"low self confidence" instead of AS?

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Intelligence doesn't come from a degree. Neurotypites will deny the truth to reassure their ego. I'm sure she just naturally assumes you could never be more perceptive than she and thus will dismiss the validity of your own intelligence. They do it all the time. I had one where the dude had his degrees all over his walls, and several other displays of vanity and pride. Pay attention to these small clues, the less they celebrate themselves the better, humility is far too absent among the "professional" these days, but no less important.

IMO, get a new one. You're probably more intelligent than she, but she won't care without the degree or certification. NT's love things that celebrate their superiority over others.

I really like your way of putting it. I saw a cousellor (for another reason) and she said (after I had mentioned AS) that she suspected something like that, but she didn´t see the need for putting labels on people. Well, AS is the most significant (in a very good way) label that I have ever recieved! Btw. i found an expert who was not in doubt after a few hours talk.

That's a great realisation. I wonder if you could give an example? I.e., the type of scenario where you could take either approach, what the approches were, and the result of each? I'd be very interested to hear about it.

Last night I was discussing with my friend about how I struggled to understand a particular comic strip style joke. I told him how the drawings were too complex and some of the wording got me confused. The way I would "autistically" figure it out is to carefully work my way through each frame, and not move on until I knew I understood. My friend suggested that the NT way of making sense of it is to do the opposite - don't be so pedantic, switch the brain off a bit when reading it and somehow "pay attention" to the gist, not the details. I don't think that really works for me because as far as I can tell, that's what I did the first time and didn't understand the joke.

I'm assuming the same sort of instructions could apply to a social situation.

I'm actually wondering if there is a different way to "switch off" from the details, which we are less able to do. I think my version of "switching off" might be different to the standard NT way.

Sure! I think this would be a good example...

For years now, I've been aware of the fact that I do not like to go grocery shopping, and for years I've been pretty hard on myself about it. I couldn't put my finger on the problem, but I assumed that it was a social anxiety thing. As a result, I tried and tried to force myself to go during the crowded hours and practice socializing and being around the people. I would usually bring some kind of a list, but just a few ideas scribbled on a piece of paper really. I thought that maybe I could "get used to" whatever was bothering me and it would go away. Well, it never went away no matter how much I practiced and tried...and than I had a baby, which literally made grocery shopping impossible for me. I didn't know why, but I couldn't do it any longer, and I didn't. My husband had to do all of the grocery shopping at that point.

During my grocery shopping hiatus I came to learn about AS and sensory over stimulation. I figured that perhaps my problem wasn't "social anxiety" but maybe it was simply that the crowds were too chaotic and over stimulating for me. On top of that, I learned that I actually have an extremely difficult time making decisions about which items to purchase because I end up trying to calculate the best buy and compare all of my options to ensure that I'm making the best decision possible. I tend to try to do this with every single grocery item, and if I just grab something and throw it in the cart, it gives me a lot of anxiety not knowing if it was the best choice possible or not. It's very difficult for me to focus on these calculations when there are people all around me, behind me (I absolutely hate that), trying to reach around me to get products off of shelves, etc. I have a difficult time walking through a store because I'm always in someone's way, and I'm constantly trying to replay my previous actions to make sure I didn't make a fool of myself (and figure out how to avoid it the next time). When I had my son the problem intensified greatly because he would start grabbing items off of the shelves, or people would come up to him and want to touch him or talk to him, or they would start talking to the side of my head about him while I was trying to calculate or figure something out. Either that or he would start crying - I cannot deal with the sound of his crying, it causes me to feel very overloaded very quickly, especially in public when people are looking at me expecting me to make him stop immediately. The whole thing just became way too much for me to bear. I also later learned that the lighting in grocery stores bothers me as well. It's just bright and sterile looking, and it makes me feel stressed out just thinking about it.

So, taking into account my newly acquired autistic perspective, I figured out how to avoid all of this and I'm glad to say that grocery shopping is no longer an issue for me. I learned that if I do my "calculating" at home and bring a very specific grocery list, that eliminates the need to feel overwhelmed while figuring it all out in the aisles. I know where most of the items are, so my list goes in order, and I take the same "route" through the store every time. Not to mention, my list is much more efficient, detailed and accurate, which I now know makes me very happy. Also, I stopped trying to force myself to shop with the crowds. Now I've simply accepted that it's OK to shop during the off hours, and I'm not some kind of a failure for doing it. If I have to go with my son (which I try to avoid now), there's less people there talking to him, and I'm zipping through the aisles faster because I have a specific list in my hand, so he doesn't really have much time to grab stuff off the shelves. If someone does happen to talk to me, I'm more relaxed, and it tends to go much better. I might even say that I occasionally enjoy chatting in the grocery store now (as long as it's brief!).

If anything, trying to force myself to be a "normal" grocery shopper was giving me "low self esteem" because I kept failing over and over again, and eventually felt like a quitter on top of it. The solution that worked for me was so unbelievably simple, yet I went for years feeling badly about myself and having trouble functioning in the grocery store for no reason at all.

Nice one, thanks

The NT approach sounds like exposure therapy, which in hindsight and keeping AS in mind, doesn't make much sense.

Sometimes it is useful to try to directly treat anxiety, depression or low self-esteem I suppose, but if you find yourself saying "there's more to it than that", then it's more important to focus on the underlying issue, e.g. a sensory processing issue, because the secondary issues will fall away when you deal with the primary one.

I have a pretty low opinion of therapists and therapy in general. They all have a vocabulary, and view of the mind, and theory of what is really going on here, that they slowly get you to use to describe your experiences to yourself and others. Many of them will want to give you pills. And many people see a therapist for their whole lives.