Social skills deteriorating....

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A symptom of mine that has gotten worse over the years....

I almost had a meltdown tonight talking to some artists who were supposed to be hanging their stuff for the art crawl on Saturday....
These were artsy eccentric people...and i just about cratered while attempting to tell them what to do with their stuff...

This is something I used to be able to manage a lot better than I do now...

It was a combination of not knowing the right things to say/not knowing what they were thinking...sensory issues...I can hardly talk when we have the fluorescent lights on...ummmm....The music was bothering me the lights were bothering me and talking to them was like talking to a wall...

gads....

I used to maybe make an ass of myself...but at least not totally crater the way I did tonight.

Our meeting started out with them asking me if I was cold or upset...on account of the way I was carrying myself...and just went downhill from there....

I know this sounds more like it belongs in the haven...but anyone else have trouble with symptoms seeming to get worse or social skills deteriorating.

Also, I am not proud of the number of people that I have chosen not to communicate with just because it is hard and stressful..
I know I must come across as snobby and mean..to the majority of regulars at our venue...
There is a girl that has been coming in to help out with the cleaning...and I cannot talk to her because we were never formally introduced...even though she has been coming around for years, and actually used to live at the old place when I was gone for 6 months a few years ago...I have a hangup about not being able to talk to people who I have not been formally introduced to for some reason.
This hangup is relatively new, and is a lot more pronounced now than it was in the past.

It could be stress related or some such, but it might just be the natural aging process poopylungstuffing.

I know things I could “get by” and around in my twenties is really just too much for me now. A person in their twenties can cope with energy outputs, and ongoing stressors much better than someone in their thirties.

Many people who enjoy loud clubs, being out late, a constantly active lifestyle with lots of varied socialization in their twenties, mellow out in these areas in their thirties. If you consider people in their twenties, in many ways they are more resilient to "stress over time" and "energy zappers". The twenties is when most people are at their peak in terms of multi tasking. They still have much of their energy and youthful “extroversion” but have not yet begun to “slow down”._Unlike elder people they still have their very youthful neuro flexibility, but they also have the benefit of adult neuro function and have already accumulated some life experience (unlike teens who have similar neuro flexibility but have yet to develop mature neuro function and who have accumulated less life experience).

Just as non Autistic can do things in their twenties that they most usually cannot keep up into their thirties, I think a lot of Autistic people might find that they were utilizing the “life stage” characteristics to achieve tasks such as socializing and coping with stimulus heavy environments. In our childhood we have yet to learn how to cope with these things. By our twenties our coping skills are probably at their maximum, and so too I expect are our energy levels, our capacity to be outgoing, and to take risks balanced against adult impulse control and forward projection (modelling consequences).

So I think it might not necessarily be unusual for those who have been pushing themselves to reach their maximum potential in their twenties (in areas that are innately challenging to those on the spectrum), to find that once they move out of their twenties that they may not be able to maintain the same kinds of activities, or perhaps may need to relearn some new coping strategies, and that the price of all that functionality in your twenties may be a need to change your expectations and how you divide up your resources when your transition into your thirties. On the plus side, you will have a growing body of life experience and living wisdom to draw on, so there is a trade off.

I have only recently discovered my AS and at times it seems like my social skills are just crumbling.

I realise that they aren't and that this is due to the fact that I am now aware of what I am and how I 'behave' and that my self awareness is still growing.

The acid test is probably whether OTHERS think that our social skills are crumbling.

My life experiences and "wisdom" don't seem to count when I still act/feel mentally younger than most of the girls in their early 20's who hang around here... ..and to top it off...I can't talk to anyone...

I need to learn new coping mechanisms or re-learn my old ones...or something....

I should not let my coping mechanism be that instead of paddling to keep afloat, I turn off...or drop my facade and start acting more "autistic" in front of them...Just need to figure out an alternative.

My ability to focus has also dramatically gone downhill...this adds to the stress and it is all very annoying....

Would it help to wear some sort of visor when the overhead fluorescents are on? I know that trick would make them less annoying for me. One less irritant can't hurt. ^_^

I understand that this can be particularly disheartening which is why I would recommend against non functional comparisons (functional comparisons being those where by comparing what you do to someone else you can derive a specific strategy someone else is using for your own use). The point is more that while everyone who ages (that is everyone who does not die young) will find some capacities decrease as they age through life, there will be compensatory learning and life experience that might be drawn on as capacities change over an individual’s life cycle.


