After trying to change, I know now people with AS can't

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Can we judge you by reading your messageboard posts? Ken, you don't try very hard. You insist that you shouldn't have to change, you get upset when NTs don't play social interaction by your rules, and you complain here about it. Constantly. It's clear that all your energy goes into lamenting your situation and propagating a defeatist WHY BOTHER, EVERYTHING SUCKS point of view when you could be examining why a relationship failed, planning what to do about it, and maybe listening when someone here tries to help you.

That last bit... take it to heart. LISTEN.

So true.

People can certainly change. But like anything, it'd very difficult. Some really low functioning people lead really successful lives.
Besides, loneliness need not mean misery.

You're not helping anyone here. Just because you can't seem to make things work doesn't mean that you can sabatoge other peoples possible success. That's not helping people. It's dragging others down to make yourself feel bigger and better about yourself. You're like my father. Rather than help me in life he tends to sabatoge me in order to make himself feel better about his failures. At the same time, he's given up on life and doesn't try anymore. If he's given up, how can he succeed? He has no right to undermine my success, especially because his failures are in large part due to the fact that he gave up trying.

And again, you're just making excuses. Your god doesn't exist. If you keep looking to it for help you'll find that that help is never coming. You have to help yourself. If you keep blaming it for everything then you're never going to take responsibility for your own life.

People, just do what makes you happy.
If you want to live solo, do it
If you want to work on your social skills do it.




just live your life your own way, don't think you have to make lots of friends or get married because it is expected of you. just do what you think is best for you.

I haven't completely changed, but I have grown up and learned to be more adaptable over the years. Growth and apaptability are change of the best kind. I haven't changed the basic things that make me who I am, but I believe I have grown up a great deal.

i find it very hard to break away from my internal programming, the repeating patterns of emotions my brain runs through, but it can be done...

i sound like kryten or something lol x

Thats my problem I don't know how to change my programing.

I did not start this thread to ask for help. I know its too late for me. Just trying to help other people with AS from not going through as much crap as I have.

I think the biggest trouble is when autistic people try to apply NT solutions to autistic problems.

I don't agree with you. I think anyone can change if they really want to. However a person should NOT have to change to please someone else, I know this because I try to do it all the time. A person should change only to please themselves or because they have to get ahead in life. I don't believe we are meant to be alone, however there are times when a person may NEED or HAVE to be alone, be it their choice or not. I am sorry to here things are so hard for you.

When I'm rested and feeling on the ball it can be very hard to tell I'm an Aspie. However when I'm tired and stressed out my Aspieness comes roaring back with a vengeance. Due to a bad situation at work involving a coworker getting injured (not my fault but I have to fix it) I've been really struggling to keep it under control.

it is BS. You CAN change. I am a remarkably different person than I was when I was 10. Because of my lack of social intuition, and how much I CARED about whether or not people actually liked me, this became my obsession, and now I can fit in fine with other people. Anything you work on to change will change eventually...that's not to say you won't stumble along the way and embarrass yourself a great bit trying, but you will eventually get the hang of it if you practice enough. It took me about 10 years to figure it all out. Once you do figure it out the best thing is to move on to a totally new group where you don't know anyone...then they will accept you as "normal" because you have finally learned to act that way.

It is so significant that whenever this topic appears, the people who say "You CAN change, I used to be a total social loser, now I'm doing fine" are all younger than mid-20's. And all those who say "you may THINK you've changed, but in reality, you can't change that much" are in the 40's and older.

Socialising is never easier than when you're in your early to mid-20's. When I was 25, I'd have posted the same as all the other 25 year olds. After dismal teens, I was having a crazy social life. But had I finally got a real grasp of social interactions? I doubt it.

By early 20's the insecurity that drives the nastiness of typical teenagers has largely passed. Almost everybody is young, free and single and looking for an exciting time. NT's at this age will tolerate and even seek out eccentric and unusual individuals more than at any other point in their lives. My experience was at age 25 I had friends who ranged from the children of aristocracy to street drug dealers. I believed I had sorted out my social difficulties, but over time these people all drifted away into a life of conformity that I seemed strangely excluded from.

I'm not saying change is impossible. But I'm skeptical that planned, internally driven social skills improvement is possible to the extent of total transformation. The major factor in improving social position for people in the 20-30 bracket is just that socialising is easier for everyone in that group. The other factor is just naturally 'growing up'. Something we all do and have no control over.

