16 Overlooked Autistic Traits in Women

chances are you're either a someone who's already received an autism diagnosis as an adult or b someone who thinks they probably are on the spectrum and is currently scouring the internet for every autistic resource ever created i know because i've been there today i'm sharing with you 16 characteristics of females on the autism spectrum that are less commonly talked about these characteristics are based on my own experience as well as those of other autistic adults that i've been spending time with and learning from and i really feel that exploring these characteristics will help you feel

more seen as someone on the autism spectrum stay tuned until the end of the video i'm going to be sharing one of my all-time favorite products for helping to manage sensory overwhelm and i cannot recommend it enough so if you're ready let's jump in and explore more what it means to be an autistic female [Music] [Music] if you're new to the channel welcome i am taylor with mom on the spectrum and i'm so glad you're here i started my channel because i am a late diagnosed autistic female and i could not find enough resources that

really helped provide me with the information i was looking for during the diagnostic process and now that i have my official diagnosis which i received at age 31 i continue looking for more resources and support to help connect me to other people like me in the autistic community as someone on the spectrum i feel that my experiences are very unique and oftentimes these experiences can be overlooked or labeled as something other than autism that's part of why i created this channel i wanted to help clear up some confusion as to how autism is diagnosed in

females it can present in so many different ways that's part of what we're going to be talking about today so you can help me spread this message of what it actually looks like to be an autistic adult an autistic female in 2022 just by liking this video if you find it helpful commenting below i think you'll find a lot of great discussion and other like-minded people here to support you and making sure that you've subscribed to this channel those three things go a long way in helping these videos reach people like you and me at

just the right time if you've been on the channel for a while you might remember that i did a video on female autistic characteristics but it was a while ago and it was back when i was calling myself the atypical aspie so a lot of things have changed around here i'm really excited to announce that as of now the channel is receiving about 10.5 000 views a month cannot believe it thank you so much for the support and encouragement and i continue to receive countless stories from you out there detailing your experiences as someone on

the spectrum and i can't thank you enough for sharing these things with me i do my very best to read and respond to every comment every email and i love learning more about the autistic community today's video is going to be an extension of what that first video talked about so if you're interested after this video of delving into even more female autistic characteristics that's a mouthful be sure to check out the description for a link to the first video i did on this subject if you're interested in learning more a few quick disclaimers before

we begin one i'm not a doctor i'm not a psychologist this list of characteristics is by no means a diagnostic tool to let you know if you are on the spectrum but if you find yourself relating to several or all of these characteristics it might be worth looking into a diagnosis or at least exploring the idea further you can also check the description for more resources aimed at helping you navigate the autistic diagnostic process i'm just using all kinds of big words today i also wanted to point out and this point has been brought up

by several of you on the channel on the community tab which is another great area to check out on this channel for a great discussion using the term female can be kind of isolating there are many people on the spectrum who might not identify as female or male the perspective that i present today is an autistic female that's why i chose to use this wording also because i feel like there is a high need for females specifically to be able to better understand themselves due to resources literature studies that are based solely on how autism

presents in males i understand that's also a need for transgender and non-binary people on the spectrum i'm doing my best to learn more about those needs but because i am an autistic female that's the perspective that i'm coming from today i wanted to let you know today that no matter where you fall on the gender spectrum you may find that these characteristics are applicable to you so just keep that in mind as we go through this list today [Music] also i do want to learn more about how to better communicate regarding gender so if you

find any wording that i've used in this video to be something that is not helpful happy to hear that in the comments just know my goal is to be inclusive of everyone and i'm doing the best i can to use the right wording to support that with all that said let's jump into our list so number one as a female on the spectrum you might find that you have increased difficulty navigating romantic relationships maybe this has led to you finding yourself in problematic situations maybe you have found yourself as unfortunately someone who has experienced sexual

abuse or trauma this is not uncommon in the autistic community there's one study that has shown that people on the spectrum are up to three times more likely to experience sexual abuse than people who are not on the spectrum i will post a link to that study in the description if you're interested in more information on that but i have heard from many of you on the channel that you've been through experiences like this which i think goes hand in hand with that added difficulty in navigating romantic relationships things might not come as easily to

us we might not understand when someone is flirting we might not understand when someone says something that might mean something different than it actually does because we're very literal so as someone on the spectrum you may have found that romantic relationships have just been totally confusing to you you may have found in grade school that your peers were navigating these relationships differently and you just felt kind of like a fish out of water these are very normal experiences for females on the spectrum number two this is the thing that has come up more than anything

whenever i asked for y'all to share your experiences with me internalized anxiety from constantly masking so crash course on masking masking is pretending to be something that you're not put very simply women have particularly problematic pressure placed on them by society in terms of who we're expected to care for what we're expected to put on hold in order to pursue things that we want or need the list goes on and on and this video is not to delve into that even though i definitely could but the fact that that pressure exists i feel like is

