A woman has revealed the 10 telltale signs that led her to seek an autism assessment, including “blacking out after social interactions.”
Emilie Leyes, a brain training specialist in New York, revealed that she was diagnosed with autism last year after noticing some “autistic traits present” that led her to get an evaluation.
On her Instagram account, Emilie shared a clipwhich received over 12,000 views, detailing the features to look out for.
The TikToker urged her followers to take a ‘RAADS-R test’ if they identify with the traits ‘to understand’ the spectrum disorder.
Here FEMAIL lists Emilie’s top 10 signs that suggest she might be autistic…
Brain training specialist Emilie Leyes of New York revealed the 10 telltale signs that led her to seek an autism evaluation, including “blackouts after social interactions.”
1. Stimulation
She said: ‘The first factor is stimulation, I’m constantly moving my body. I feel like I can’t regulate or process information or emotions unless I’m stimulating in some way.
“If you don’t know, it’s repetitive body movements that calm themselves. When I was younger, I would spend hours and hours twirling my hair and now I play with my popsockets and I still can’t sit still.”
2. Nervous breakdowns
She said: ‘I’ve always had a hard time when plans or expectations change because I have a very rigid vision in my head of how certain things will turn out or how certain days will go.
“If that is disrupted in any way, it would lead to nervous breakdowns, confusion and anger. Even if it is a small and simple change, I find it very difficult to process.”
3. Intense sensory experiences
She added: ‘Number three is intense sensory experiences. I’m very sensitive to light and sound; I feel like I can hear electricity and that’s a lot sometimes.
‘I feel like I become deregulated if I don’t wear comfortable clothes, I can’t wear anything that touches my armpits, I didn’t wear jeans until I was a teenager.’
4. Stops
Emilie said: “Social interactions are really draining for me. I am a social person and I love talking to people, but they take so much energy out of me that I often shut myself off after big social events or if I have a lot to do in a day or a week, I need days to recover with minimal human contact.”
Emilie shared a clip on her Instagram @emilieleyes, which garnered over 12,000 views, detailing the features to look out for.
5. Hyperfixations
She said: ‘I’ve always had very intense special interests, where I get really obsessed with a topic, I get hyper-fixated on it, it’s all I can think about, it’s all I want to talk about, I get frustrated when I can’t talk about it and I look at information about it very quickly.
‘My relationship with my special interests is very strong, of course everyone has interests, but autistic people tend to relate to their interests at a different level of intensity.’
6. Intense need to plan
Emilie revealed that she has always had an “intense need to plan and prepare” for every occasion.
She added: ‘I have to feel 100 per cent prepared for the situation I’m going to face, so I mentally rehearse conversations in front of the mirror before I go out and interact with people.
‘I study the menu of restaurants before I go so I don’t feel overwhelmed by the options.
‘I literally studied for high school. I read a book about how to survive high school and I read it like ten times the summer before sixth grade because I felt like I needed to have enough information to feel confident, like I could handle it.’
7. Masking
Emilie revealed that she wore masks and was very aware of her behavior in social interactions.
She said: ‘I have a super high level of masking, which means I camouflage and hide my autistic traits and part of that experience is that when I’m in social interactions, I’m very aware of how I’m interacting with people.
“I get anxious about whether I’m making eye contact correctly, I don’t know which eye to look at, I don’t know when to look away. I’m very conscious of my body when I’m talking to people, I feel very exposed and uncomfortable.”
8. Repetition of phrases
“I’ve always held onto quotes from TV shows and people of all neurotypes quote TV shows all the time, but I’ve found that when I’m watching a show and I hear people say things in a different way, I repeat them in social interactions because I feel safe,” Emilie explained.
9. Taking things literally
Emilie said she understands the nuances and metaphors, but takes everything literally.
She explained: ‘My brain always goes to the literal explanation first.
‘So the phrase kill two birds with one stone, it’s an expression, I know what it means, but my brain automatically visualizes two birds dying.’
10. Always feeling different
She said: ‘I’ve always felt different to the people around me, before I knew I was autistic I was so confused why everything seemed easier for everyone else, I didn’t understand why it was so simple to just decide what to make for dinner and then go and do it.
‘Or how people could have the social battery to get through the day. I always felt ashamed that I couldn’t do as much as the people around me, and I felt like there was a rule book or a manual that I hadn’t been given to teach me how to be a person.
“When in reality they just gave me a different operating system, and now that I know I’m autistic it’s much easier to adapt and accept myself.”