Aspergers is not a personality type!

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Ok, I'm tired of people saying Asperger's basically means being a shy introverted person with social anxiety. This is not what Asperger's is!

It is perfectly possible for a person with Asperger's to be confident, extroverted, and enjoy socializing with people. I am like this. I know two other girls and one guy with Asperger's IRL who are like this.

I totally agree; I am anything but shy; I alternative between talking too much (about my interests and "dominating" the conversation" to being too quiet (say nothing cuz the topic doesn't interest me so I space out and daydream).

I am also sick of people saying that Aspies all wanna be hermits. I need some social interaction on a regular basis and am very grateful to have friends right now. I also admit to needing significant time alone to think, daydream, and read.

There are plenty of introverted NTs and I'm sure there are some extroverted Aspies. What defines our "aspie-ness" is our difficulty reading other people's social cues so my theory is that some Aspies may naturally be extroverted but become introverted over time after repeated rejection and failure to react to those cues and socialize in what NT's would refer to as "in an appropriate manner." Therefore, it is possible that there may be more naturally extroverted Aspies than the Meyers Briggs test shows.

I am often quiet and seemingly shy, but I can talk endlessly if the subject is interesting, I am introverted nonetheless.

edit: you can be shy and confident

Sorry, I missed that one. I checked but I can't change the poll now. I guess that could fall either under 'other' or under 'introverted and confident' (lumping shy and introverted together).

Yes! Thank you for posting that. That is the most common mistake people make. (And there seem to have been a lot of threads around here lately that have focused solely on social issues.)

It should be noted, though, that some people with an ASC can be introverted. An ASC is something that independent of being shy or introverted, and the same for self-esteem, expressiveness, boisterousness, and so on.

How you can be "shy" and "confident" at the same time? I am not an English-speaker, but my ideia is that the definition of "shy" is "person who is quite and introvert because lack of confidance" (in contrast with a person who is quite and introvert simply because he does not like - or like only in reduced levels - to talk and socialize).

I like this thread.

I voted "Introverted and confident".

It seems possible, but (E)xtrovert aspies are rare.

Check the MBTI thread.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt67764.html

Either that or they really hate doing MBTI tests and reporting their results.

That's all good as long as you make social blunders from time to time.

Asperger's became Asperger's when Lorna Wing noticed that some people were displaying autistic symptoms but were much more capable in life, had average to high IQ, oh and had awful social skills. So basically Asperger's wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the poor social skills.
Hans Asperger didn't come up with the term.

By the way I'm giving a generalised example of what AS is usually characterized as. If it wasn't a disorder then you wouldn't be complaining about people stereotyping what are very common symptoms.

Well YEAH, at least when younger, ALL aspies do that! With ME, I spoke a LOT about that into my teens. THEN, if things got on the periphery, it ended up coming out until like my early thirties. NOW, I MIGHT keep quiet.



I ACT like a hermit sometimes, but am clearly NOT one.



Yeah, you are right there. I am shy because sometimes I COMPLIMENT a person, and they take it as an insult. I'm just not good with some things, so I have distanced myself from them. Even at SIX, I was more open.

I have been diagnosed with HFA (but i think it was most likely AS) , i didn't spoke until age of 3 and half, and my parents have always helped me a lot to be more open toward world.
And I was the most outgoing kid at school. I was almost always wrong when i tried to socialize, because i always talked about things that where in my interests, for example i was always asking to my classmates to puff their check, because i had fun to see them. Or i was obsessed with identical twins and i talked about them over and over again.

And this is what is happen to me.

I'm also introverted but confident.

Yes, this is what I meant. Sorry if my meaning was unclear.





When I take the myers-briggs test, I generally score as being introverted, or on the knife edge between the two. In reality I would say I am both introverted and extroverted, but my introversion stems more from my Aspergers than my personality. At social events, I generally am one of the most outgoing people there - the "life of the party" so to speak (not just saying this, it's how things generally pan out), and I am nearly always asked to way more social functions than I can attend or cope with. I am confident around people and love getting right in the thick of things at parties. But on the flip side I require long periods of intense solitude and isolation to rest and recharge, so I believe this is what causes me to score as being introverted.

Although I may be loud and lively and confident, this doesn't mean I am not AS.



I, and the other people I mentioned, do have a tendency to make social blunders. In fact, speaking of myself and another outgoing AS girl I knew in school, our social blunders tended to be correspondingly larger and more obvious. When I blunder, everyone in the room knows it because I'm the loudest person there. Being outgoing doesn't make you any less oblivious to social cues.

I can relate to this.

By the way, the only difference in diagnostic criteria between Aspergers and High Functioning Autism is that HFA has an early language delay. That's why they're for all intents and purposes combining the two in the DSM V. In my opinion, AS and HFA refer to different external presentations of the same internal thing.

Oh, I was just echoing your point (maybe over-emphatically); I didn't mean that it was unclear or anything.

I'm only extroverted because of my drug abuse - I mean my medication. Ha ha ha.

I'm naturally introverted and have no desire to be around people. When I was younger I was like that and I've gone back to that. It feels more natural. Although I've had some experience with socialising and have some social skills...I guess.