one of the reasons that women may feel like they have to mask more than men do obviously i'm not a man so i can't speak from that perspective but i do know that women many times voice that they feel they have to mask constantly this may mean smiling when we don't want to this may mean pretending to be interested in something that we're not really interested in it could be giving someone a hug and we don't want to give that person a hug kind of goes along the lines of fake it till you make it

so as the female on the spectrum you might feel constantly burned out from trying to be somebody but not even understanding who you're trying to be because that constantly changes based on the people that you're around someone on the channel actually wrote something that i wanted to share this is from hannah hunt she said it's like people either expect autistic women to be the four-year-old boy who's obsessed with trains or completely neurotypical and i thought that was a really good perspective because males on the spectrum i feel like they might be able to get away

with a little bit more in terms of different types of social behaviors but women seem to be taught a more rigid pattern of behaviors that are acceptable by society and it can be really hard as an autistic person to understand how to fit that mold and extremely exhausting to find ourselves in that situation over and over again the third point goes along with this one that is you may feel like you're suppressing true honesty in order to make other people more comfortable this kind of goes along with masking but a lot of times autistic people

can be a little bit more blunt we are very literal and many times we feel like saying exactly what we mean is the best way to say something if you're on the spectrum you may have noticed how hard it is to figure out what's actually appropriate to share with the person that we're talking to it's almost like this song and dance of figuring out what is acceptable and what's not acceptable but the thing that falls behind in all of this is what we actually think or feel or believe or want to communicate so you may

feel that as a female on the spectrum you've had to soften your honest opinions in order to appease the needs of others and to make them feel more comfortable in the situation number four definitely also goes along with masking and that is copy and paste behaviors this was the first sign that i remember hearing and thinking oh my gosh i do that i was talking with someone about autism and they mentioned that it wasn't normal to have copy and paste behaviors and i remember thinking but it is normal and that's when things started first clicking

into place for me so as an autistic female you might find that in social situations you are constantly observing what other people are doing and you might change your body language to mirror them you might change your facial expressions to mirror them you might change your tone of voice or the types of vocabulary you're using to mirror them it comes from a different place it's not necessarily social anxiety it's more of ineptitude or an inability to understand how to properly participate in the communication going on now even as i say that i'm like who gets

to define properly so clearly there's some more unpacking we have to do there but copy and paste behaviors are almost a survival tactic for navigating the world of non-autistic communication number five this is something that i ran into my entire life from a very young age being labeled either sensitive or gifted or both i haven't seen males on the spectrum deal with this issue as much it doesn't mean that they don't but many times autistic females if they're a little bit different socially or don't really fit the mold it can be passed off as them

being sensitive right they're shy or they're just gifted and they're really smart and so they're a little bit different but the reality is if you dig deeper than that sensitive and gifted are just two terms that kind of cover up the struggles that are going on underneath the surface number six as an autistic female you may feel especially depleted after social events or large gatherings you may also find yourself constantly looking for ways to get out of those events i never really understood why people wanted to go to these very large events but i understood

that it was important so i found myself going to them and then would always need a lot of recovery time afterwards i didn't necessarily register that at the time but i remember just being kind of fascinated by the idea that people wanted to get together in these large groups and hang out and have small talk for hours because that sounds like a literal nightmare so if you find yourself in these large situations you might find that you need recovery time afterwards that you feel really depleted you might almost feel a sense of depression or lethargy

an inability to stick to your normal routine these are all normal autistic responses to large gatherings and social events number seven as an autistic female you might find that you have secret stems so stimming is something that you do physically with your body in order to move energy outward so as someone on the spectrum we deal with a lot of sensory overwhelm and that can create this feeling of a lot of physical energy that needs to leave the body the stereotypical autistic stems of flapping your hands or maybe hitting something those things tend to be

more common in autistic males not all of the time but many times autistic females if they have that type of behavior that seems more socially problematic so autistic females will revert maybe without even knowing it like i did to something way less noticeable like hair twirling i did this all the time in school hair twirling or picking at my nails biting my lip which is something that i'm still trying not to do because i do it all the time and it ends up kind of hurting so we find these little ways to stem that other

people don't notice i also used to blink a lot as a stem when i was younger gems can change over time that's totally normal but let me know if you're picking up for the first time maybe on some secret stems that you've had that you didn't know were stems i'd be curious to hear what those are number eight this is me for sure as an autistic female i feel like i am much more comfortable and much truer to myself in writing rather than in person that's not true a hundred percent of the time but more

often than not i would rather communicate with you in writing rather than having a conversation in person in person what i'm thinking about when i'm talking to you is where should my eyes be what should my body language be doing is this an appropriate facial expression and then trying to hold what you're saying in my head while trying to formulate an idea and figure out the right time to jump in and share it all of those things are so overwhelming and now in a way they are automatic but it still requires so much brain power

