Curious/interested about autism

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Hello all,

I'm new here, and I haven't posted an "introduction" topic for myself so I hope that's not considered rude around here... if so let me know and I'll go post one.
Anyway, I registered with this forum because I have recently made a friend who I found out is autistic. I am not autistic myself and never even gave the condition a thought in my life because I had never encountered it before.
Around two months ago I moved into a Hall of Residence in a new city, because I've started my first year at university. Living in a Hall of Residence, I've made friends with a LOT of new people and, as I said, I found out one of these people is autistic. I don't know what "type" he has (I've come to believe there are different types of autism, though I still don't know a lot about the condition), but I actually had no idea he was autistic until he told me himself. Since then I've noticed subtle things in his behaviour around people, but nothing that I would have noticed if he hadn't told me.
Obviously he doesn't have autism as extreme as some do; after all, he is in his second year of a science degree at university. In any case, ever since he told me I've been very intrigued about autism and wish to learn more. I want to be able to understand how he is feeling with this condition. He doesn't say a lot about it generally but he has mentioned to me that he gets depressed and it is tied in with autism.
Is there anything I can do at all to help him? I'm not trying to ask someone to teach me how to cure him. But I mean, just in day to day life, is there any way I can act towards him that might help him feel a bit better? I'm not meaning to say I do things generally that anger him or frustrate him, but since I don't fully understand his condition I'm searching for ways I can try and understand him better, and help him to cope with how he feels sometimes.

Sorry if this is just a whole lot of babble! I hope I'm getting my message across properly and haven't confused anyone. Thanks for your time!

hiya,

First up wlecome to Wrongplanet. and secound up well done for asking. I am VERY IMPRESSED that you are inquiring about it. I myself am borderline aspergers, which is on the low end of what is know as the autistic spectrum.

The best way to describe the astistic spectrum is a very long line. For wordings sake lets assume it starts at NT (nuro-typical and twelve aclock position) and it goes in a loop through NI (nuro-irgeular at the six position) and then back to NT at the twelve.

Everybody is on this line. no exceptions. It is just that most (maybe 98%) of people fall on the space between 11 and 1. Now, the rest of the population fall across th rest of the line/loop. Now i would say (but this be my opinion) that aspergers (which is what i think your freind may be reffering too) is between the 1 and the 4. This is a form of high functioning autism i myself would put me at about 1:20. After this the spectrum comes back to somthing called LFA (low functioning autism). this is what most people would consider the classic autist.

that is the autistic spectrum. now what does all this NT and NI crap mean.

It is thought that evrybody is wired slightly differently. NT means only the most common way people are wierd, and NI just means a less common way. This give each charater strenths and weaknesses. For example, NT are good at socilising (genrally) and NI are generally good at learning and logic (genrally). being austistic is not somthing wrong, it is merely something different.

I hope this helps to explain a little. i would be able to give a better explanation over Instant messaging. so if you wish to do that then send me a PM with you adress in and i will respond with mine.

jammie ^licks^[/b]

Hello,

I have been in your position.

When I was in the second year of my Law Degree a new guy joined our tutor group. We were doing a group project (3 of us) in one of our classes so I got to know him better. He'd taken a year out with stress (caused by exam time) and had come back in to the year below. I was immediately drawn to him because he had a passion (perhaps an obsession) for law. He was so interesting. He knew about EVERYTHING and the others seemed so dull in comparison because he had taken the time to learn languages and was a brilliant pianist. We could talk about complex legal issues for hours on end which my other friends just thought were a waste of time. He helped me win the mock-trial cup because we researched together. At some point he told me he had a personality disorder and, knowing what I know of his life, it is very possible that this was an Autism Spectrum Disorder. He had a car and we took off at high speed to the coast at every opportunity, just to get away and feel the wind in our hair. I introduced him to my friends and they were all blown away by him.

He'd told me he'd been badly bullied at school which surprised me. Why would anyone bully such a clever interesting person? He had difficulties forming friendships because he felt that nobody would like him because it had been that way at school. I tried to get him to understand that he was liked and respected by many for his wit, brains and personality but it was VERY hard for him to see it. Ok - enough already, you just need to know what to do for your friend!

Just be a friend. If you're having a coffee and he says "oh - I have to go umm I forgot something!" let him go. Don't try to make him stay because maybe he just needs to get away when it's all too much.

Introduce other (no fools) people to your friend.

As a friend, keep a little eye to see that, especially around exam time, he's not exhausting himself and getting majorly stressed and not sleeping/eating because he's going overboard on prep and worrying about exams which he could pass in his sleep.

Be a supportive friend and provide reassurance that a friend might provide to another friend. Laugh a lot and enjoy your friend and keep balance and perspective.

