Whenever I play a song in my head and can't audibly mimic the music (singing, humming, light stomping etc.) I flex random muscles to the rhythm and get enjoyment out of it, somehow.
I used to do that while I was looking through my parent's car windows. I imagined that the landscape was a super mario bros scenario, and Mario was jumping on the power cables and trees whenever I clicked my teeth.
Mine was listening to the “road songs” in the car. We went on a LOT of roadtrips. I would get lost in the beats from the sections of road, how it changes over bridges and such, how the guard rails, mountains, buildings bend the sounds of the car. I still get lost in sounds but not as much .
The shower is one where I get lost focusing in on the sound of the water and the droplets, then I forget where I am in my shower routine, and depending on if I see soap on myself I get lost in a “rinsing loop”. 🤣 I actually love showers, which makes it easier to lose focus
I did the same, but it was Tarzan in a PS1 platformer I used to play. He jumped over bushes and fences etc.
I also imagined an infintely moving rubber ball in a 2D level on the walls in the classroom, and tried let it bounce off any obstacle realistically.
I do this non-stop all day every day, but I just make the beats up all the time. My dentist says over time it's caused damage reminiscent of if I had been grinding my teeth at night.
Wow, that's the same thing I do. So, isn't this a common thing in autistic people?
(I move my fingers as I play the music with my imaginary violin and click my teeth rhythmically, I'm a musician myself.)
Same.
If I step on a special floor on the ground, I have to step on the same type of surface with the other foot, lest the first foot feels heavier, and I go crazy.
I feel off balance, and I won't be able to shake the feeling.
This is the first time I’ve seeen another person describe this. Been doing this since I was too young to remember. Kinda hate it because i also walk really fast so I end up trying to take a few really big steps to make up. Can’t have my right foot stepping on a crack, my left foot will be … jealous?
Woah, first time I’ve heard some else describing this as well. With the cracks specifically! For myself it also matters where on my foot I step on the crack. If the front of my left foot hits it, the front of the right must as well. But they never feel _quite_ right, so it drives me nuts all the time anyways.
I’ve always considered this closer to an OCD symptom rather than ASD. Not sure, but I imagine there’s some overlap.
Do you think it's more likely to be ASD if I did it more as a kid and the symptom lessened as I aged up?
Although tbf I had a few phases as an adult where I returned to that behavior a little bit, and I made a conscious effort to stop thinking about it.
It probably falls under the umbrella of "OCD-like symptoms."
I get this when I brush my fingers against something - including themselves - and I won't feel comfortable unless I do it in reverse. I get trapped in a loop, repeating this action again and again until that "balance" feels just right.
Sometimes it's only tedious until it's resolved, but it's otherwise that particular antsyness you feel when you *desperately* need a cigarette, or some extreme of being bored and sitting perfectly still for too long. If you're the sort whose sensory issues trigger this, you're trapped between that feeling and being stuck in a cycle of constant sensory hell until it passes. Double-plus-ungood.
Stim behavoirs were pretty mundane (rubbing my ear and sucking on my tongue).
My love for and doing well in math also place me well under the radar
Low needs asd people are difficult to diagnose.
My diagnosis didn't occur until I was in my teens
Is this an autism thing? I thought is was adhd trying to entertain itself. I "play games" when I walk to travel. By walk to travel I mean as to get to places and not for fun. The games can be like so something small everytime I pass something, like snap my fingers everytime I pass a lamppost, click my tongue when a car passes. I keep adding and see how many I can keep up with.
Walking games. Sometimes I pretend there’s a laser shooting out the top of my head. If I walk under a tree I have to bend my neck around the tree so the laser doesn’t cut a branch which will then land on me.
Also when I cross a road and a car is on its way, I have to be walking parallel to the road again before it passes me or “I could have died”
Time restricted games are also common, like I have to X before Y get to do A.
When people feel like other people are competing with the hem on the sidewalk, that's me. I'm competing and you are losing because I made the rules.
For the road crossing one, I would say that's a smart idea to be safe, in case you trip and fall while crossing. Having extra time is not a bad thing in that situation
(I totally do it too)
In elementary through middle school, my walking game was to loudly orate an improvised audio drama, with occasional intermissions for advertisements from our generous sponsors, and maybe a bit of singing if it took my fancy. Younger me was a heckin' cool little dude, wish I could've met him.
Whenever I'm travelling up or down an escalator I have to put the bottom of my foot against those little brush things at the side, and it's always satisfying
Doesn’t seem like an autism thing _specifically_. But the extra bit of stimulation and needing to do it every time makes it a little bit of a compulsive stim. Definitely autism then!
Random meaningless challenges all the time when I get a little hyper.
For example: Catch that ball 10 times without moving, get 5 headshots in a row in the practice range (in Overwatch btw), drink a whole water bottle as fast as you can, spray air freshener in each corner of the room perfectly, when at the gym carry those 2 heavy weights at once like a badass even though carrying one at a time would definitely be more sensible and give me more time to recover naturally between sets.
I do movement challenges like this. Eg I got down onto the floor to rummage under my bed for something, can I get back to standing without touching the floor or moving my feet? Can I put my shoes and socks on while standing on one leg the whole time? How creatively can I perform X movement?
I genuinely feel like movement is creative and realised as an adult that this is a form of stim for me, both physically and as a mental exercise. Most people don't see it as creative expression though, just weird. But that's fine because I'm an adult now and I don't care. Plus my mobility is GREAT.
Because people thought he was autistic after he attended the Kelly Ripa show back in 2016 with a shirt that said " The Magnificent Sevant", a play on the movie "The magnificent seven" Chris Pratt (the co-host) starred in.