to do that that it really depletes me whenever i get to write out what i want to communicate i am truer to myself i'm able to take out all of that extra processing and really focus on what it is i actually want to say there have been many times where i've written something and thought wow that's really truer to who i feel i am than how i actually interacted in person with them which is kind of interesting because i know there's been this is a little different topic but i know there's been some shade thrown

at online communication facebook comments that kind of stuff because people just say anything and they need accountability but for me i feel like i don't type or share anything unless i truly mean it and i have run into that a lot in the autistic community that we won't put something in writing unless we feel it's honest and true and i feel like written communication is extremely helpful for me so just an interesting tidbit there in relation to the very complicated world of social media number nine you may find as an autistic female and especially if

you're an autistic person with lower support needs you may discover that you tend to find yourself in leadership positions this might be subconsciously because you want to participate without being part of the herd in a leadership role you know more clearly what your expectations are the routines that you should follow the rules that you should be guided by so for me in particular and other females that i've heard from on the spectrum taking a leadership position it doesn't feel scary most of the time because we know more of what's expected and we tend to have

more one-on-one communication rather than small group communication small group communication is hard y'all it's just hard ten this is an important one that might be hard to hear as an autistic female you might be really good at gaslighting yourself this is something i want us all to listen to it's important if you don't know what gaslighting is it's being convinced that something that you believe is true is not true as an autistic female there are many experiences that we have that don't measure up to what our peers are experiencing so you might find yourself saying

well she can handle it so i just need to work harder she did this so i can do it too she doesn't need a break so i shouldn't need a break so we experience all these things internally where our body is saying hey slow down hey listen to me hey this is way harder than i thought it would be and instead of listening to those voices we just suppress it we say no that's not true you can do this suck it up it's fine and ladies it is very important that we start to gently become

more aware of these tendencies to gently acknowledge when we're having these types of thoughts and feelings and mindfully recognize them and give ourselves the grace and patience to do things differently than the person next to us this is a long process but i wanted to at least plant that little seed in your brain today because it's important number 11 this is something that came up last week that i was having a discussion about with several people on the spectrum having a very rich inner world inner dialogue but being unable to express it outwardly and there's

a super funny tick tock that i feel like really relates to this that i'll put in the description for you but many times as someone on the spectrum we have these vivid ideas and imaginings and we can make connections across all different kinds of topics and we're formulating all of the stuff in our mind while someone else is talking and when it's actually time to talk none of that stuff comes across i find this happening a lot even in my closest relationships like with my husband i will have something so great to say and then

when i start saying it i'm like well i have no idea where that went it was really good and it definitely didn't come out that way number 12 as an autistic female you might find that you have fewer female friends and prefer to hang out with people who are not females you might find that you do fewer girly things than other people around you and i realize there's so many stereotypes and generalizations happening right now what even is girly let's not get into that but stereotypical girly things painting your nails going shopping wanting to get

all dressed up whatever it might be that's stereotypically girly in your neck of the woods we won't get into how problematic those stereotypes are right now but you get what i'm saying you might have found that your preferences were different than other females which brings me to number 13 as an autistic female you might feel really different than your other female peers someone had a great comment i believe it was on my community tab about going to sleepovers and realizing that if she was going to be having a conversation with another girl she would spend

time journaling beforehand or thinking through her emotions so that she would be able to communicate about that with the other girl because she knew that that was important so those types of things where we realize okay what is expected of me is different than i feel like what i can offer or want to offer or even interested in so maybe you have found that you just feel like you're always on the sidelines or never quite where everyone else is you're always kind of observing from the outside and feeling like an outsider number 14 as an

autistic female you may have found that you tend to excel in school this could be as a way of camouflaging don't create waves do everything the way you're supposed to it could also be due to the fact that school is based off of usually a pretty rigid routine and structure and that gives you some comfort and the ability to anticipate what's coming next so you may find that you actually did really well in school because it gave you a very specific framework to work within and helps you manage day to day without creating too much

attention number 15 as an autistic female you might notice that you have more socially appropriate special interests than males special interests for people on the spectrum is something that you like spending a ton of time learning about practicing researching doing talking about and there's a lot of stereotypes of like loving trains being great at numbers rain man a beautiful mind that kind of picture but females might find that we have more socially appropriate special interests your thing might be social justice or fashion or computer programming the list goes on and on and males can also

fall into this as well but as a female you might find that you raised fewer red flags because the things that you loved to devote all your time to didn't seem weird to other people and asterisk gone weird because i actually like being weird and i think being weird is cool but you know what i'm saying and then last but not least number 16 you may have found that you are especially awkward at flirting that's right you may find that you have no idea how to receive flirting how to pick up on flirting and definitely

