Can someone have great social skills and still have AS?

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Then you must also be the first to do so

We may have digressed here but I feel saying this is in keeping with the current mood...

I spent a while recently slightly losing faith in life and started to believe that it's just a bad joke.
But then I thought, well, at least I'm laughing . Now I have faith again.

A sense of humour is a sense of humour, regardless of what the source is, it can't be a bad thing surely.

I was just showing my appreciation^^
So to conclude all I have to say is yes it is possible, but it takes pretty much your whole life to achieve and it would be better without disabilities at all.

VERY GOOD POINT!! ! They are proving this happens with OCD , so it probibly is the same with AS.

I would like you to know that AS is not always a burden . To me it is an amazing gift.

If I had never had this I wouldent be as intelligent as I am now.

I would be miserable trying to keep up with the trends and doing what everyone else says I should.

I am myself and I love it, people want to be themselves but there scared .

Because of this I got the chance to see what it was like to be myself.
Shure I was bullied but now that I am an adult it doesn't happen anymore and I am free to be me.

I CAN act normal I just choose not to be it is much more fun to be just wacky old me.

Synth I hope you can learn to like your AS as much as I do in the future.

I wish you lots of luck

Having aspergers isn't what makes you smart though, you are just smart (perhaps even in a particular area of special interest which is the asperger side of it), which I would gladly give up myself to not have disabilities. Though I do appreciate what you are saying.

Everyone has limitations... just some are called disabilities. It doesn't take your entire life, but it does take your entire focus and application of what is learned in order to progress, and it takes an acceptance that you will fail repeatedly before having any success.


M.

I don't know if great social skills are possible, but I do believe people with AS can learn to fake it well enough to get by, as I have done. I socialize, just not a whole lot, and I need my downtime afterwards, but I do manage.

Right now you are in black/white/comparison thinking mode. You are putting yourself in "autistic" and all of them in "NT" and seeing yourself as inferior to "the thems" that are oh! sooooo perfect.

Now step out of that frame and think differently. Do you know someone you would label "NT"? Think about that "NT" person you know IRL. Has this person ever encountered a difficulty? Ever had a broken friendship? Ever been picked on at school? Been less favored at home by family? Experienced hardship? Didn't get a job because there were twenty other applicants, all with better connections?
Think honestly.

Well I know everyone has limitations, but not usually to this extent which you have to admit is very very significant and oh.. nevermind I just feel kinda drained now.. I'll get back to my star trek episodes on dvd

Sure, my adoptive parents even give me the "well everyone has problems" line... Right, but not to this extent.. You have to admit it's much more than anyone should have to endure.. Unless I'm the only one or something

Ack ok maybe you guys are right, having support like from your parents can make a difference and I'm way too pessimistic at times.. Sorry about that

Not beating up on you, Synth... I think many if not most of us have been worn down and have hated the problems we face. But by putting that energy into hating it, we waste what could be spent working to overcome it. We cannot change the problems we face, but we can change how we respond and react to it. Support helps, but it can also be a barrier to seeing things how they are. Keep trying, all I can suggest.


M.

Yes that is very true , but I learned to broaden my interests, to economics, politics , science , art, psychology, and many other things.

I find I pick these things up quickly if I become intrested in them because of my AS . This is how I use my AS to my advantage.

There are good things just try and work with what you have you'll get there, I believe in you!

Synth,
I am not sure what your specific problems are...we are all on the spectrum and we vary because of this.
Okay, I am going to paraphrase what an NT friend of mine said. I am not making light of your feelings here...I get like this from time to time myself which is why the "NT" friend told me this.

This chick that went to my high school was someone I saw as having a "perfect" life, without any hassles, worries. I had her on a pedestal, basically. She represented the perfect being, and I the most flawed.

I explained this once to my NT friend who was telling me about a problem the "perfect" being was experiencing. I got all upset listening to my friend talk about her problems, real failure to empathize on my behalf because I kept saying and thinking

"How can she have any problems. If I were her my life would be so happy so perfect etc."

The same kind of stuff we indulge in on WP, feeling sorry for ourselves.
Another thing I did during this conversation was discount "the perfect one's" (I'll call her that to show how distorted my thinking was about her) problems by trivializing them, comparing them to mine, scoffing at them, acting like her's were nothing, mine were everything.

This aggravated my NT friend.
She told me that just because it wasn't my personal problem, one that I was experiencing at that particular instant didn't mean that it wasn't just as valid and as important to "the perfect one". It was just as big a trauma and event to "the perfect one" as "the imperfect one's" (meaning me) was.
I didn't like hearing this at the time and scoffed some more.
Now I realize she had a point.

Everybody's problem is a big deal to the person experiencing the problem and should we compare our problems to one another's in an effort to try to make other's (and ourselves) feel bad about our feelings?
I think it's a bad idea.

That was one of my many lessons on empathy. Thought I would share.