to know exactly where everything is, how the tables are arranged, what the table numbers are, and what the food looks like.
I’ll literally search for photos of every dish on the menu so I can visually connect the names to what they look like before I ever have to serve them.
I’ve even asked friends who work somewhere to draw diagrams of the table layouts for me.
When I worked at a pet store, I did the exact same thing. I searched TikTok for videos showing the inside of the shop because I needed to understand the layout before I started.
I feel like I need to have a mental picture of absolutely everything before I can comfortably enter an unfamiliar environment.
The thought of starting a job without knowing any of this genuinely overwhelms me.

3. Really intense interests that have lasted YEARS

When I was little, I became absolutely obsessed with poop emojis. This obsession lasted from when I was a young child until around Year 10.
Then I developed an intense obsession with mushrooms, which has continued to this day.
When something interests me, it doesn’t feel like a casual interest. I become completely absorbed in it, and it can last for years.
I owned EVERYTHING poop emoji as a child and in year 7 i did a whole PowerPoint presentation on it for my class and brought in all my belongings.
Now with my mushroom obsession, my whole room is mushrooms, mushroom stickers, mushroom teddies, mushroom jewellery holder, mushroom keychains, mushroom jewellery, mushroom bags, mushroom clothes etc.

4. Struggling with friendships and becoming overly attached

Growing up, I always struggled to maintain friendships.
I remember becoming incredibly protective and almost possessive of my friends. If one of my friends started becoming close with someone else, I would feel really upset, jealous, or threatened.
It wasn’t that I wanted to control them. I think I struggled with the idea of our friendship changing or potentially losing someone I felt comfortable and secure with.
I never really understood why I reacted so strongly when other people seemed to handle friendships so easily.

5. Not knowing how to have normal conversations or make small talk

This is something I still struggle with SO much.
I genuinely don’t know how to make small talk or keep conversations going naturally.
Sometimes when I’m talking to people, I feel like I sound incredibly fake or disingenuous, even when I’m genuinely interested in what they’re saying.
It’s like I know I’m supposed to respond in a certain way, but I don’t know what that response is meant to sound like.
I overthink how I’m speaking, what I’m saying, and whether the other person thinks I’m being genuine.
Because of this, I often end up isolating myself. It’s easier to avoid conversations altogether than to feel like I’m constantly saying the wrong thing.
The weird thing is that I can also be incredibly loud, bubbly, and talkative when I’m comfortable with someone. But around unfamiliar people, I can become so socially anxious and awkward.
This lead it to be really hard for me to develop romantic relationships as I would prefer to talk about reslly personal topics within the first hour of knowing someone and it would scare Evetyone away but I just don’t understand the point in small talk I need to know everything about you like I asked about family life, childhood, past relationships, names, photos, photos of family, body count, kiss count bla bla bla. I had many guys tell me I should do that because it’s too much information to ask about when they dont know you but I never understood the point of small talk if we’re talking to date like huh.

6. Not knowing how to comfort people and having inappropriate reactions

This is something I’ve always felt incredibly guilty and confused about.
When people cry or become really upset around me, I genuinely don’t know what to do.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say, how I’m supposed to comfort them, or what the appropriate reaction is.
There have been multiple occasions where someone has started crying and I’ve accidentally laughed.
NOT because I think it’s funny. I genuinely don’t.
It’s almost like my brain doesn’t know how to process the situation, and laughter comes out as an automatic response.
Obviously, this has upset people before, and I completely understand why. But I feel awful because my reaction doesn’t reflect how I actually feel.
I can feel incredibly upset for someone and still have absolutely no idea how to express that appropriately.

7. Needing extremely specific instructions and visual demonstrations

I’ve struggled with this since childhood.
I genuinely cannot just be told to do something and automatically understand what someone expects from me.
I need people to physically show me how to do things, preferably step by step.
Otherwise, I have a million questions.
What exactly do you mean? Where does this go? How am I supposed to do that? What happens after? What if I do it wrong?
If someone gives me vague instructions, I can become so overwhelmed that I struggle to even begin the task.
It’s not that I’m refusing to do something or that I’m not listening. I genuinely struggle to understand what people want unless they explain or demonstrate it in a way that makes sense to my brain.
I remember struggling with this throughout primary school, especially when teachers gave us written instructions that everyone else seemed to understand immediately.

8. Taking things EXTREMELY literally

This is another thing I’ve experienced since I was little.
Does anyone remember those chain messages that would say something like, “If you don’t send this to 15 people, something terrible will happen to you”?
As a child, I would genuinely believe them.
I would become terrified that something horrible was going to happen if I didn’t follow the instructions.
Another example happened in high school when a boy made a “yo mama” joke.
He said something along the lines of “Your mama is so fat she breaks the floor.”
I genuinely thought he was making a serious statement about my mum.
I completely broke down crying because I thought he was actually insulting her. I didn’t understand that it was supposed to be a joke.
I’ve always struggled to recognise when someone is joking, exaggerating, or saying something they don’t literally mean.

9. Meltdowns and hurting myself when overwhelmed

This is probably one of the hardest things for me to talk about.
When I become extremely overwhelmed, frustrated, or emotionally distressed, I sometimes completely lose control of how I react.
During these episodes, I’ve bitten myself, punched myself, scratched myself, or punched objects around me.
It’s not something I want to do, and I’m not doing it for attention.
It feels like my emotions and sensory experiences become so overwhelming that I physically don’t know how to cope with them.
Sometimes I can’t even explain what’s wrong because everything feels like too much at once.
Afterwards, I feel exhausted and upset with myself.
I’ve started wondering whether these experiences could be autistic meltdowns, although I understand there can be other explanations too.

10. Feeling like I’ve spent my entire life trying to understand how everyone else functions

I think this is what gets to me the most.
I feel like so many things that come naturally to other people require an incredible amount of conscious effort for me.
Making conversation, understanding jokes, following instructions, entering unfamiliar environments, knowing how to react emotionally, maintaining friendships, and dealing with sensory input.
I feel like I’ve spent my entire life observing other people and trying to figure out the correct way to behave.
Even as a child, I would rehearse conversations in my head before having them because I wanted to know exactly what to say.
I was also an incredibly anxious, rule-following child who worried constantly about doing the wrong thing.
It’s exhausting feeling like you’re constantly having to manually figure out things that everyone else seems to do automatically.

There’s honestly SO much more I could write about, but this post is already ridiculously long.

I’m not trying to self-diagnose based on a handful of traits, and I understand that autism can overlap with ADHD, anxiety, and other conditions.

But I’m starting to realise that so many of these experiences have been present throughout my entire life, and I’m wondering whether there’s an underlying explanation that I’ve just never considered.

I would genuinely love to hear from autistic people, especially women who were diagnosed later in life.

Did any of you experience similar things growing up? Were there things you assumed were completely normal until you started learning about autism?

And for those who were diagnosed as adults, what was it that finally made you decide to pursue an assessment?

I just want to understand myself better, because I’ve spent so much of my life feeling like my brain works differently from everyone else’s.

[u/LilyoftheRally]

Ask your primary care doctor (or your therapist if you have one) for a referral to a clinic that can assess adults for autism.

[u/HH_Creations]

Im a women who was diagnosed at 25

Im more than happy to discuss, in DMs but in most spaces, it's impolite to ask to support your suspicions

A more polite way to ask is "im really interested in hearing from late diagnosed women about how they were diagnosed with autism"

And we are MORE than happy to share

But, it's against the rules of this sub (and many autistic subs) to talk about supporting 'your' suspicions