Self-Awareness

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What are some good techniques or ideas that I could use as an educator to help my ASD students be more self-aware of their strengths and limitations and use them in a positive manner?

What age group?

I had no concept of self until late teens. By this I mean that while I would respond to my name and such, I had no internal "self" that I recognized as a separate intentional entity from all the other "selfs" around me.

So you could teach me awareness of strengths and weaknesses but I would not have attached these things to some sense of self upon which to build any sort of worth or value. The entire self esteem construct would have been (and still largely is) quite lost on me.

Don't teach them to be more self-aware, please!
Aspies who are too self-aware end up unconfident and socially phobic. OK, this may not be true for every Aspie, but it is for me, and I am blaming my ''too self-awareness'' on all of my social anxieties and self-consciousness. I am so self-conscious that I'm even afraid to take off or on my jacket in public because I feel people are watching me. So I stand stiffly, bearing the consequences of being too hot or too cold. I don't think this is normal, because NTs have self-awareness but they're not afraid to take off their jackets. I probably think I'm being watched because I know I get stared at a lot, so someone's bound to be watching me.

It makes life harder for Aspies who are extremely self-aware, because you become frightened to show your face at general social events, because you start to worry about what others are thinking of you, and you know people will think something because of the expressions you unintentionally give off, and of odd things you know you will probably say, and of past experiences of mocking and teasing from others because of not giving into peer pressure. It's all a vicious circle, and I envy those on the spectrum who aren't as self-aware as I am. But you can't tell someone to be less self-aware because I've got that in me, and my mum is NT but is extremely self-conscious and gets easily embarrassed, and I think I have got it from her. I can't help myself now. I have an anxiety disorder aswell, and I feel I don't trust myself.

I think I will get you to teach me how to become less self-aware.

I was always aware of myself, I think, but I didn't really notice my strenghths and flaws until recently (Before I only noticed traits about myself that others pointed out to me), and I've always had problems identifying my feelings. I guess of lot of what to do really depends on the individual. First try to figure out how self aware they are, don't ask me how you are supposed to do that.

I'm self aware but don't have much anxiety because I basically disconnect from people, so it's a loss for one small gain.

I find the question difficult to answer because like wavefreak I wasn't self aware until my late teens/ early twenties.

I would say tell them to monitor their actions, what they say and do and I dunno maybe write down what gives them a negative reaction. If someone stops talking to them when they go on about an interest or tells them they're rude because they said something inappropriate without realising.

Make them find out what they have skills in. That's always been a confidence booster for me.

It's hard. There's so many different strengths and weaknesses on individuals on the spectrum. For example I have poor spatial awareness so that's a weakness. My strength is my ability to remember landmarks when navigating around places. I don't often remember street signs or numbers but I can remember a takeaway shop, a pet shop, and a supermarket. If I've ever been inside I can remember it exactly as it was the day I was in there.
I have poor skills when it comes to showing empathy but I do feel it and show it through doing things for people when they're struggling.
Then there's my interests which I know a lot about and I can make them so broad that I will be able to talk about them to people. One interest is watching the news which is a great conversational starter, although I tend to hang around science and sci-fi nerds that I can talk about my really intense interests with.

Yeah, I don't know if any of this helps.

I'm still coming to terms with my relative lack of self-awareness over time, although it has steadily improved over the years. I have no idea now how to answer this thread, either.

My anxiety is more often related to how things can go wrong with travel, my health, my pets' health, my computer, my income, my health care, my access to the internet, etc. Being socially anxious is not a big thing for me.

Joe90, I understand your misgivings about self awareness, but is there the slightest chance that what you mean is self consciousness? I think the OP wants to give practical assistance for his or her students, not make them feel embarrassed about themselves. Like if they have no concept of danger, if they walk up to someone that has committed a crime, like theft, they might get themselves into a whole load of trouble. Or if they don't have good understanding of money, or consent etc

That said, I wish the OP would indicate what the age group is as that is pretty fundamental to the question.

I would imagine that the educator would role play through certain situations and then ask questions regarding what's going on in that situation, and then explain to the ASD student the underlying assumptions people make and what it all means. But a student would have to be 14 or so at least, esp if they are v childlike/ naive. No idea what can be done for young children.

I wasn't really self-aware until I was probably about 11 or 12. Even then, I wasn't completely. I still did not care about taking care of myself. I did not notice people thought it was weird I had no eyebrows/eyelashes since I pulled them out. I simply did as I felt and cared, and when I look back on the situations and remember them, I notice situations where I now KNOW someone was being mean/bullying me on purpose, but I did not REALIZE it. It was not until 11 or 12, I realized people or other kids were sometimes being mean intentionally, and bullying.
So, perhaps to teach them right responses to keep them safe, and to build on their strengths of the good things they can do, that would be good.