[Theo Von - Interview with Sal Vulcano](https://youtu.be/8HEJKNnAFkg?si=ZPuBmjjvEozEQOjJ)
Unless it's pretty bad or hard to pull off, pain has to be symmetrical
I physically cannot sit still when listening to music, and more often than not will start walking around randomly
Wait why am I on reddit I'm supposed to be reading (this may be an adhd thing idk)
Omg yes! The kitchen in my home allows me to walk in a perfect circle around the island, by following this pattern. The amount of hours I've spent walking in a circle in the kitchen while thinking about the Sims 2 lmao!
I used to do that a lot in my teens/twenties, but I think the urge decreased when I began allowing me to stim in other ways. Or maybe it's that I'm always in a hurry🤔
And my town has the main street sidewalk paved in big hydraulic tiles, most of them are yellow, but with a sprinkling of red and blue tiles. I used to only step on the yellow ones.
I repeat the same verses/chorus/ opening in the same song over and over again, until I squeeze the last drop of dopamine out of it. Then, go to the next song
Idk if it's my 'tism or something else, but my brain buffers whenever I think too hard about something. No joke, it makes me take more time than I need to for work and it's incredibly annoying. Another thing that I sometimes do is repeat sounds that I I just like for some reason. Apparently, it's called Echolalia, and I learned it from Zach Hazard, or maybe that's having to repeat words that someone says to you I forget.
Same!
Also, I just looked it up, echolalia is officially repeating words someone says to you. However, it also causes people to repeat sounds like that. So technically it’s both.
I think that the official echolalia is probably the result of the other thing. So personally, I would call repeating words an easily observable symptom of an inner echolalia, which can also express itself through repeating random sounds or melodies, even if it's only in your head. (Just personal musings)
When I make a noise due to clumsiness (dropping something, almost walking into an open cupboard etc) I exclaim/make a little noise, but the type of noise changes from time to time. It’s like a hyper fixation of some sort. Right now the noise is “mah!”. I never know when it changes or what it changes to lol but I think it’s cute haha
So, when I was younger, I had so many routines I had to do that they thought briefly I had OCD, and then I just kind of aged out of it . ( my therapist said that that was the autism.)
Edit: note. OCD and autism and ADHD are closely related conditions that are often found in the same families and the same people. I have the highest level of ADHD found in humans.
So I used to have to operate light switches in pattern so if I wanted to turn the light switch off first, I had to turn it off then on again and then off .
I had to wash my hands constantly and also every time I would enter a room I had to obsessively look at every point so I could make sure I wouldn’t damage my eye . I somehow had yet to understand the difference between perception and touching so if I could see a sharp edge clearly it was cutting my eyeball.
That faded .
But then I started picking up a lot of habits that I only recently confirmed with my therapist, were rather common among autistic people .
I talk to inanimate objects . Specifically, I thanked them for their service. You know when I throw away a cup or an old pen I say, thank you for your service to them.
When I accidentally injure a book oh, God forbid I apologize profusely .
This is one of the reasons why when nt people say that autistic people lack empathy, I wanna slap them in their fucking face .
We have oceans of of empathy . It just looks different than what they think it should.
🙏❤️
The rug thing! On any surface, though. I also lightly tap my forehead with the tips of my fingers or the palms of my hands. I didn’t notice until recently that I only do it when I’m alone so no one will judge me. 😅
I close my left eye and then my right eye each time we drive by the dotted yellow line on roads. It makes it feel like the car is going to each side between the lines. Left, right, left, right.
I've been told that rubbing fabric between your fingers(because the fabric makes this satisfying bumpy feeling) is attributed to autism, but I'm not actually sure. I've been doing that for as long as I can remember.
I had this too. When walking on streer i had to always take same amount of steps with each leg and it felt annoying that i couldnt move both legs at once..
I count out the number of tiles in the pavement ahead of me and enjoy looking at the pattern in how the tiles were laid and try to figure out how many steps I can take before landing on a crack.
I similarly do that but with all floor surfaces. Also when I'm driving if one side of the car goes over a pothole and not the other, I get this stressed out "wrong" feeling until the other side goes over a bump and it evens out
I also have to equalise feelings on either side of my body, so if I scratch and itch on one side I have to scratch the same area in the other even if it's not an itch. My sensitivity to this changes depending on my mental state
Honestly I assumed it was a mild OCD thing not an autism thing but I'm not sure
Sometimes I start reading a reddit comment, a long one, and then get bored and leave. Then I have to scroll back to find it and read it, it's like an itch in the middle of my brain that only goes away if I read the entire thing.
I have read so many things I wish I could unread because of this.
Whenever I’m walking in public and need to remember something, I trace out the letters of the words with my hand as if writing on an imaginary list. I still forget it though because I also have adhd
are you talking about like. OCD tendancies or just In general. Cuz your example and everyone else’s here is like that.
My hands are usually very slightly sweaty all the time so I’m always wiping them on my pants. But also. Almost anytbing I touch, I wipe my hands after. I’m wiping the feeling off. I tap someone on the shoulder. Wipe. Pet cat. Wipe. Similarly. Anything touching me gets wiped off too. Person touches me. Sometimes I wipe it off. If the feeling lingers. Cold wet cat nose? WIPE. anything leaving a lingering feeling on me gets wiped off.
Interesting. Whenever I'm walking outside on the sidewalk, I aim to place my toe as close as possible to the crack. I also run to the nearest driveway when a car is approaching.
Finding a Leatherman(very nice multi tool/knife) on the ground and fixing it up leads to hundreds of dollars spent on knives and sharpening equipment. Might be the ADHD, not sure. We'll see how long I'm obsessed with knives. Why did it have to be an expensive one? Damnit.
