My Autism Traits List

This list is not exhaustive and isn't meant to be a diagnostic tool. It reflects my personal experiences and doesn't apply to everyone. It's not a comprehensive representation of all confirmed autistic traits. I hope it can encourage discussion. I will update this list as I discover new traits.

• Either talking too loud or too quiet
• Getting "stuck in a rut," as my mom would say, by doing almost everything the same way
• Always having issues with noise: not going to chapel in preschool because it was too loud, wearing earplugs at preschool graduation, holding my ears (even now) when flushing a loud toilet
• Covering my ear(s) at night with a shirt if I was scared
• Purposefully failing spelling bees. I didn’t want to win because of the attention I’d get, and so I wouldn’t seem out of place with other people getting words wrong
• Picking and biting at my thumbs and lips for as long as I can remember; I think this is a stim 
• Needing days or even weeks to prepare for an event where I have to talk or hold multiple conversations 
• Always being very jumpy and being made fun of/being taken advantage of to scare me
• Having extremely specific interests 
• Being able to pinpoint exactly when I started liking a certain topic
• Correlating fictional characters or historical people with people I know in real life
• Relating to and looking up to people who fit within my personal interests like a certain time period (best of both worlds honestly)
• Not sure if this is related but having no interest in romantic or sexual relationships
• Also not really understanding why people desire those types of relationships 
• Literally googling "what makes people popular?" or "what makes something popular?" when I was younger because I couldn't understand why (and still don't)
• In the same way, I used to search for things on Google that probably made me seem like an alien trying to figure out how to act human
• Getting emotional when inanimate objects are “hurt” to the point of crying because I personify almost everything 
• Eating the exact same meal when I’d get home from school and never getting tired of it (an egg sandwich with hot sauce 😍)
• I wore my hair the same way every day from the middle of first grade until about the 11th grade when I got a drastic haircut. Now I want my hair to stay short forever so I don’t have to style it
• Picture day as a kid would make me have a fit
• Washing my hair would make me have a fit
• Drying my hair would make me have a fit
• Braiding my hair would make me have a fit
• Brushing my hair would make me have a fit
• Honestly, anything with hair made me have a fit
• People invading my personal space makes me either shut down or explode 
• Wearing the same flannel all the time every day 
• I hate clapping, yelling, screaming, cheering, basically any loud human noise
• It is pretty easy for me to go into tunnel vision and “not be aware of my surroundings”
• On the other hand, it is also very easy for me to be overwhelmed and be too aware of my surroundings 
• I enjoy playing repetitive, predictable, and strategic games such as Risk, Geometry Dash, various Roblox games, Minecraft, and Pokémon
• Is gifted a part of this? Idk
• I could read very early (hyperlexia?)
• Was obsessed with road signs and maps very early 
• Loved looking at my grandparents’ world book encyclopedias or my dad’s photographic encyclopedias (specifically all the pages on cooking utensils and types of silverware/glasses, and the ones about tectonic plates, volcanoes, geography, etc.) 
• I had an obsessive interest in volcanoes, earthquakes, and dinosaurs when I was very young
• I think the dinosaur obsession morphed into dragons when I found out about the Wings of Fire series in 4th grade
• I've always loved Lego, especially Lego Ninjago, including the TV shows and the comic books. I never really played with the Lego sets; I just enjoyed building them and admiring how they looked when completed. My favorite part was the characters, and I used to bring them into restaurants, setting them on the table with their little weapons, and occasionally swapping out the weapons for fun 🙂
• I went through a huge Pokémon phase where I collected hundreds if not thousands of the playing cards simply because I thought they looked pretty. I enjoyed organizing them by type and rarity, but rarely, if ever, actually played a game with them as intended
• I didn’t really play with any toys come to think of it, at least not traditionally. I really liked books/reading, videos, board games, and playing outside
• Used to say a lot about how I enjoyed sitting and thinking, which was very enjoyable for me
• I've always been easily entertained
• I don’t like to shuffle my music. I like to listen to all the songs I like from one band or artist and then move on to something else
• OR, listen to my liked playlist unshuffled and never miss a beat when a Linkin Park song comes on after Fleet Foxes
• I don’t normally like remixes or covers of songs (unless I choose to listen to them) because I’m used to hearing a certain version and I don’t like being thrown off by something in it I didn’t expect
• I can watch the same movie multiple times without getting tired of it. I prefer movies that align with my interests, such as specific time periods and non-fiction genres 
• Apparently, having mostly male friends while growing up is considered a sign of autism? I always sided with the boys because I thought the girls didn't make sense and were "drama queens" (I PROMISE I WASN’T A PICK ME) 
• Most if not all of my close friends throughout my life were also ND
• I feel like people think my interests are dumb, stupid, or unimportant 🙃
• I used to be really confused by the word “rude” 😂 I vividly remember not understanding what it meant or why it was spelled the way it was, but liked saying it over and over 
• Always had problems with interrupting, saying “thank you” and “you’re welcome”, not intentionally or out of spite, but just because I didn’t understand WHY. I would watch my dad “interrupt” and so I thought it was ok, but when I tried it it was rude. And I couldn’t understand that. I would literally wait until I thought there was a long enough gap of silence in a conversation and then insert myself in because I thought that was what other people did. Apparently not 🙃😭
• Driving stresses me out and gives me anxiety
• I have had multiple full on panic attacks at the wheel and have had to pull off the road
• I FEEL like I either don’t pay enough attention to everything or am too worried about what the driver behind me is thinking, but always drive perfectly according to everyone else in the car
• I don’t like when people are behind me when I’m walking OR driving 
• I can remember landmarks but not road names unless I can correlate them with a landmark 
• Learned to play the banjo by memorizing finger positions and the sounds they make, not by reading music. Playing the banjo came easily because all the finger movements are patterns that repeat
• When I was little I used to beat and tap on everything like a drum and it would drive my dad crazy so I eventually stopped doing it  
• My parents called me “Amelia Bedelia” growing up because I would take everything literally
• I still take everything literally 
• I often hear "you're missing the point/my point" from my family
• Thinking in patterns and images instead of words/sentences 
• I used to hit or beat myself up when I was little if I felt like I did something wrong. 
• Saying “This tastes like the smell of ___” and not being understood by anyone 
• Would and still do often say “okay” to “I love you” 
• Carefully unwrapping presents and the tape on them as a kid (and to this day; wrapping paper is expensive y’all! 😂)
• I am very particular about how I prepare and eat food. My dad has made fun of me when putting jelly on toast because I look like I “am trying to paint a picture” (the jelly has to cover the surface area of the toast equally)
• Being lectured about being "too negative" when making factual, unbiased observations
• Punctuality is very important to me. I like to say that if I'm "on time," I'm late