Have you tried deliberate social echolalia (adopting a persona you are familiar with and enacting it like a character for the purposes of business and other non voluntary social interactions)? Some people with AS report quite good success with this strategy and often find if they keep a particular person in mind it’s sometimes easier to think what they might say than come up with something to say “as themselves”. I understand you are_somewhat creative/artistic and that might suit this kind of strategy quite well. It’s a lot of energy of course, so whether or not it’s worth it to you to use this kind of drastic strategy is entirely a matter of personal preference.

I think that when we are younger we can use our nervous systems and fire them up to help us cope with what we cannot really cope with. But eventually the nervous system can no longer operate at such a hyper stimulated level and then everything falls apart.

I think that is the time we realise it was all an illusion, and that we never learned how to truly cope without some huge artificial crutches... I think we then enter a new stage in life when we ask the question... ok, how can I cope properly, using what I actually have, and not what I dont have? I think the answer can be surprising as we can discover that there are certain ways of being we can no longer turn to but we may end up finding new attributes to us that we didnt know existed.

I can talk to people a whole lot better as Puppetrina, but that is totally unpractical...albeit...I do slip into Puppetrina mode from time to time when I need to be assertive lately...so there must be people who have met me who think I have this crazy hillbilly/ Southern belle accent..

I was better at the "social echolalia" when I was younger, and that is how i managed.
A lot of the social "personality" of mine that people see was sorta partially derived from sources I adopted a long time ago. I have been exposed to hyper-social environments for a large part of my life...I figured out the social echolalia when I was in my late teens/early 20's and the singer in a band....and I used it as a coping mechanism for dealing with the constant stress of interacting that was kinda driving me mad...

I partially adopted the persona of a girlfriend of one of the guys in a band we frequently played with...it had mostly to do with her accent and her way of saying things, but it helped me socially a bit...and that sorta mutated over time into the way I talk today...

It is harder now for me to connect to new personas that I would like to emulate...or the ones that I tend to admire are dysfunctional, air-headed or awkward..like Helen Kane for example...who is completely dated....and impractical....and not good for social business...
In general.
It is harder for me to connect with people these days...not that it was ever very easy...but somewhat easier....I used to be more prone to absorbing a bit of the personality of whoever I was talking to and bouncing it back at them...now there seems to be a disconnect...or a friction...I can't do it like I used to (it seemed at least somewhat involuntary) ...except when talking to other very awkward people.

I tend to quickly lose my patience...and deflect all further interactions to another of my comrades if possible....and what should be light-hearted social discourse with one of my acquaintances feels like an elephant stomping on my psyche..and I have to retreat...or I might become hostile.
I have managed to alienate enough of my acquaintances that they don't really try anymore to engage in chitchat with me...

My good AS-ish friend and I tend to chameleon each-other...we have our own accent-dialect we speak in that kinda is out of step from all the people around us...I feel very comfortable with it.
I have been prone to doing this sort of thing in the past...but it doesn't help in involuntary social situations...I wish I could maybe turn it around more and use it that way.

Example of skills I need to re-learn....

Last edited by poopylungstuffing on 18 Nov 2009, 3:10 am, edited 3 times in total.

Life changes fast. It could be that your social skills aren't "patched" up to the version your life needs right now. I'd suggest you take a mental step back, observe a bit more, and contemplate how you act.

Oh, and stress crumbles all of the mind.

Whatever happened to "What does not kill you makes you stronger?"

I am constantly sorta put on the spot so it is often hard to measure my responses before they happen..

I have been trying to take a step back lately though..I don't know how to go back on certain things....like all of a sudden being nice to people I have avoided due to hangups...and whatnot...

In my case I think your analysis is spot on.

I think mine is aswell, I seem more closed when I'm talking in a conversation then I used to back in the days. Most of the social skills I had with most people seemed to disappear when I started getting depression but I've never told anyone about it apart from my girlfriend. That's why I normally talk to her the most. Plus I feel nobody would understand why?
Just 2 days ago, I had a meltdown about my mate who I thought or probably is faking the friendship with me and I only found out... And it really had gotten to me that much that I simply ended up shutting down from the world of communications and cried...

It is not just you, it is a common problem in managment. You only get stronger if you have time to heal. Someone who micromanages a business is not doing their job, which is to look to the future of the business. They may think they do everything better that everyone, but they only annoy the workers and neglect their job description.

Once overloaded the ability to function drops fast. Then even the simple things you used to do become impossible.

Do you own a business or does it own you?

There is some little art major who would have loved to work with the artists. All they need is you asking.

Do not correct their work, let them fail, or take the credit.

Tough ex-Marines crumble from a few years of corporate life. Where there is no clear chain of command, no bounds to the job, it will eat anyone. It is why we have written job descriptions.

A business plan must make best use of key personel. The Prima Puppetrina does not deal with the whole performance, and perform well herself.

The horse can pull the wagon, or race, but not both.