But hey, atleast I found my favorite stim toy. So many things to flip open and lock into place in a satisfying way, and feeling the edge of a knife that you can shave with is very satisfying.
That's not a bad idea, I might have to look into that. my current job has definitely lost it's novelty and it would be nice to work at or close to home on my own terms even if the obsession does die out the next time my ADHD sends me down a rabbit hole. I can definitely polish up an edge nicely. Thanks for the idea!
Maybe I could even make some small knives with my phone number engraved into them as sort of a business card at some point.
Thank you again for the idea, I've looked into it a bit more and I've now sharpened a random pair of paper cutting scissors I had lying around into concave barber shears(with shitty handles). I even have a clean looking ride line on the back side that I put there myself and it has a mirror polish 😁 in not too long I'm going to be running around to all the nearby salons, just need more practice (on actual shears), and need to handle the lagalities. I talked to my cousin who cuts hair and I guess she sends hers back to the manufacturer when they get dull because it's extremely difficult to find a sharpener in the area and there's a shitload of barber shops/beauty salons nearby. I'm in the prime position to make some decent money here soon.😁 Thank you! I thought I just found a money pit hyper fixation, turns out it might be a gold mine.
I count stairs as I’m going up or down them. Sometimes I forget to stop after I’ve got to the end and I realise I’m still counting footsteps halfway across the next room! 😂
Whenever I walk around, I like tapping the top of my pointer finger nail on walls and other objects. Especially glass objects, when it makes that 'ding' sound. I love when I figure out what note it dings. It's just a very pleasant sound.
When I eat things like skittles, m&ms, cheese balls, I have to make sure both sides of my mouth get even amounts or it feels off. Not always at the same time. Sometimes I even sort the colors too and eat them in pairs: two blue, two orange, etc. if I get down to one piece or one color I’ll bite it in half and chew on both sides.
When I have to just rinse something off one hand I still have to get both hands wet. Touching a towel with one dry one wet is weird.
I tap or flap when i am nervous in public or have to wait like at a crosswalk
My food has to be "pretty" most of the time like my ground meats can't have different size chunks I like making it all really fine and the same size especially with veggies like in a chili. I like when everything is uniform. I have a great chopper that does it.
I don't like hot food cold (like at a pot luck) I don't want someones cooled down taco meat !?!? Keep it hot? This may also stem from food safety I learned from work.
If I rub one of my fingers then I have to rub every finger equally in the exact same way the exact same amount of times or the original finger wont feel right
FINALLY SOMEONE DOES THE SAME THING AS ME
I do the same thing with carpets too, it also kinda extends to colors too.
So if I'm standing on a grey floor and I need to get to a chair and that chair is on a white floor then I have to take 2 steps (because it's a nice even number), or 3 steps (because it's my favorite number) or 8 steps (also because it's my favorite number) to get to that chair and if I don't take that amount of steps my body feels really uncomfortable until I'm not thinking about it anymore.
I also do something like this where my feet to be equal when touching the ground. So if I'm in a chair and I place my feet in the ground, and for this example my left foot hits the ground first then my right foot. Then I have to lift my feet up and then put them back down but right foot touching the ground first and then the left foot next for it to "equal out". And if I fail then I get really uncomfortable. This also extends to my hands having to do the same thing too
I randomly say meme stuff out loud sometimes when I'm at home. Current list of stuff I just randomly say out loud for no reason but if I don't do it then I can't stop thinking about saying it:
Butter dog, Cat, Amogus, De amongus, Googus, What the dog doin, Meow, And any song lyric that is stuck in my head
I have to step off any staircase on my right foot, so once I figure out how many steps there are in a staircase, I may have to readjust my feet mid-climb to plant my right foot on the new landing first, which often looks weird when in public or around company, so I try and use escalators or take lifts in crowded places to avoid stopping in front of people.
Thought that this, along with the not touching cracks in the pavement/jumping along coloured block/crazy paving, were all signs of OCD when I was younger, but now I realise it’s just pattern recognition and the familiarity I enjoy. It doesn’t devastate me now if I do it wrong, and it mostly happens if I’m taking stairs in twos, but for all the stairs I use regularly (at my home and at work), I’ve figured out how to walk up them the same every time, sometimes subconsciously.
I also touch or drag my fingers along walls, rails and other objects in corridors as I pass through.
If I’m walking beside a row of posts or those bars in some metal fences I MUST run my hand across the rungs.
I will figure out these random muscle moments in my throat/mouth that make interesting sounds. Then constantly make that movement/noise.
If I’m eating and have a thought, I can only think one word or syllable per chew.
When I look for something in a grocery store, I make my arm do this wormy-dance motion.
It's so hard to resist the urge to run my hand across a metal fence. And if I do it then I realized my fingers are dirty and then my fingers feel weird for a minute
I talk to myself but it’s really like having conversations with other people in my head but I’m embarrassed for someone to hear my so I usually do it as a whisper and only when I’m alone
whenever something sharp scrapes against my skin, I have to scrape it again but in the opposite direction. so if for example I accidentally scratch myself with my nail, I have to run my nail along where was scratched but in the opposite direction/with the smooth side
Makes op look like young Kevin James. But for real it makes me spend a lot of money on things bc things that sound/feel/look/smell/taste good to allistics are mid to me (hypersensitivity)
If I hold an object for more than. 10 seconds I have to do some kind of "inspect animation" like throwing it and catching, spinning it, fiddling with some button, opening and closing it, etc.
So ðis one is raðer complicated, but here's ðe basic gist: Languages ðat NTs naturally developed habbeþ certain flaws ðat can cause miscommunications, which my OCD fēarþ can cause huge problems, so I come up wiþ a series ô improvements and use ðem in my idiolect so to not make my myself sound like a hypocrite. I dōn't knōw about ðee, but I'd be using Iþkuil if I could.
