Advice to aspies too basic - anyone agree?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm 29 years old - does that qualify me as "an elder"? I'm excellent at social interaction, to the point NT's won't notice anything 'different' about me and very much enjoy my company. However, I had to acquire those skills very deliberately and I had to do it on my own because my parents were clueless about how to teach something they "just knew".

Not necessarily, behaving as IF the situation was ideal is a very effective strategy a majority of the time. If you learn how to be polite, respectful and try your very hardest to be understanding and empathic..... then you become unusual in a GOOD way. Treat someone as IF they are trustworthy and valuable and nearly all the time they will try to prove you right. Being "extra polite" is unusual and valuable in all the cultures I've been. (USA, Europe, Mexico) As a side benefit people become far more willing to overlook any social mistakes you make.

Of course the downside is that being able to spot a dangerous person/situation becomes critically important. Self-Defense classes are excellent starting point for that skill. So is being EXTRA paranoid about dark, isolated places and letting a trusted person check out anyone you interact with more then just once. Pay attention to anyone you feel unusually uncomfortable around and compare notes with a trusted NT to learn WHY you felt that way.

Now for the list of useful resources for social skills.

ABSOLUTELY!! ! Also psychology books, parenting books, and any other non-fiction how-to books with promising titles. (ie - "How to Write Dialog")

Comic Books! Modern comics explore a wide range of emotions and the simplified expressions are easier (and less scary) to study then real people. This way you can stare at expressions and body language from many angles with the context spelled out in the story.

Cartoons/Anime Simplified expressions + voice tones. This is the next step up from comics. Intonation is a large part of communication AND something many Aspies have trouble identifying. The speed of cartoons also helps you practice identifying emotions quickly without losing track of the plot. (rewind/pause/replay functionality is awesome)

TV Shows/Movies Next you can practice on live-action. Most shows are about humans in extreme situations so the emotions are intensified. Comedy and sitcoms get laughs out of exaggerated acting or unusual/bizarre situations. Learning how to spot "not normal" can help you figure out what "normal" is supposed to look like. Cop dramas and reality shows are particularity good for learning how to spot lies.

Fiction Books In novels only the important body language and vocal cues are written. Reading and studying fiction helped me identify 'important' gestures and expressions.

Acting Classes Very useful, but only if you don't get stage fright. Ditto if looking people in the eye seriously freaks you out. Milder version of the class would be acting books. If you can at least learn a "neutral" set of postures/stance then your communication with strangers won't get buried in twitches and other body language static.

Special Interest Clubs/Sports This is about the lowest pressure social interaction that exists. (other then family) Practicing your social skills here is the closest thing to a shallow end that I can think of. All the study in the world is not gonna substitute for actual practice.

"The code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules." - Captain Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl So true, especially of anything called 'social rules'.

Hope this helped someone.

I definately qualify as an older aspie but did not have a clue until recently. I have had a reasonably successful life, particularly with my career which began in my late 30s after a typical bad start and I am now semi retired. However, my career more or less ended 5 years ago when I was told I was wierd yet again (my managers later denied saying this). I have no pearls of wisdom. I have blundered through life rarely making friends and never keeping them, without insight, because I didn't know what the issue was. An increase in anxiety and 'meltdowns' led me to seek help but people of my generation just drifted through life, learning bits along the way but not really succeeding. Perhaps it is me that can learn from the younger generation who may have more awareness because they have been diagnosed and had support if they were lucky.

I'm 34 and I'm sure I'm not an elder, and certainly not wise!

What I don't get, though, is why NTs somehow don't find it too difficult not to expect intellectually disabled people to keep up with them academically, or physically disabled people to keep up with them in sports, but somehow expecting less from us socially is unthinkable to them and, apparently, to a lot of us.

Why should we have to create our own society simply to get out of being forced to continue to attempt and fail what our wiring prevents us from doing? It isn't reasonable at all.

It's not that we should. It's that we have the opportunity to try, so every aspie is tempted to. Someone blind can't even try to pass for seeing, but aspies can and most try to pass for NT.

i am a fan of the collective unconscious that dwell in our society. i think anyone can be a better attuned person given the right skills and appraisals needed to find a database in which to view their findings and come back with the concluded mystery to the preliminary.

I wonder how much of the above mentioned "deficits" are the result of Aspies, for no other reason than issues processing non-verbal communication, not understanding decisions and the transaction of information inside peer groups?

I really believe that many of the issues that are mentioned on a daily basis on WP are the result of social exclusion, and not Aspie processing/communication differences in and of themselves. Social exclusion can be reduced, particuarly by interaction with other indivduals with the same neurological processing style.

agree 100%. this is no dearth of superficial advice out there.

For NTs intellectual disabled kinda equals ~ socially disabled. So if your not intellectually disabled you cant be socially disabled. And if you have normal intelligence but bad social skills its kinda your fault like your not putting yourself out there enough and you dont really try. Or you dont care enough about other peoples thoughts and feelings. Its a vast misperception.

True, but we're talking about a generation of researchers who are taking the time to research things that were assumed to be simple for years, at least since the begining of our current cultural world. They have to start from the basics, because no one else ever did a study of how conversions work.