no idea at how to actually flirt back what does that even look like maybe you found yourself quoting specific movie lines that are supposed to be flirtatious in an effort to fill that gap and realizing that they don't work maybe you found yourself trying to flirt with a specific body movement like putting your arm around someone and it just doesn't go as planned or feels really really weird flirting can be a very very difficult thing to pick up on and learn as someone on the spectrum i've heard many stories from different females where flirting was

just totally bizarre and didn't make any sense just to reiterate you can be autistic and maybe you don't really relate to these characteristics or you can be autistic and relate to all of the characteristics that's one thing that's so interesting about autism is that it presents very differently so please don't use this as a diagnostic tool it's more of kind of an interesting way to connect to other people on the spectrum and learn from their experiences like i said this list is comprised not only of my own experiences but also from input from many other

autistic adults that i'm learning from on my channel and in different communities that i'm a part of so i would say to you if you feel like you do resonate with a lot of these characteristics the next step might be to take something like the autism quotient which is a free online questionnaire that you can take that will help give you a better grid for whether or not you may be on the spectrum there's also another diagnostic tool called the aspie quiz that i like a lot and i will put both of those links in

the description of this video i'll also post a link of another video that i made about the diagnostic process that i went through and what exactly that looks like i've really been thinking lately that the most important thing is not whether or not we have a label for autism it's about having a better framework for understanding yourself and advocating for what you need to be successful so whether or not you have an official autism diagnosis adhd diagnosis ocd diagnosis whatever it may be whether or not you have that the most important thing is what information

do you need to have in order to better understand yourself and then once you have it who cares what anybody else thinks about it right if it helps you show up as a more authentic version of yourself yeah maybe it'll create some waves and make people uncomfortable but the most important thing is that you are happy and healthy and thriving and that's something that we can learn how to do together as an autistic community by continuing to share our own experiences and what life on the spectrum is actually like now that you've made it to

the end of the video i am so excited for those of you who have been around for a while i've hinted at upcoming affiliations and partnerships and i have my first ever affiliate partnership with a company called flair blair has created these earbuds that i have in my ear right now and i love them because they are so uniquely designed so before i show you what they're like i want you to know that i reached out to them and asked if i could represent them because i love their products so much i want you to

know that on this channel i'm only going to share stuff with you that i actually use and love i also want to say that i've tried many different earbuds i really don't like things to feel cloudy or really muted to where i have to kind of listen extra hard to hear i don't like that feeling i don't like hearing myself chew more loudly i don't like hearing myself talk more loudly and so for that reason there's a lot of earbuds that just have not worked for me but my friend lindsay recommended flair to me she

was like i promise you have to try them they're the best i promise and she's right i love them so check out this design so there's a hole in the bottom of the earbud here's the top of it and it sits in your ear and what it does it doesn't necessarily make things quieter but it reduces the frequencies so that you're not getting the really high or really low upsetting frequencies it kind of evens everything out in the middle when i first put them in i thought lindsay what have you suggested this makes no difference

and she said you have to wear them for a couple of days and you will not want to take them out of your ears my friends she was right i love these babies i keep them in my purse always i find myself reaching for them anytime i leave the house and in the house because i have two children i love them other reviewers have said that they just feel calmer when they wear them and that's what these are called flare calmer so if you're interested in trying them out i actually get a small portion of

the proceeds from each purchase so i will post my affiliate link no big deal in the description below once you click on that link you can shop around the website and select any product that looks like a good fit for you and it will be linked back to me if you decide to do that i would love to hear what your experience is like with them i know that they have a really long trial period where you can keep them i think it's for 100 days i need to research that and if it's not your

thing you just send it back no questions asked and you'll get your full refund so anyways was so excited to share that with you all some of you have heard me share about it before but now it's official i get to rep them and i'm gonna include that link in the description below for those of you who are interested in checking it out i hope that going through this list of characteristics has made you feel more seen i would love to hear in the comments which characteristics you resonated with the most and also any that

you would like to add to the list because you know i'm going to make more videos another thing i have coming up is a video with me and my husband where we both take the autism quotient assessment discuss our answers and compare our scores at the end pretty excited about that that was another subscriber suggestion other than that yeah please just make sure that you've subscribed to the channel if you haven't already that is a gift to me it means so much you can also support me through my paypal at paypal.me mom on the spectrum

and also make sure that you check out the rest of my resources at mom on the spectrum.net i've got a lot of free resources on there designed to support the autistic community and make our needs and challenges a little bit more accessible being on the spectrum yes we have plenty of challenges but i also am here to tell you that i truly believe your brain is beautiful and together we can learn how to better appreciate our very unique minds and the innate strength and talent that we have to share with the world thank you so

much for watching i can't wait to talk with you in the comments and i will see you in the next video bye [Music] [Music] you