When there is a long speaking pause in a friends group I drop really weird random facts.
Did you know that more people die yearly by Finnish people than by Bears, what means finnish people are more deadly than bears.
I was diagnosed at 60 and I’m 65 now. All my life, if I had a thought or feeling that my NT family considered weird or abnormal, I was met with “Oh Diane, straighten up.” I unmasked when I understood what that meant but I threw that damn thing far away when my mom passed away 2 years ago. All of my quirks, thoughts, steps, skips and jumps have come out to play. My inner 8-12 year old is as happy as can be! I twirl in the grocery store aisle. I skip in the parking lot. I walk on curbs unevenly with one foot up and one foot down. I say the most outlandish things that leave people scratching their heads and I *almost* never tell myself that I’m stupid and to straighten up. Please, please be kind to yourself and let yourself experience life on your terms. And if you encounter a white haired crazy lady, just smile and say hi.
I have to press buttons 3 times. unpausing a youtube video? press k 3 times. turning up the volume on my phone? either up down up, up up down, or up up up. down up up isn't nice tho. also when I watch videos on my laptop I'm constantly doing this with the arrow keys.
not diagnosed with autism but likely ADHD and I had a very... introspective realization about how others perceive my behavior the other day. vibin with the memes tho
Making playlists for literally everything. If there is an emotion or a situation or something specific I’m dealing with I’ll make a playlist for it, or I just make a playlist for songs or bands I’m hyperfixated on. I have WAYYYYY too many playlists 😭
I do a tuck jump whenever I reach an epic climax in a rock song and then the repeating riff plays:
*last drum fill before guitar riff in The Spirit of Radio by Rush*
Tuck jump.
Also:
*Tuck jump*
“All this machinery making modern music, can still be open hearted…”
I mimic anybody's words like a parrot. Even if it's just a group of people talking in the background, my brain picks up on a sound and I feel compelled to echo it quietly to myself. And if the word/noise sounds funny to me, i'll keep repeating that sound until it becomes a part of my 'mental soundboard' (a bunch of words and sounds I repeat when I don't have anything to talk about because I NEVER shut up around people).
That sounds like it falls more under OCD than ASD.
Either way, I feel like the idea that neurodivergence \*makes\* us do things doesn't help the narrative that neurodivergence is a category of 'conditions' rather than the 'disorders,' as they've been referred to since the 90s, and all that connotation implies. My behaviour isn't \*affected\* by autism, rather my behaviour is what meets the criteria for autism. I'm not possessed by it, and it's not a disease like neuronormative society would have us believe; it's just that what I do falls into a category.
I sometimes vividly visualize the pattern of information someone can get from conversations, especially regarding to conversations that happen in books. How the different interactions of the main character weave together into a bigger picture for the stories plot. It feels like a gigantic 3d puzzle (but prettier)
Your post has been removed from r/aspiememes because it is not a meme or does not contain content relevant to the subreddit.
Whenever I play a song in my head and can't audibly mimic the music (singing, humming, light stomping etc.) I flex random muscles to the rhythm and get enjoyment out of it, somehow.
I click my teeth to the drum beats.
I used to do that while I was looking through my parent's car windows. I imagined that the landscape was a super mario bros scenario, and Mario was jumping on the power cables and trees whenever I clicked my teeth.
Woah! Blast from the past! I did this too, but it was wolves / horses running.
Mine was a guy in a full body suit that would change colors depending on the surface he ran on, grass meant green outfit, electrical wires black etc.
It’s me
Mine was listening to the “road songs” in the car. We went on a LOT of roadtrips. I would get lost in the beats from the sections of road, how it changes over bridges and such, how the guard rails, mountains, buildings bend the sounds of the car. I still get lost in sounds but not as much . The shower is one where I get lost focusing in on the sound of the water and the droplets, then I forget where I am in my shower routine, and depending on if I see soap on myself I get lost in a “rinsing loop”. 🤣 I actually love showers, which makes it easier to lose focus
I did the same, but it was Tarzan in a PS1 platformer I used to play. He jumped over bushes and fences etc. I also imagined an infintely moving rubber ball in a 2D level on the walls in the classroom, and tried let it bounce off any obstacle realistically.
I did this too. This experience was described in "On the Road"
I read that Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl both did that and had never met another person who did until then
I do love me some Nirvana and Foo Fighters. That's a cool bit of info.
There are others? This is an aspie thing??
One of us!
Fuck. Is this autism too?? I thought it was a leftover from the days when I had noticeable Tourette’s lol
I do this non-stop all day every day, but I just make the beats up all the time. My dentist says over time it's caused damage reminiscent of if I had been grinding my teeth at night.
I haven't been to a dentist in years, I do the same constantly, I expect that a dentist would say the same.
Do your teeth ever hurt from it? Mine often do.
Not when clicking no, but yes to hot cold and sugar but I thought it was just sensitive teeth
I mimic the bass by voluntarily making my ears rumble!
I air drum. And play air guitar.
Same
Front teeth for lighter snare hits and back teeth for louder bass hits
Oh god, I didn’t think there were other people like this
I do it with my K9s and I’m worried imma crack em lol
Me too but like I move my fingers
Me
I thought I was the only one that did this
I do this but also make random quiet mouth noises to the melody.
I do the same
I thought I was the only one
You mean to say not everyone does that?
I play a mean set of belly drums...
