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Can anyone here read body language and facial expressions

Bolletje said:
I only got diagnosed when I was 29, because of my masking and my academic success. Typical female Aspie story really. It was only because I was seeing a bright psychologist for my recurrent depressions. The fact that I never felt like I belonged anywhere, combined with social anxiety, made her start a diagnostic process for autism. In the end it took a team of mental health professionals to decide whether or not I’m on the spectrum, because I have some typical traits but also some traits not typically associated with autism. I’ll try to list some of the reasons they decided I am on the spectrum:

-I need people to be very specific with me. I get very agitated over vague promises or vague assignments.
-I get extremely agitated when people are late and I can’t stand being late for appointments myself. I’m always way too early.
-I have a set way of doing things and I get agitated when people try to interfere with that. For example, if I am cooking dinner I cannot have someone helping me, unless that person is willing to follow my instructions to the letter. If they don’t do that I get angry.
-I have a lot of special interests that I know a lot about, I could talk about those forever.
-I’m a little disconnected from society. I don’t watch TV, I don’t listen to the radio and I’m not interested in celebrities. I have no clue what’s popular at the moment and I’m not interested in finding out. I do listen to music a lot, but it’s seldom mainstream.
I do keep up with the news, but I only read articles about things I think are important.
-I mostly keep to myself. I’m perfectly happy staying at home and generally only leave the house to go grocery shopping. I have friends, but I rarely feel like meeting them in person. I’m happy with maintaining a friendship via WhatsApp messages. If I meet up with people it’s generally at their insistence.
-I need time to mentally prepare to do things. I am rarely up for spontaneous adventures. If someone calls me and asks me to hang out right now it’s generally an automatic no, even if I have no plans whatsoever (which is most days). I do not want unexpected visitors and my friends know not to come by without asking me in advance.
-I feel very uncomfortable in social situations. The more people, the greater my discomfort. Having lunch with coworkers makes me miserable because I never know when it’s my turn to talk and a lot of the subjects they talk about are things I don’t know about (TV, pop music, celebrity gossip). I have a tendency to withdraw into myself in these situations.
-I have very keen senses, to the point that I am often being ridiculed for noticing things other people don’t. I’ve learned to mostly keep this to myself. I’ve also got a great eye for detail and for noticing patterns others don’t. This has helped me a lot in my work.
-I can be very direct, often interpreted as being blunt or rude. I’ve learned to guard my tongue, but when I’m caught off guard, or when I’m tired or emotional, I accidentally offend people.
-I get overstimulated from noise, crowds or lots of visual stimuli. When I’m feeling good my threshold for overstimulation is a lot higher than when I’m feeling bad.

I could go on and on, but I think this gives some idea of how I came to be diagnosed :) Feel free to ask if you have more questions though.
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You sound almost exactly like me!

Bolletje said:
Having lunch with coworkers makes me miserable because I never know when it’s my turn to talk and a lot of the subjects they talk about are things I don’t know about (TV, pop music, celebrity gossip).
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This is absolutely my problem in group conversations. I cannot figure out when it's my turn to speak, I miss cues, and I either *awkward silence* or I talk over people. And when I start talking over people it takes me several seconds to realize that I'm doing it and get my brain to switch gears and turn my mouth off. Talking to me is like a Zoom call with a bad audio delay.

I actually sit there doing "fish mouth" a lot because I keep starting to say something but then someone else jumps in.

It really feels like my brain just doesn't process conversations fast enough and I'm perpetually "out of sync".

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SDRSpark said:
You sound almost exactly like me!



This is absolutely my problem in group conversations. I cannot figure out when it's my turn to speak, I miss cues, and I either *awkward silence* or I talk over people. And when I start talking over people it takes me several seconds to realize that I'm doing it and get my brain to switch gears and turn my mouth off. Talking to me is like a Zoom call with a bad audio delay.

