I took one of those autism tests and I can’t remember off the top of my head what the score was but it was very high which both surprises and doesn’t surprise me. I mask extremely well according to most people I meet. Telling me “You seem normal” or even “You aren’t autistic”.
I’ve only had two people tell me “It’s obvious” ever, my mom and a single friend of mine.
But holy hell all the other autism personality/psychological aspects are like cranked up to 100 and I have a love/hate relationship with that. Hyperfocus is a double edged sword for instance. I love that I can get super into something and get really fucking good at it but I don’t love obsessing over the same thing for months to the point of it keeping me awake at night and hurting other aspects of my life because I can’t change mental direction.
It also isn’t good for social anxiety, way too much rumination on single awkward conversations MAKE IT STOP.
I have a childhood friend who was very recently diagnosed with autism. We talked a little while ago and he brought it up. My first thought was “ah, yep, that explains a lot”.
He’s still a great friend. It didn’t change anything about him, rather it helped make sense of his behaviors that we all just saw as “that’s just how [friend] is”.
I already knew I was autistic I got diagnosed like 10 years ago as an adult, but I had never taken the test in question (Cat-Q) and I guess I kinda figured my autism was “light” or something. I think the test’s questions were very effective at breaking through high masking so that’s why I scored so heavily autistic and it kind of struck me so hard it made me cry. Masking is exhausting and at this point I can’t really “stop” its so ingrained.
For me I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with me but I think some aspects of it fueled some really stifling early life decisions that kept me from growing (before I learned I was autistic) and now I feel like I’m permanently “behind” socially/developmentally. Part of that also I think might have been how subtly conservative and judgemental a lot of culture I absorbed was as a kid that I ended up assuming everyone thought I was a dorky loser so I avoided people I thought were “cool” to a degree. I still feel like I can’t relate to people my own age and that’s been the case since I was like 8 and its still the case in my 30’s. It makes me sad about what I’ve missed out on and makes me worry about my future.
EDIT: I just retook it, I scored a 149, for context average male non-autistic scores are 96.89, for autistic men the average is 109.64.
I took one of those autism tests and I can’t remember off the top of my head what the score was but it was very high which both surprises and doesn’t surprise me. I mask extremely well according to most people I meet. Telling me “You seem normal” or even “You aren’t autistic”.
I’ve only had two people tell me “It’s obvious” ever, my mom and a single friend of mine.
But holy hell all the other autism personality/psychological aspects are like cranked up to 100 and I have a love/hate relationship with that. Hyperfocus is a double edged sword for instance. I love that I can get super into something and get really fucking good at it but I don’t love obsessing over the same thing for months to the point of it keeping me awake at night and hurting other aspects of my life because I can’t change mental direction.
It also isn’t good for social anxiety, way too much rumination on single awkward conversations MAKE IT STOP.
I have a childhood friend who was very recently diagnosed with autism. We talked a little while ago and he brought it up. My first thought was “ah, yep, that explains a lot”.
He’s still a great friend. It didn’t change anything about him, rather it helped make sense of his behaviors that we all just saw as “that’s just how [friend] is”.
I already knew I was autistic I got diagnosed like 10 years ago as an adult, but I had never taken the test in question (Cat-Q) and I guess I kinda figured my autism was “light” or something. I think the test’s questions were very effective at breaking through high masking so that’s why I scored so heavily autistic and it kind of struck me so hard it made me cry. Masking is exhausting and at this point I can’t really “stop” its so ingrained.
For me I don’t think there is anything intrinsically wrong with me but I think some aspects of it fueled some really stifling early life decisions that kept me from growing (before I learned I was autistic) and now I feel like I’m permanently “behind” socially/developmentally. Part of that also I think might have been how subtly conservative and judgemental a lot of culture I absorbed was as a kid that I ended up assuming everyone thought I was a dorky loser so I avoided people I thought were “cool” to a degree. I still feel like I can’t relate to people my own age and that’s been the case since I was like 8 and its still the case in my 30’s. It makes me sad about what I’ve missed out on and makes me worry about my future.
EDIT: I just retook it, I scored a 149, for context average male non-autistic scores are 96.89, for autistic men the average is 109.64.