Poof! All of a sudden I have social skills.

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My abilities and disabilities with AS come and go all the time. Sometimes I have really good insight to people's feeling and thinking, and other times I cannot even pick up a phone because there is a "person" on the other end that I cannot see and have to communicate with.

At 15 I seemed normal to everyone around me... I was also new in highschool and not letting myself seem like the rest of the idiots in grade 9. I was thought of as being advanced for my age, but then I fell back into the social awkwardness as I went back to my interests, and I started having less in common with people just because I wasn't experiencing much of the world. Was I normal at 15? No, people around me were just very accepting of me, and didn't notice me being different as I didn't come off as different to the people around me.

I've always been fairly empathetic, even too empathetic, and socially awkward. A lot of the time I found myself watching social interaction rather than engage and mess up.
Then in July 2003, I went to a transition course at a university for students with Learning Disabilities going into post-secondary education. About two hours into the "getting to know each other" icebreakers (which I hate, but these weren't too bad), something in my head just clicked, and I started to emerge from the social shell I lived in most of my life.
That's not to say that I don't half live in one now; I still do. But I'm able to interact for periods of time at a fairly NT level. Most of the time, for most basic things. New situations and new people have me falling back on "default" manners and distance, and even clinging to a friend to make sure I'm doing things right.

So sometimes, things just go click and makes sense.

Well good fer you son.

No, you think you have NT social skills. Then something will come along and you will realise you are not quite at their level.

I think this is called "growing up".
The brain is still growing at a really rapid rate at this age.
I remember when I was 15 I had a lot of "flashes of insight" probably for this reason as did my friends. Also, the academic work suddenly "jumps" up a level (it's a steeper learning curve) so you have to think harder and more often. This probably helps with the "flashes of insight" too as the brain makes new connections.

Same here.

I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a caring and understanding, close-knit community of people. If I'd say gone to a bigger school, I don't think I'd have coped nearly as well.

I think that luck and one's social environment has a lot to do with social acceptance.
If you're surrounded by understanding people who make the effort to include you in their discussions, of course your social skills are going to improve: they're giving you opportunities to practice!

I now realise that I was different from those other kids, but many of them were too well brought up or polite to let on. What I didn't realise until much later was that many of them were doing the hard work (such as approaching me) for me. I was merely learning to reciprocate (not a bad thing in itself).

Also, I was reading situations by looking at cues in the physical environment/verbal content rather than reading people's faces/emotions intimately and directly (think the "Clever Hans" effect). I was coping so well because people accepted me for all my idiosyncrasies. I was still "distant" from the other kids even then, even from my closer friends. I was still "out of sync" and I think I'll always will be.

That's why I received a shock when I went to College. It was a more unstructured, larger, less caring environment. Because I didn't know how to initiate conversations myself, I struggled. People started saying that I was rude and impolite when I was trying to be helpful. I realised that I had no large helpful network of kind people to fall back on so I tried to create one myself. I failed miserably: I was overestimating my adeptness and people were more cliquey and not as understanding.

Last edited by AmberEyes on 23 Jan 2009, 9:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wow! Congratulations! What did you do? What is the secret? Did you eat something different? Are doing something differently? I want to know the secret!

Mine seem to be slowly going the other way

I remember going through a jump socially, and it was when I hit my senior year in high school (16-17). I also remember more about that year than any other year in school. What did it for me was that I hung out with more people, and that was because that year, more people wanted to hang out with me, and so I was willing to hang out with anyone and everyone who was willing to hang out with me. Awkward phrasing...anyway, I felt like I fit in (I didn't know I had Aspergers then). It did get better in college, and a lot of those improvements were not temporary. Main thing was an improvement in my social confidence. But, throughout the years, I grew into other phases that included a less desire to hang out with people. I realized I could be picky now about friends. I also felt like I needed my alone time a lot, something I never considered at 15.

I've also noticed a dramatic difference now that I'm 30. But I think this forum has helped out a lot. Also, I noticed a dramatic difference in the military.

Anyway, more power to you. Remember, changing your approach to things shouldn't change who you are. People like real people, even some of the fake ones like real people. Real people with a big heart, now that's inspiration. So keep that about you, and if it takes some people a few weeks or years to realize how awesome that is, it's worth it. Basically, shine baby, and keep it real.

ALSO, don't let your grades slip. AND, don't do anything stupid. Keep your nose clean. Don't get lost in your social world where you do things like drink and drive, experiment with drugs, get a girl pregnant, etc. You can still be the responsible person and make friends.

Well I'm still an aspie, but if I could just rate myself on how generally good I am in social situations I am definately in the normal range. My friends even want to hang out more now. It seems unfair, but after all I've been through I'm glad to be moving to the better end of the injustice of people being unpopular just because they lack certain skills.

I'm curious - How do you know you're in the normal range?

Getting people to hang out with you isn't difficult really. If you want to show off your social skills, try getting elected to something and see what happens.

but it's something to maintain through practice, like daily exercise. I used to carry a folded up piece of paper with a set of social rules that I would go over whenever I had time alone, usually in the bathroom. The rules were basic in panel one (NT people prefer to hear their names more than any other word, they only listen to things they want to hear, and care more about thinking they won something than doing something constructive). Unfolding the paper gave me more rare rules that I couldn't always remember, some were based on certain people or gender roles. I also had a section on when to laugh.

By practicing constantly I became very popular. It also helps to learn about body language and eye movement. People expect different responses when they know they are lying, they also want to see a response to passive and aggressive behavior. You also have to learn that peoples words and non-verbal communication are two different conversations, and with NT usually only the non-verbal one is truthful.

Yeah, I think that´s how it´s been with me from time to time.

mine have improved in the last ten years. but it has been hard work and there has been nothing natural or organic about it at all.

i can now be social buti find it exhausting and really painful. i find listening to people really tiring. i can monologue. i find my internal visuals interrupt and distract my communicaiton exchanges and i zone out mid sentence a lot and just start watching pics in my head
trying to suppress all these things is why it gets so exhausting.

If your social anxiety has decreased at the same time your abilities improved, I'd say the anxiety is the only and whole reason why you got better.

So it probably wasn't your AS that gave you any of these problems, but your anxiety.

Sure you can work through social anxiety.

dude i believe u. a word of advise if ur axiousness comes back in social situations. relax and smile, go with the flow and just answer questions. U are just as good-looking and adiquete as everyone else. When u tell urself these things u will begin to beleive them, and once u believe them everyone else will believe them and they will become reality. think about the situation as if it was u tryin to pick up chicks. no girl wants a little weak man that they can definitly have, they want challenge, u want to try to make her feel like shes missing out and she needs to get on that, same as society... make everyone else feel as tho u are IT. they're not nobody if they're not talkin to u.. feel me..? just dont go overboard into cocky as*hole mode- beleive me its happened to me.