different things that work for me

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I hae always been asocial outcast, but several of my jobs have required me to not only coordinate with other employees, but also to help the customers. As long as I am knowledgable about something I do great, but when it comes to small talk or suggestions, I stumble and fall alot. I'm sure many of you can relate to that. However, I have found several different ways to not only cope, but improve my skills, especially since discovering I had AS.

One of the best things which has helped me focus and not let things get to me is meditating and studying Zen. The books by Chuck Norris and Shunryu Suzuki have helped the most.

Also, certain self-help books have done a lot for me. The two best are "Unlease the Warrior Within" by Richard J. Machowicz and "Complete Confidence - A Handbook" by Sheenah Hankin, Ph.D. These books were written for NTs, but they've really helped me a lot.

Well, there's also a book my brother told me "How to Gain and Influence friends"

Something that worked for me, in my late teens and early 20s, before I had even heard of AS, let alone suspected it related to me, and that was forcing myself out of my comfort zone.

I was quite shy, but through force of financial necessity I ended up working in bars and restaurants. I wasn't naturally a sociable, chatty type of person with strangers, but I had to chat and make small talk with customers, and I forced myself to do that. It wasn't so bad. Because the way I did it was to pretend it was like a role I was playing. So when I went to work, I played the role of a confident, sociable barmaid or waitress.

But later there came a point when I realised that maybe I'm not so much pretending to be confident, but I've practised it so much that I've become more confident. Although I still have some crises of confidence no and again, but I've realised that deep down, it's more about perception than reality. It's about how you perceive yourself, and how others perceive you. And you can change that by 'acting' more confident and chatty, and then people perceive you to be friendly and approachable, so they will engage with you, and it becomes a positive re-inforcing cycle of behaviours.

Thank you. I might check out those books. Most western, "Dr. Phil" style self-help books don't do anything for me, but I find that Zen type stuff is very useful. Zen is a way of thinking that can benefit people with autism, because it helps you to relax and be balanced, and doesn't interfere with a person's individual religious beliefs. Another good one, is "Urban Shaman" by Serge Kahili King. It's based on the principles of native Hawaiian shamanism.

I've read that and many other books along those lines, like "How to make friends in 30 seconds or less", "7 Habits of Highly Effective People", and "Total Self Confidence (by Robert Anthony) and while these worked in some ways, weren't nearly as good for me as the ones I mentioned.

"Complete Confidence" handles the subject differently, by showing all the factors of why you make yourself not feel confident, and how to stop sabotaging yourself, and is good because even if you are an aspie, by now you know you are differnt from NTs, and you can see how you are, and assert some control over things and feel better socially. Even NTs aren't always confident, and this book should work for anyone who can see him- or herself objectively and use some self control.

"Unlease the Warrior Within" was good for me because it helps you focus and accomplish goals through will power; it helped me more with my ADD issues than with AS, but helped with the confidence thing too.

I'm not saying any of the other books won't help, just that these 2 were different and really helped me a lot. Different things work for different people.