5 signs of autism you're likely wrong about🔥

[Music] hi and welcome to five signs about autism you might be getting wrong I'm a licensed clinical psychologist and while this channel has been built on Concepts around attachment and Trauma and relationships and narcissism and borderline and eggshell relationships and will'll continue to be so I know lately we've taken a sort of autistic turn and I just want to ask all of you because right now this is what these are the things the algorithm is pushing I would love to hear your thoughts about content you'd like me to do especially if it's content that you think I could dive deeper on and I or I haven't talked enough about I've made a lot of videos around those other topics and I have no intention of leaving those topics but right now my brain has really become passionate about this High masking autism piece and so like I'm saying at the same time that is where content is kind of being pushed and and frankly being received well and so I but I do care about those of you who don't really want to know about autism I hope you will know that I don't intend to fully stay here I thought about making a whole separate channel it's just so much work and what you guys don't realize most of you is that I'm a onew woman show I my primary job is to see patience every day and then I try to fit in content and courses in between and we could say I don't have the greatest life balance right now at the stage of life but I feel like that's changing the point is that um I can only do so much and I want to do things that you find helpful so please feel free to post down below other topics you'd like to see me perhaps talk about and then please check out the massive amount of videos if you're newer here that I have made and if I don't say it often enough I truly appreciate all of you who've been here for a long time all of you who are new those of you who are just like checking me out um you're you're so appreciated okay so let's get into these five topics though and the reason why I want wanted to share them is that I think that in many cases these five there are more but these five can make someone in the field of psychology who is not yet updated on the newer dynamics of autism just say well you know it's not autism every single day in every single post I make someone tells me something like well I saw my psychiatrist and because I can make eye contact and have friends they say I'm not autistic so we're going to get to those two topics actually number one is this concept by Damien Milton proposed about 10 years ago in an academic Journal called the double empathy problem and the bottom line is that the idea here is that the way we've kind of neurotypic described empathy has been through a neurotypical lens and definition set and that people who are autistic do have empathy varying degrees just like people who don't have varying degrees all of us as humans but that when it is present in autistic people the way that it is felt in the body and the mind and expressed and absorbed and communicated might just look different than that typical neurotypical lens of that issue and so the bottom line is that everything from how we understand each other you know when it's based through a one kind of lens that is neurotypical is going to make everything else look pathological or often non-existent and it's especially important because within the criteria of autism historically has been this idea that autistic people are not empathic that they're all looners they don't have friends like I'm saying and that is actually not true and so also this concept and it really helps us understand is that instead of focusing on all of our deficits and these like normative standards opening up something like understanding that empathy looks different for autistic people really helps build connection understanding of one another that really opens up frankly the possibility for us to be empathic towards one another so I'll link Down Below in the notes all of some articles I found on each of these topics for you to look at later or places where there are great graphics many of you know I love neurod Divergent insights and I almost always use her her links and Graphics too because she's a psychologist and has spent a lot of time in these topics and is also very familiar and on the Spectrum with and on the Spectrum okay so this is about a 10-year concept we've got a lot more work to do but really important to understand number two there's been often a confusion between narcissism and autism especially around the piece that I think can present as an autistic person perhaps coming off as arrogant knowing more than someone else maybe not engaging in certain if they they do fall into the more social difficulties Dynamic coming across less reciprocal and so inherently there are some differences right between these two now with narcissism you know what we know so far coming from a trauma perspective and in more cases than not alongside genetics and things like that and temperament it's very parenting strategies it's very possible that you could be autistic and narcissistic but I think where I'm starting to question is some people that I think have really presented in a way that looks narcissistic and is more autistic what do I mean so for example just a few summaries and we're talking about more High masking here but that a person who is autistic is going to be less likely to fully understand or engage or agree with or uh respond in a pattern of communication that is not sort of like navigated through the lens of understanding rules and cues and things like that whereas a narcissistic person in terms of communication often has a motivation of being manipulative they are intentional about what they're trying to do or Coco's cat here uh trying to do or or influence in you uh things like using silent treatment as a weapon for example for a narcissistic person where a person can really lose the ability to speak in many cases when they have autism so they're not trying to punish you they might lose the ability to access words and they might shut down and we know that that can be one of the signs of autism that has been historically called mutism and so that's