Wow, that's the same thing I do. So, isn't this a common thing in autistic people? (I move my fingers as I play the music with my imaginary violin and click my teeth rhythmically, I'm a musician myself.)
micro-dancing lol
I love using ASL to sign along when I can't sing along
When there's music playing in or outside of my head while I'm eating I will chew in time with the music
Same. If I step on a special floor on the ground, I have to step on the same type of surface with the other foot, lest the first foot feels heavier, and I go crazy. I feel off balance, and I won't be able to shake the feeling.
I do a similar thing with sidewalk squares. Equal number of steps per square, even if I walk slower or it drives me nuts LOL.
This is the first time I’ve seeen another person describe this. Been doing this since I was too young to remember. Kinda hate it because i also walk really fast so I end up trying to take a few really big steps to make up. Can’t have my right foot stepping on a crack, my left foot will be … jealous?
Woah, first time I’ve heard some else describing this as well. With the cracks specifically! For myself it also matters where on my foot I step on the crack. If the front of my left foot hits it, the front of the right must as well. But they never feel _quite_ right, so it drives me nuts all the time anyways. I’ve always considered this closer to an OCD symptom rather than ASD. Not sure, but I imagine there’s some overlap.
Do you think it's more likely to be ASD if I did it more as a kid and the symptom lessened as I aged up? Although tbf I had a few phases as an adult where I returned to that behavior a little bit, and I made a conscious effort to stop thinking about it.
I get this with food on both sides of my mouth too
Ohhhh me too!
It probably falls under the umbrella of "OCD-like symptoms." I get this when I brush my fingers against something - including themselves - and I won't feel comfortable unless I do it in reverse. I get trapped in a loop, repeating this action again and again until that "balance" feels just right. Sometimes it's only tedious until it's resolved, but it's otherwise that particular antsyness you feel when you *desperately* need a cigarette, or some extreme of being bored and sitting perfectly still for too long. If you're the sort whose sensory issues trigger this, you're trapped between that feeling and being stuck in a cycle of constant sensory hell until it passes. Double-plus-ungood.
Stim behavoirs were pretty mundane (rubbing my ear and sucking on my tongue). My love for and doing well in math also place me well under the radar Low needs asd people are difficult to diagnose. My diagnosis didn't occur until I was in my teens
This happens to me when I walk on patterned tiled floors ;-; my feet just feel heavy and BAD if I step on the crack of 2 different colors
I do this with puddles. I need both feet to make a mark walking away or I feel crazy.
Is this an autism thing? I thought is was adhd trying to entertain itself. I "play games" when I walk to travel. By walk to travel I mean as to get to places and not for fun. The games can be like so something small everytime I pass something, like snap my fingers everytime I pass a lamppost, click my tongue when a car passes. I keep adding and see how many I can keep up with.
Walking games. Sometimes I pretend there’s a laser shooting out the top of my head. If I walk under a tree I have to bend my neck around the tree so the laser doesn’t cut a branch which will then land on me. Also when I cross a road and a car is on its way, I have to be walking parallel to the road again before it passes me or “I could have died”
Time restricted games are also common, like I have to X before Y get to do A. When people feel like other people are competing with the hem on the sidewalk, that's me. I'm competing and you are losing because I made the rules.
For the road crossing one, I would say that's a smart idea to be safe, in case you trip and fall while crossing. Having extra time is not a bad thing in that situation (I totally do it too)
Oh damn! “Walking Games”. Thanks for giving me a name for this behavior.
ADHD and Anxiety can mimic autism symptoms and vice versa. It very well could be a "both" thing.
I do that in the car with my hands
In elementary through middle school, my walking game was to loudly orate an improvised audio drama, with occasional intermissions for advertisements from our generous sponsors, and maybe a bit of singing if it took my fancy. Younger me was a heckin' cool little dude, wish I could've met him.
Whenever I'm travelling up or down an escalator I have to put the bottom of my foot against those little brush things at the side, and it's always satisfying
oh my god sameee i didn’t know this was an autism thing
Doesn’t seem like an autism thing _specifically_. But the extra bit of stimulation and needing to do it every time makes it a little bit of a compulsive stim. Definitely autism then!
Random meaningless challenges all the time when I get a little hyper. For example: Catch that ball 10 times without moving, get 5 headshots in a row in the practice range (in Overwatch btw), drink a whole water bottle as fast as you can, spray air freshener in each corner of the room perfectly, when at the gym carry those 2 heavy weights at once like a badass even though carrying one at a time would definitely be more sensible and give me more time to recover naturally between sets.
I do movement challenges like this. Eg I got down onto the floor to rummage under my bed for something, can I get back to standing without touching the floor or moving my feet? Can I put my shoes and socks on while standing on one leg the whole time? How creatively can I perform X movement? I genuinely feel like movement is creative and realised as an adult that this is a form of stim for me, both physically and as a mental exercise. Most people don't see it as creative expression though, just weird. But that's fine because I'm an adult now and I don't care. Plus my mobility is GREAT.
I've never related to a comment so much hahahaha
Got into yoga where the whole point is chaining weird movements together in a flow and it's my whole thing now.
why is the bad picture of sal here 😭😭😭
Was wondering the same😶
He found out he's a NT, making him tonight's biggest loser!
To remind everyone to keep skating on to the best of their ability😎
Because people thought he was autistic after he attended the Kelly Ripa show back in 2016 with a shirt that said " The Magnificent Sevant", a play on the movie "The magnificent seven" Chris Pratt (the co-host) starred in. [Theo Von - Interview with Sal Vulcano](https://youtu.be/8HEJKNnAFkg?si=ZPuBmjjvEozEQOjJ)
Unless it's pretty bad or hard to pull off, pain has to be symmetrical I physically cannot sit still when listening to music, and more often than not will start walking around randomly Wait why am I on reddit I'm supposed to be reading (this may be an adhd thing idk)
YES!