However, by age 30-ish, most NT's are not looking for a wild time anymore. Now they're interested in impressing the boss, maintaining their social status and they become increasingly uncomfortable in the presence of anything that challenges the social heirarchy.

Maybe some of us are at a 'softer' end of the spectrum where it may be possible to become NT, but for typical AS, I agree with Greentea that you can't change the internal processing that goes on. Change is happening, indeed inevitable, but is not as controllable and self-directed as many seem to think. The whole social world changes and at times it makes it easier for us, other times harder.

Last edited by ManErg on 02 Sep 2008, 9:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Totally ditto to all of that.

I probably only became a mother because I was travelling in another country, ( to make reference to another thread going here, about how living abroad "disguises", at least for a couple of years, a lot of AS characteristics and difficulties, at

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt75929.html ). In fact now I think about it I wonder whether this may have been behind a lot of my deliberate, sometimes reckless, moving around/changes of scene/radical changes of lifestyle over the ten years or so before and up to my moving to France; an effort to escape the "failures" to connect which became visible after more than a few months /half year in places).

Now in my mid forties and with "motherhood-activities" diminishing in importance as my son grows up, I am increasingly aware of complete absence of connections with rest of world which would be springboard for work or social opportunities.

Was wondering whether might change countries again, Germany for instance where I have family, recently visited too, ( which is why was thinking about it !) instead of France, where I have been 10 years and not established a single meaningful relationship other than with my son, and, simply as a result of proximity, with his father ( who is unfortunately not someone I would have chosen for an important relationship) .

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Last edited by ouinon on 02 Sep 2008, 9:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

ManErg,

That's exactly how it happened for me.

I was very popular in elementary school, where the hero is the kid with the highest grades whom the teacher adores. Then I was painfully rejected in high-school, where conformity is king. I moved away to a new country in my early twenties, packed with all my new social skills knowledge and thinking that now I could have a clean start in the right path (normal relating).

Boy was I wrong! I did enjoy for a brief time, until my late 20s, lots of new friendships, but they didn't last. I struggled with friendships in my thirties and, now in my forties, when everyone around me is so set in conformity, status, image, money, being normal, I'm as alone as it gets.

I think few people have invested as much as I did during all my life in trying to change. Therapies for decades, self-help books, workshops, introspection, observation and writing, internet reading when the internet appeared, talking to people, asking, investigating, practising new ways, etc. etc. I have a tenacity that even I admire. But reality is stronger than all that: I miss 65% of what is said to me (nonverbal messages) and therefore people don't like me, don't feel comfortable with me in the best of cases and downright hate me and/or abuse me in the rest. Will I ever be able to train my brain to grasp the nonverbal clues? No. I can't cause neurological rewiring of my brain. That's ridiculous.

This is why I requested a forum for those over 35 years old (the undiagnosed era). Because I know the younger don't want to hear about our experience. And why should they? They're a different generation, they have diagnoses, they can study what will work for them in the job market, they don't have to try impossible things for Aspies and blame themselves for failure where NTs succeed, they can start early to look for other Aspies, they are raised in a different pride, and they have a different future ahead than we had. We have to deal with the feelings of guilt and shame we were raised with, on top of the AS.

However, coming into WP and claiming that Asperger's is reversable and that anyone can reverse their brain wiring if only they're not lazy about it is not just ridiculous and a lie but toxic. It's actually more accurate to claim, as the OP does, that nothing makes a worthwhile difference and better devote your life to pursuits other than the social one.

Mind you, some of the people who have contributed to this thread claiming that they've "CHANGED" and that they are proof that change is possible, have afterwards started other threads asking for advice, where it's clear from their questions that they're as socially clueless as the rest of us Aspies, if not more.

The only possible and positive CHANGE for us is to accept that we constantly miss 65% of what is being said to us and learn to live with it, making the most of our life.

I have done this too. And people, not understanding why, have described me, in a clearly patronising way, as "still searching", as if I should have found whatever it was by my mid-twenties, as if I was being self-indulgent. But I was in fact still searching, desperately, for the explanation, the solution, etc. And now finally having an explanation in a way have part of the solution. As you say, understanding and accepting one's limitations is a big part of the answer.

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