I actually sit there doing "fish mouth" a lot because I keep starting to say something but then someone else jumps in.

It really feels like my brain just doesn't process conversations fast enough and I'm perpetually "out of sync".

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Yeah me too in group conversations.
 
Gift2humanity said:
Can you give me an example of pattern noticing, as I can't fid anything on the internet that I can resonate with. I like patterns in nature, but info online is too vague.
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It took me a really long time to figure this out for myself, because I don't notice "patterns in nature" etc very much (or maybe I do, but I don't think about it, it's just kind of there and I don't recognize that I recognize it any more than usual). What I notice a lot of, is patterns with people. (This leads me to know when someone is acting out of the ordinary, or lying to me, even though they don't admit to it.) I know what someone normally does, their normal "pattern of behavior" and the second they step outside of that, it's highly "visible" to me.

I see patterns kind of like equations. Event + Event = Result. When something doesn't add up the way it did before, I notice. Or when it does, I notice that too.

For instance, I was folding laundry in my bedroom (as far as possible from the door) and I heard a *beep* out in the hallway (super good hearing/noticing things others probably never would.) I had a package out for delivery and I immediately knew that the *beep* was the mail carrier's scanner and the package had been delivered. I stopped what I was doing and went to get the package, and she was barely out the door to the building by the time I had it in hand.

Package out for delivery + *beep* of a scanner = package delivered

I actually really amazed myself at how quickly my brain put that all together.

On a more distressing front:

Mutual friend + post on a subject a that person I've blocked is interested in + some of the comments don't load = person that I've blocked is commenting

It takes me about as long to figure that out as it does to read the post and notice that it says "5 comments" but only 3 of them load. What's the point of blocking people if my brain is just going to do this? I've unfollowed a lot of people just so I wouldn't be confronted with stuff like this.
 
SDRSpark said:
It took me a really long time to figure this out for myself, because I don't notice "patterns in nature" etc very much (or maybe I do, but I don't think about it, it's just kind of there and I don't recognize that I recognize it any more than usual). What I notice a lot of, is patterns with people. (This leads me to know when someone is acting out of the ordinary, or lying to me, even though they don't admit to it.) I know what someone normally does, their normal "pattern of behavior" and the second they step outside of that, it's highly "visible" to me.

I see patterns kind of like equations. Event + Event = Result. When something doesn't add up the way it did before, I notice. Or when it does, I notice that too.

For instance, I was folding laundry in my bedroom (as far as possible from the door) and I heard a *beep* out in the hallway (super good hearing/noticing things others probably never would.) I had a package out for delivery and I immediately knew that the *beep* was the mail carrier's scanner and the package had been delivered. I stopped what I was doing and went to get the package, and she was barely out the door to the building by the time I had it in hand.

Package out for delivery + *beep* of a scanner = package delivered

I actually really amazed myself at how quickly my brain put that all together.

On a more distressing front:

Mutual friend + post on a subject a that person I've blocked is interested in + some of the comments don't load = person that I've blocked is commenting

It takes me about as long to figure that out as it does to read the post and notice that it says "5 comments" but only 3 of them load. What's the point of blocking people if my brain is just going to do this? I've unfollowed a lot of people just so I wouldn't be confronted with stuff like this.
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Hi

This confuses me as I thought Aspies did not notice when people were lying, manipulating, etc and I've heard some say that they are naive and easily connected. This does not seem to fit in with "patterns with people"
Not invalidating your experience its obviously valid.

I am not good at noticing bad intentions in people.

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain "Event + Event = Result".
I only notice this retrospectively, if I have been fooled it is after the fact that I try to put the pieces together.

As for super good hearing I told the assessor I had bad hearing, I failed to tell him that I could hear a ticking clock in the bedroom of a neighbour when I was stood at the front door of his ground floor flat.
He was amazed that I could hear this clock.

I failed to tell him this because, in real time I cannot find immediate answers to questions. I am not good at hearing one person talk if others are talking.