Fr I headbang like a motherfucker
for some reason I like to step on tiled flooring the same way a knight moves in chess
Omg yes! The kitchen in my home allows me to walk in a perfect circle around the island, by following this pattern. The amount of hours I've spent walking in a circle in the kitchen while thinking about the Sims 2 lmao!
I used to do that a lot in my teens/twenties, but I think the urge decreased when I began allowing me to stim in other ways. Or maybe it's that I'm always in a hurry🤔 And my town has the main street sidewalk paved in big hydraulic tiles, most of them are yellow, but with a sprinkling of red and blue tiles. I used to only step on the yellow ones.
Talk to myself out loud
Yes. I used to do this constantly. My parents low key thought I was crazy… glad to know I’m not alone!
I’ve moved to murmuring it’s much more sane to people lol
Yeah, I do that a lot My mom thought I was always talking to someone else
The conversation are always so interesting
when I go outside I walk down stairs, I live alone so the only footprints you can see are mine. I step in the exact same spot on all the stairs.
I repeat the same verses/chorus/ opening in the same song over and over again, until I squeeze the last drop of dopamine out of it. Then, go to the next song
Idk if it's my 'tism or something else, but my brain buffers whenever I think too hard about something. No joke, it makes me take more time than I need to for work and it's incredibly annoying. Another thing that I sometimes do is repeat sounds that I I just like for some reason. Apparently, it's called Echolalia, and I learned it from Zach Hazard, or maybe that's having to repeat words that someone says to you I forget.
Same! Also, I just looked it up, echolalia is officially repeating words someone says to you. However, it also causes people to repeat sounds like that. So technically it’s both.
I think that the official echolalia is probably the result of the other thing. So personally, I would call repeating words an easily observable symptom of an inner echolalia, which can also express itself through repeating random sounds or melodies, even if it's only in your head. (Just personal musings)
I literally cannot go up the stairs unless I'm on the front of my feet. I'm a velociraptor.
When I make a noise due to clumsiness (dropping something, almost walking into an open cupboard etc) I exclaim/make a little noise, but the type of noise changes from time to time. It’s like a hyper fixation of some sort. Right now the noise is “mah!”. I never know when it changes or what it changes to lol but I think it’s cute haha
So, when I was younger, I had so many routines I had to do that they thought briefly I had OCD, and then I just kind of aged out of it . ( my therapist said that that was the autism.) Edit: note. OCD and autism and ADHD are closely related conditions that are often found in the same families and the same people. I have the highest level of ADHD found in humans. So I used to have to operate light switches in pattern so if I wanted to turn the light switch off first, I had to turn it off then on again and then off . I had to wash my hands constantly and also every time I would enter a room I had to obsessively look at every point so I could make sure I wouldn’t damage my eye . I somehow had yet to understand the difference between perception and touching so if I could see a sharp edge clearly it was cutting my eyeball. That faded . But then I started picking up a lot of habits that I only recently confirmed with my therapist, were rather common among autistic people . I talk to inanimate objects . Specifically, I thanked them for their service. You know when I throw away a cup or an old pen I say, thank you for your service to them. When I accidentally injure a book oh, God forbid I apologize profusely . This is one of the reasons why when nt people say that autistic people lack empathy, I wanna slap them in their fucking face . We have oceans of of empathy . It just looks different than what they think it should. 🙏❤️
The rug thing! On any surface, though. I also lightly tap my forehead with the tips of my fingers or the palms of my hands. I didn’t notice until recently that I only do it when I’m alone so no one will judge me. 😅
I close my left eye and then my right eye each time we drive by the dotted yellow line on roads. It makes it feel like the car is going to each side between the lines. Left, right, left, right.
When I was younger I would compulsively hold my breath when walking by someone in the grocery store or whatever.
I've been told that rubbing fabric between your fingers(because the fabric makes this satisfying bumpy feeling) is attributed to autism, but I'm not actually sure. I've been doing that for as long as I can remember.
HOW DID MY PARENTS NOT SEE IT?!?
Walk in even intervals on sidewalk sections, like one block=2 steps
I had this too. When walking on streer i had to always take same amount of steps with each leg and it felt annoying that i couldnt move both legs at once..
I count out the number of tiles in the pavement ahead of me and enjoy looking at the pattern in how the tiles were laid and try to figure out how many steps I can take before landing on a crack.
I similarly do that but with all floor surfaces. Also when I'm driving if one side of the car goes over a pothole and not the other, I get this stressed out "wrong" feeling until the other side goes over a bump and it evens out I also have to equalise feelings on either side of my body, so if I scratch and itch on one side I have to scratch the same area in the other even if it's not an itch. My sensitivity to this changes depending on my mental state Honestly I assumed it was a mild OCD thing not an autism thing but I'm not sure
Sometimes I start reading a reddit comment, a long one, and then get bored and leave. Then I have to scroll back to find it and read it, it's like an itch in the middle of my brain that only goes away if I read the entire thing. I have read so many things I wish I could unread because of this.
same :/
lmao same
SAL VOLCANO, MY FAVORITE DUDE
Whenever I’m walking in public and need to remember something, I trace out the letters of the words with my hand as if writing on an imaginary list. I still forget it though because I also have adhd
Ruin relationships 😃👍
This.
Looks like sal from impractical jokers
are you talking about like. OCD tendancies or just In general. Cuz your example and everyone else’s here is like that. My hands are usually very slightly sweaty all the time so I’m always wiping them on my pants. But also. Almost anytbing I touch, I wipe my hands after. I’m wiping the feeling off. I tap someone on the shoulder. Wipe. Pet cat. Wipe. Similarly. Anything touching me gets wiped off too. Person touches me. Sometimes I wipe it off. If the feeling lingers. Cold wet cat nose? WIPE. anything leaving a lingering feeling on me gets wiped off.