common we can see punishment guilt tripping trying to hurt people maliciously lacking empathy and kind of really hyperconnected to wounds and sensitivities and that driving a lot of that behavior where they blame others where they need to feel like the best person in the situation or a person of high value and an autistic person of course can do those things but more likely if it's coming across that way it's driven from certain things like lacking intuition perhaps a disconnection in that moment from what they're feeling not really being triggered by um you know things that are triggered triggering for narcissistic people in terms of like ego wounds but perhaps being triggered by a new environment or being pulled out of a routine so those are really important to look at and I would say that the heart of autism is probably going to be varying degrees of sensitivity and while narcissists can be easily wounded you don't tend to get Sensi positive reciprocal behavior from them number three eye contact so one of the earlier criteria and Dynamics has been oh autistic people don't make eye contact and certainly that is true for a range of them but this implication especially for high masking people who have been overly focused on how much eye contact for how long you know they've had to learn to camouflage and mask and compensate for things that weren't inherently comfortable or natural in terms of social Dynamics and so especially like I've talked about so much in autism amongst women and girls it is very much expected for us to have eye contact to like provide cues that we hear you we see you we get you and I just don't think that historically in terms of culture men and boys have been expected to engage the same way so it is not true that because you make ey contact or don't that you may or may not be autistic number four this is a big one I think a lot of therapists think that some of the qualities of autism are especially around friendships and whether it's about being alone or not if they don't understand High asking autism they might easily think it is an attachment wound it is you being avoidant for example and there's also the concept of course of avoidant Personality which is a different concept but still this idea that if you have the more uh or the less socially motivated version of autism that you are just automatically you know it's all about your childhood trauma and wounds and you're engaging in avoidant patterns or it is morphed into more avoidant personality disorder there are essentially some significant overlaps around sort of like low extraversion and high neuroticism temperamental Dynamics how they might engage with their behavior being more inhibited or not more cautious and some overlapping brain circuitry those are the overlaps but it really can be a combination of differences that that really are not anywhere near the same ballpark but can look that way and so I'm not going to go into that although I thought about making an entire video on autism versus avoidant personality for example and I may do that what I want to share with you is not to assume that traits of which may appear to be less empathic less socially motivated less you know engaged in that way is automatically autism or automatically avoidance and worth looking into and lastly number five which goes to the idea that autistic people are loners and don't have friends if in fact there are many studies and many people you can just watch in the autistic Community even now with such great content with friendships with engagement with connection and when it comes to at least what I found so far when it comes to autism amongst women and girls even making friends might be easier but maintaining them might be more difficult and so there's lots of reasons for that but the idea that an autistic girl who has found herself on the outskirts of a popular group or is masking and camouflaging through you know girly things of the group or whatever the criteria of the group are doesn't imply that she doesn't have the capacity to be autistic because she can blend and camouflage that is the heart of blending and camouflaging and masking that can make diagnosing autism especially among certain populations very difficult to understand so those are the things I think that are important like I said they could each be individual videos and if you like me to do that or something some version of that please let me know but I think they're important to just hold in mind because like I said every single day I see content with someone who says five different Million Ways well my psychiatrist said I have friends so I'm not autistic like I said or my you know I can make eye contacts so I'm not so those are important and worthy of more study anyway please take good care of yourselves it has been an overload lately and I've had to really remove myself a little bit from social media though I need to be posting content for lots of reasons it is just overwhelming and so take your time pace yourself give yourself breaks avoid it if you need to but just protect your mind and brain and self right now as the world seems to be quite challenging for all of us not that it wasn't but it feels especially challenging now so thank you for being here please please do check out my courses which I've built this platform on which are really about childhood wounds and Trauma complex trauma relational trauma eggshell families like I've talked about and the last thing I'll say is that I do believe that many high masking individuals obviously have a lot of trauma we know that to be autistic is almost to inherently have trauma PTSD and relational types of complex trauma but that something like hypervigilance is another factor that could look like autism but is actually trauma or frankly very often could be both and that's a course I just made so please check that out if you had really a highly unpredictable eggshell type caregiver in childhood or relationship anyway that's it thanks for being here take care and I'll see you soon and really quickly Coco wants to say hi to her long her long time long seen friends hold on coko says bye can you say bye she's like what are you doing take care have a good day stay safe bye [Music]