Sorry to hear about the Facebook incident.
 
I can somewhat read facial expressions and body language, i think much bigger struggle in a group of peers is lack of mutual interests.
 
Gift2humanity said:
Me too, it feels terrible knowing I have all these problems that I can't give people an explanation for. I did try to give a social worker's manager self diagnosis but it didn't wash with her.
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I can try to give my school psychologist my self diagnosis. I go to her because of panic attacks in stressful situation for example I had nasty panic attacks from 22 to 29 March this year because of online school, quarantine and earthquake (google Zagreb earthquake).
 
Dadamen said:
I can try to give my school psychologist my self diagnosis. I go to her because of panic attacks in stressful situation for example I had nasty panic attacks from 22 to 29 March this year because of online school, quarantine and earthquake (google Zagreb earthquake).
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Sorry you had these overwhelming experiences. I hope you can get an official diagnosis.
 
Dadamen said:
I want to study medicine, so the diagnosis can be an excluding factor, so it is better not to get it in next 2 years (now I'm starting 3rd year of a 4 year high school)
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Is medicine your real calling?
It seems discriminatory thet an Aspie should not be allowed to be a doctor when Bill Gates is one.
 
Gift2humanity said:
Is medicine your real calling?
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Well, it is one of my special interests and I really want to study it also, i have great school marks, but problem with a lack of friends and anxiety, being a doctor is my life goal and I don't want a stupid formal diagnosis to waste it.
Gift2humanity said:
It seems discriminatory thet an Aspie should not be allowed to be a doctor when Bill Gates is one.
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I don't know if it is really excluding, but I'll have to pass a medical exam before entering university and it is a question to they accept ASD.
 
Please can I ask other questions, as I am in UK and assessment was based on ICD-10, does anyone think I would be insulting the assessor by saying ICD-10 is based on males?
Also would it insult the assessor if I mentioned that Tony Attwood the leading expert on Asperger's acknowledges masking in females?
 
Gift2humanity said:
Please can I ask other questions, as I am in UK and assessment was based on ICD-10, does anyone think I would be insulting the assessor by saying ICD-10 is based on males?
Also would it insult the assessor if I mentioned that Tony Attwood the leading expert on Asperger's acknowledges masking in females?
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If you want diagnosis just go to psychologist and say about your suspicion.
 
Dadamen said:
If you want diagnosis just go to psychologist and say about your suspicion.
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If you read my earlier posts in this thread, I have been assessed and it failed, meaning he thinks I am not ASD. The assessor wants me to write to him to say why I disagree with his assessment. :)
 
Gift2humanity said:
If you read my earlier posts in this thread, I have been assessed and it failed, meaning he thinks I am not ASD. The assessor wants me to write to him to say why I disagree with his assessment. :)
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Go to another psychologist. After all, ASD 1 (Asperger's) is just a variety of personality and skill caracteristics. It can't be surely diagnosed or surely eliminated via any test. Not all neurotypicals are the same and it can be hard to tell if you are ASD or not.
 
Dadamen said:
Go to another psychologist. After all, ASD 1 (Asperger's) is just a variety of personality and skill caracteristics. It can't be surely diagnosed or surely eliminated via any test. Not all neurotypicals are the same and it can be hard to tell if you are ASD or not.
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I have to use the same assessor, he is a nurse specialist trained in diagnosing autism.
The letter is long and repeats itself.
 
FreeDiver said:
You should also ask if this is done "intuitively" or "cognitively". People on the spectrum can't do it intuitively, but some people can compensate by doing it cognitively. Doing it cognitively put a mental load on the mind that can result in exhaustion. Thus, why most can't keep the mask on all the time.
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This is what a lot of people don't get. Plus the autistic-spectrum as a circle diagram. People can learn too all sorts of unnatural things - like playing the piano or riding the unicycle. But they take effort.
 
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