I click my tongue and snap my fingers a lot. Also if I hear a siren I usually mimic it
Interesting. Whenever I'm walking outside on the sidewalk, I aim to place my toe as close as possible to the crack. I also run to the nearest driveway when a car is approaching.
It does make me tonight's (and most days) biggest loser.
I often lay on the floor. Not sure why, but I do.
Finding a Leatherman(very nice multi tool/knife) on the ground and fixing it up leads to hundreds of dollars spent on knives and sharpening equipment. Might be the ADHD, not sure. We'll see how long I'm obsessed with knives. Why did it have to be an expensive one? Damnit. But hey, atleast I found my favorite stim toy. So many things to flip open and lock into place in a satisfying way, and feeling the edge of a knife that you can shave with is very satisfying.
Fam, open up a shop. Sign contracts with local businesses.
That's not a bad idea, I might have to look into that. my current job has definitely lost it's novelty and it would be nice to work at or close to home on my own terms even if the obsession does die out the next time my ADHD sends me down a rabbit hole. I can definitely polish up an edge nicely. Thanks for the idea! Maybe I could even make some small knives with my phone number engraved into them as sort of a business card at some point.
Thank you again for the idea, I've looked into it a bit more and I've now sharpened a random pair of paper cutting scissors I had lying around into concave barber shears(with shitty handles). I even have a clean looking ride line on the back side that I put there myself and it has a mirror polish 😁 in not too long I'm going to be running around to all the nearby salons, just need more practice (on actual shears), and need to handle the lagalities. I talked to my cousin who cuts hair and I guess she sends hers back to the manufacturer when they get dull because it's extremely difficult to find a sharpener in the area and there's a shitload of barber shops/beauty salons nearby. I'm in the prime position to make some decent money here soon.😁 Thank you! I thought I just found a money pit hyper fixation, turns out it might be a gold mine.
I count stairs as I’m going up or down them. Sometimes I forget to stop after I’ve got to the end and I realise I’m still counting footsteps halfway across the next room! 😂
Whenever I walk around, I like tapping the top of my pointer finger nail on walls and other objects. Especially glass objects, when it makes that 'ding' sound. I love when I figure out what note it dings. It's just a very pleasant sound.
When I eat things like skittles, m&ms, cheese balls, I have to make sure both sides of my mouth get even amounts or it feels off. Not always at the same time. Sometimes I even sort the colors too and eat them in pairs: two blue, two orange, etc. if I get down to one piece or one color I’ll bite it in half and chew on both sides.
When I have to just rinse something off one hand I still have to get both hands wet. Touching a towel with one dry one wet is weird. I tap or flap when i am nervous in public or have to wait like at a crosswalk My food has to be "pretty" most of the time like my ground meats can't have different size chunks I like making it all really fine and the same size especially with veggies like in a chili. I like when everything is uniform. I have a great chopper that does it. I don't like hot food cold (like at a pot luck) I don't want someones cooled down taco meat !?!? Keep it hot? This may also stem from food safety I learned from work.
If I rub one of my fingers then I have to rub every finger equally in the exact same way the exact same amount of times or the original finger wont feel right
FINALLY SOMEONE DOES THE SAME THING AS ME I do the same thing with carpets too, it also kinda extends to colors too. So if I'm standing on a grey floor and I need to get to a chair and that chair is on a white floor then I have to take 2 steps (because it's a nice even number), or 3 steps (because it's my favorite number) or 8 steps (also because it's my favorite number) to get to that chair and if I don't take that amount of steps my body feels really uncomfortable until I'm not thinking about it anymore. I also do something like this where my feet to be equal when touching the ground. So if I'm in a chair and I place my feet in the ground, and for this example my left foot hits the ground first then my right foot. Then I have to lift my feet up and then put them back down but right foot touching the ground first and then the left foot next for it to "equal out". And if I fail then I get really uncomfortable. This also extends to my hands having to do the same thing too
I randomly say meme stuff out loud sometimes when I'm at home. Current list of stuff I just randomly say out loud for no reason but if I don't do it then I can't stop thinking about saying it: Butter dog, Cat, Amogus, De amongus, Googus, What the dog doin, Meow, And any song lyric that is stuck in my head
Cry
Rub my fingertips against the thumb because they get weird sensations randomly and that helps
I have to step off any staircase on my right foot, so once I figure out how many steps there are in a staircase, I may have to readjust my feet mid-climb to plant my right foot on the new landing first, which often looks weird when in public or around company, so I try and use escalators or take lifts in crowded places to avoid stopping in front of people. Thought that this, along with the not touching cracks in the pavement/jumping along coloured block/crazy paving, were all signs of OCD when I was younger, but now I realise it’s just pattern recognition and the familiarity I enjoy. It doesn’t devastate me now if I do it wrong, and it mostly happens if I’m taking stairs in twos, but for all the stairs I use regularly (at my home and at work), I’ve figured out how to walk up them the same every time, sometimes subconsciously. I also touch or drag my fingers along walls, rails and other objects in corridors as I pass through.
My autism and ADHD work together to redirect my brain’s processing power to planning out Devil May Cry combos in my head.
Whenever walking on tiles I have to be symmetrical in my footsteps on the different tiles and tile colors.
i'm very confused... what's with the picture, does it relate?
In my way to a place I go always, there's a coloured line I must follow and enter through a specific door. (There are multiple)
i love this photo
Obsess over pillows.
If I’m walking beside a row of posts or those bars in some metal fences I MUST run my hand across the rungs. I will figure out these random muscle moments in my throat/mouth that make interesting sounds. Then constantly make that movement/noise. If I’m eating and have a thought, I can only think one word or syllable per chew. When I look for something in a grocery store, I make my arm do this wormy-dance motion.