If he's anything like my friend was I think you've struck lucky.

nomoreality....

you have descibed me a bit. i don;t get why people see to like me.

jammie

I understand you don't know what type of autism this friend has. I also understand your frustration with admitting that you have a friend with autism. It takes a lot of courage. I commend you.

My advice is to make sure there is nobody in the room where you both talk at so that your discussion is completely private. It can make some people uncomfortable.

It is said that Autistic/AS people have areas of their perception which are fixed. If I was bullied in high school and no-one went near me because I was SO DIFFERENT to everyone else (and it was SO IMPORTANT at that time for everyone to be THE SAME!) then nobody will ever ever like me. WRONG - SO WRONG!! !!

The NT's around grow up and change while you stay pretty much the same. In high school that may have made you a big nerd because you wore a tweed suit, didn't get your hair cut very often, could play Jazz Piano, liked to crack jokes in Latin (which nobody laughed at) and knew how to wire up a house. However, in adult life people are often likely to be to some degree in awe of your knowledge, original style of thinking etc. And YES, don't be afraid to believe that quite a few of them like that and like you because if you refuse to believe it then you've trapped yourself in your own cage!! !

Keep in mind that many autistic and AS (but not all) folks tend to think in pictures rather than words. Verbalizing feelings or interets may be difficult for your friend and they may not always be able to explain how the feel or what they're thinking. If your friend has AS, then you may find yourself having periods of no conversation (or only you trying to make conversation and not getting any response) then all the sudden you'll have touched on a subject of interest with them and their eyes light up and they'll keep the one-sided conversation going about what they know about the subject. Many times conversations with AS folks can be very one-sided. I, for one, along with many others, have difficulty reading and picking up the body language and eye contact cues that NTs (such as yourself) give in normal conversation to tell us when it's time to give the "microphone" to someone else.

Another common thing is that people with AS take everything we hear very literally and tend to believe everything someone tells us. So sarcasam is not an easy thing for us.

Also, many people with AS and autism will have sensory overloads. If you ask your friend if he has any sights, smells, sounds, or tactile things that bother him, he will probably tell you. Try to avoid as many sensory issues at one time as possible. And don't wear perfume, unless your friend likes it. Some perfumes can make us physically ill. I for one cannot stand Channel No. 5.

If your friend trusts you enough to let you touch him, try to give them a really big, tight hug rather than a light stroke. The deep body pressure of a bear hug from someone an AS/autistic person trusts can be incredibly relaxing.

It's great you have an interest in helping your friend. The more NTs that can guide us appropriately through the noisy, confusing world they live in, the better we'll be.

Wow, thankyou VERY much everyone. You're making it so much easier for me to understand what you all and my friend are going through.

Nomorereality - my friend also cannot understand that he is liked. He has expressed to me before that he thinks he is repulsive to females, and that he is ugly. When he says this I always tell him that it's not true - and I genuinely believe that too, but I guess he thinks I'm just trying to make him feel better. I just wish he could realise that he has a lot of friends who love him, and that I love him too! He really is a great person and it makes me sad that he can't see himself the way that I, and his other friends, see him.

jammie - thankyou so much for your explanation of the autism spectrum. You've made things so much clearer for me. =)

To everyone else, thankyou very much for the advice. I will definitely keep your tips in mind when I'm with my friend.

EDIT -- I just remembered, there was one other thing I noticed about my friend: he likes to joke a lot with me, often in a sarcastic or "insulting" kind of manner. I do realise he is joking, but when I playfully go along with his joke and retort to what he has said, he seems to think I've not realised he was joking, and he takes my remark very seriously. He'll say "oh I was only joking" and I always say to him "I know that... you always take me so seriously!", but I only now just realised - this could be caused by his autism, right?

yeah, very much.

Its hard to explai, but for me the fear of losing a freind means that i can get very serios with them. and i can get very confused by things they say. Also try to be logical, say what you means rather than hide it.

hope this helps

jammie

Your positive attitude toward your friend will go a long way to helping him feel at ease with you. It clearly has already, otherwise he wouldn't have trusted you enough to let you know that he was autistic. You already handle well the misunderstandings you and he have with each other, because you just explain without making him feel silly. There is a lot of information out there about Asperger's Syndrome. As you learn more, you will probably understand more and more of your friend's little quirks, but it's important to remember that we don't all have every symptom, we are still individuals.

Depression does seem to be common with Asperger's. It's hard to tell whether there's something in our brains that causes both, or whether depression arises as a result of feeling like we don't fit in, or the constant stress and effort of trying to fit in. To help with his depression, there's a limit to what you can actually do. If he wants to talk, you can listen. If he wants to seek treatment, you could engourage and support him in that - he might need help booking appointments, or working out how to explain what is wrong. But there's only so much you can do, because you can't be his therapist. Just being his friend like you already are will, over time, show him that he must be a likeable person.