Report about successes for getting rid of ASD problems

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It is very difficult for me to pay attention to any part of a person's face or body, or indeed to any visual stimuli that are not themselves the topic of conversation, except very briefly at the beginning of the conversation or during lulls in the conversation. I naturally tend to hyperfocus on the verbal content of the conversation.

This is not something I can just will myself to change.

It should also be noted that eye contact rhythms vary by culture. That being the case, I'd rather work on building a subculture in which we don't need to do eye contact to be accepted.

Why? Eye contact is one of the most wonderful things once you are liking and really trusting somebody else so that you are always able to make eye contact and once you are doing it always find love or joy in the eyes of the others instead of hate or rejection. You should learn how to do it instead of building your own strange subculture to avoid it.

Eye contact is difficult for lots of people on the spectrum.

Not everyone enjoys it to the extent that you do. We’re all different.

Some are more comfortable with loved ones and don’t mind eye contact with them. Some aren’t even comfortable then.

People can gently push themselves outside of their comfort zones, but there’s no reason why we should make ourselves unnecessarily uncomfortable or stressed.

That's right of course. But even then you should learn to do it at least towards the people that you are really loving. Towards the right people it's really a beautiful thing to do.

In your opinion, it’s a beautiful thing to do. Not everyone feels that way. We are all different and like different things.

Did you ever try it towards somebody who is really great? Who was able to take all your anxieties and makes you feel joy and fun only while looking in his eyes? But you are right most people are unable to do this. Once you find to often rejection or bad feelings towards you especially once you were a child then you don't like it anymore.

I keep telling you again and again and you still don't get it. Simply "learning how" is not the issue for me.

ASD isn't just a social learning disability. For many of us, it involves sensory issues and/or attention issues that make various aspects of mainstream socializing intrinsically difficult and/or stressful.

I actually don’t struggle with eye contact too much. It makes me uncomfortable sometimes, though.

I haven’t felt the things that you have from it which is fine. We are individuals and all have different experiences. I connect with people by talking and drawing them out by asking questions. I’m a very empathetic listener.

Yes, and there are so many different nuances with social interactions it can get overwhelming very quickly!

There’s nothing wrong with limiting aspects of it that are especially stressful for us. You have to find what works for you!

I found here a lot of people and a lot of quite different mental and emotional problems. I would like to separate the different problems much more. It's also OK for me that you dislike eye contact. But I wouldn't agree that ASD it is a 'social learning disability'. It's rather that you can't care about things that you are blind for. You have to learn to recognize them first.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-con ... c-20352928

“Autism spectrum disorder is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a person perceives and socializes with others, causing problems in social interaction and communicating with others. This disorder also includes limited and repetitive patterns of behavior.”

Do you think it's possible you were misdiagnosed? Do/did you have sensory issues, attention issues, unusual/spiky IQ profile, etc.? Or did you just have problems with socializing that you've mostly outgrown?

I've become highly interested lately in assessing methods for managing limitations.

I'd like to start time organization/productivity strategies I've been researching. The executive functioning issues harm me more than anything.

I'd like to start working on analyzing the social and emotional subtext found in interactions. I've been so blind to this and need to cultivate a skillset. I learned a lot about how to mask within the past couple years, but what I learned was not considering the full depth of social communication, instead being a generalized method of managing the perception of positivity and openness (which I am sometimes capable of projecting and sometimes not unfortunately). The notion of reading emotions in eyes is so foreign to me, and I'd like to practice.

I don't think there will be a moment, even with sustained effort, that the issues I experience just go away. I think I can manage them and amplify my natural strengths and minimize my weaknesses, within reasonable limits.

I think I'm always going to feel more comfortable alone. I think I'm always going be intellectually obsessive. I think I'll always struggle with multi-tasking. I think I'll always relieve stress and express excitement irregularly through stimming sorts of activities, be it pacing or whatever. It's hard to see these aspects of me evaporating, and some part of me doesn't want them to. I just want to be generally more competent at living in the present environment.