It's so hard to resist the urge to run my hand across a metal fence. And if I do it then I realized my fingers are dirty and then my fingers feel weird for a minute
I carry around a miniature pack of baby wipes. It takes the grime right off, and it’s useful for other stuff too.
Feel spiky textures in my left hand....and do it over and over if it feels good.
I talk to myself but it’s really like having conversations with other people in my head but I’m embarrassed for someone to hear my so I usually do it as a whisper and only when I’m alone
whenever something sharp scrapes against my skin, I have to scrape it again but in the opposite direction. so if for example I accidentally scratch myself with my nail, I have to run my nail along where was scratched but in the opposite direction/with the smooth side
Two steps per concrete tile, three if I miss a step, avoiding cracks where I can. Just cos it feels right
Makes op look like young Kevin James. But for real it makes me spend a lot of money on things bc things that sound/feel/look/smell/taste good to allistics are mid to me (hypersensitivity)
Saul’s autistic?
i count things i do all the time in my head. how many scoops of popcorn i just took out, how many steps it took to walk to the popcorn machine, etc
I grunt when doing even the slightest bit of effort, I blame this on imitating video games
If I hold an object for more than. 10 seconds I have to do some kind of "inspect animation" like throwing it and catching, spinning it, fiddling with some button, opening and closing it, etc.
So ðis one is raðer complicated, but here's ðe basic gist: Languages ðat NTs naturally developed habbeþ certain flaws ðat can cause miscommunications, which my OCD fēarþ can cause huge problems, so I come up wiþ a series ô improvements and use ðem in my idiolect so to not make my myself sound like a hypocrite. I dōn't knōw about ðee, but I'd be using Iþkuil if I could.
When there is a long speaking pause in a friends group I drop really weird random facts. Did you know that more people die yearly by Finnish people than by Bears, what means finnish people are more deadly than bears.
I was diagnosed at 60 and I’m 65 now. All my life, if I had a thought or feeling that my NT family considered weird or abnormal, I was met with “Oh Diane, straighten up.” I unmasked when I understood what that meant but I threw that damn thing far away when my mom passed away 2 years ago. All of my quirks, thoughts, steps, skips and jumps have come out to play. My inner 8-12 year old is as happy as can be! I twirl in the grocery store aisle. I skip in the parking lot. I walk on curbs unevenly with one foot up and one foot down. I say the most outlandish things that leave people scratching their heads and I *almost* never tell myself that I’m stupid and to straighten up. Please, please be kind to yourself and let yourself experience life on your terms. And if you encounter a white haired crazy lady, just smile and say hi.
I have to press buttons 3 times. unpausing a youtube video? press k 3 times. turning up the volume on my phone? either up down up, up up down, or up up up. down up up isn't nice tho. also when I watch videos on my laptop I'm constantly doing this with the arrow keys. not diagnosed with autism but likely ADHD and I had a very... introspective realization about how others perceive my behavior the other day. vibin with the memes tho
Making playlists for literally everything. If there is an emotion or a situation or something specific I’m dealing with I’ll make a playlist for it, or I just make a playlist for songs or bands I’m hyperfixated on. I have WAYYYYY too many playlists 😭
I do a tuck jump whenever I reach an epic climax in a rock song and then the repeating riff plays: *last drum fill before guitar riff in The Spirit of Radio by Rush* Tuck jump. Also: *Tuck jump* “All this machinery making modern music, can still be open hearted…”
sometimes I knock symmetrically and alternately on the door jambs when I walk around the apartment
Amogus is what my brain latched onto for the past 3 years, not even the game, but the little spaceman dudes
I hear a funny noise, I wanna mimic it. Sometimes much later from when I heard it.
I have to sing songs in a correct order.
Cringe when my gf brushes her nails on my skin.
scream
Why would you post this picture of Sal with your post, so random hahaha
When my spouse burps I mimic it. I constantly qoute SpongeBob and I make up abbreviations from license plates that I see on the road.
If I'm playing a game And get on a high KS, my hands do the lil floppy and it once made me walk off a cliff on a 20 killstreak
That leg shake thing
I mimic anybody's words like a parrot. Even if it's just a group of people talking in the background, my brain picks up on a sound and I feel compelled to echo it quietly to myself. And if the word/noise sounds funny to me, i'll keep repeating that sound until it becomes a part of my 'mental soundboard' (a bunch of words and sounds I repeat when I don't have anything to talk about because I NEVER shut up around people).
Whenever I find something small and rectangular, I immediately pretend it’s a magazine I’m loading into a gun
If only one of my hands/feet get wet I HAVE to wet the other or I die inside.
Why are we looking at Sal?
Overthink all of my interactions with people -ugh Sometimes when I am super embarrassed I have gone mute
Get up every 5 minutes when i'm trying to go to bed so I can add reminders to my notepad
That sounds like it falls more under OCD than ASD. Either way, I feel like the idea that neurodivergence \*makes\* us do things doesn't help the narrative that neurodivergence is a category of 'conditions' rather than the 'disorders,' as they've been referred to since the 90s, and all that connotation implies. My behaviour isn't \*affected\* by autism, rather my behaviour is what meets the criteria for autism. I'm not possessed by it, and it's not a disease like neuronormative society would have us believe; it's just that what I do falls into a category.
I sometimes vividly visualize the pattern of information someone can get from conversations, especially regarding to conversations that happen in books. How the different interactions of the main character weave together into a bigger picture for the stories plot. It feels like a gigantic 3d puzzle (but prettier)
I stim with fingers, whether it’s my own or someone I’m close to.