People have been sharing the penny-drop moments they realised they might not be neurotypical – 17 ‘Oh, riiiight!’ moments

Thanks to increased awareness, diagnoses of autism are on the rise. But for some people, it took the input of a neurotypical person to make them realise that they might be on the autism spectrum, or experiencing other forms of neurodivergence, such as ADHD.

If that sounds like your story, you’re not alone. Thousands of neuro-atypical people have been flocking to respond to this related question set by Reddit user only_mostly_sane, who asked –

‘People with autism, what did you think was normal until a neurotypical person told you otherwise?’

The word ‘normal’ might not have been a great choice, but the question still struck a chord with these people.

1.

‘We didn’t know I had autism when I was a kid.

My best friend in the whole entire world was an autistic girl in the grade below me, and when we became inseparable my mom proactively explained that autistic people “like to repeat things over and over, and are uncomfortable making eye contact.”

I privately thought that autistic people should just do the repeating inside their heads like everyone else does, and was horrified and deeply sympathetic that eye contact was even worse and more unpleasant for them than it already is.

I am one oblivious fuck.’
-52BeesInACoat

2.

‘Believing exactly what people say when they say something and being shocked when it turns out they didn’t mean it the way they said it and there was something in the WAY they said it that I was supposed to have picked up on.’
-sharkboi42069

3.

‘The fact that I have to consciously tell myself to show expressions during conversations. “It’s time to smile now”, “people are laughing, I need to laugh too”, “Remember to look at the person talking” etc. For so long I just thought that was how people worked, the fact that it comes natural for most people is still kind of hard to understand.’
-pafdoot

4.

‘Apparently people can have conversations with others in a loud environment. I had my hearing etc checked cause I just legitimately can’t hear a word people say at parties etc and yeah nah, just sensory processing disorder ‍♀️’
-Br0z0

5.

‘I only just this year learned the term “maladaptive daydreaming” and I had no idea it was uncommon to space out so thoroughly in one’s head as to be completely oblivious to all external sensory input for an hour or longer.’
-xyanon36

6.

‘Until I was 10, I thought it was normal to rearrange numbers in my head. For example, if I read 907, I’ll add the 9 and the 7 and push the 0 to the back and have 160. I explained this to my friend, and he looked at me like I escaped Arkham Asylum.’
-JohnPainis

7.

‘I thought the lights were loud for everyone.’
-Dragonhookd

8.

‘Being so tired after social interaction that you need time to recover. People also don’t understand why I’m so tired after being out in public.’
– Pastel_enby

9.

‘Needing people to have factually correct information. I was in my late 30’s before I understood that it was considered rude by neurotypical people to correct their incorrect beliefs about the world. If something I believe to be true is wrong then I would like to be corrected, with reliable sources, of course. Who wants to walk around with scientifically incorrect information?’
-ghouldozer19