Do you feel like you have advanced socially over time?

Post Reply New Topic

when i was little i was really socially awkward, then when i got to high school i was very sociable. but i think that Ive gotten worse in the last year or two.

i think it was maybe because i was prescribed medication when i was in high school. its hard for me to say weather they helped or not. however i recently realized that i prefer me the way i am now and it bothers me a lot less that im socially awkward.

I feel like not many of us can truly answer this question.I mean,how can anyone be truly objective about himself?I can't.But according to my mother,i haven't aged mentally a day since i was four,and i am turning 18 this August.Yes,i have learned new things and abilities,but i am still childlike like i was when i was four.However,if you have advanced yourself that's good to hear.

Yes and no --

I am for sure better than I was as an anxiety-ridden social phobe teen. I have a wife, have had affairs, multiple sex partners (one of my goals), friends (who have come and gone), and overall done the kinds of things I wanted to do in life. I've gotten good at making presentations through practice and training, and can generally come off well in a formal presentation. I have been able to come out of my shell, and when I trust people, I can be pretty personable.

On the other hand, I do find that other areas have not improved. Many of my aggressive social instincts are wrong and backfire -- not a bad thing when you are chasing girls who might never see you again (not my circumstances now), but not great at all when trying to make long-term friends or staying on the right side of coworkers feelings. I've managed to offend or annoy far too many people, so now I realize that I need to fight against the instinct to be too outgoing, and to find a balance between saying something I would like to say that is self-indulgent, vs. saying the right thing or even the safe thing. In many cases, better safe than sorry is an apt description, and would have saved me from making a fool of myself.

Also -- after an entire lifetime of taking things too personally, getting too worked up and threatened by situations or people, etc., I went on male hormone therapy, and immediately saw a turnaround in my mental needs. I feel a lot better, find it is easier to stay in shape, I'm less angry, less lonely, and less dependent on people. So please do consider that the answer might not just be something you have to work through -- sometimes there are medical reasons and solutions to problems that don't seem connected. Consider having your hormone levels checked and/or looking at antidepressants.

I've learned how to pretend to be almost neurotypical if I try really hard. It only took a couple of decades.

I mostly don't bother, though. I'm good enough at what I do professionally that people want me enough to put up with my "quirks", and I've got a wife and a few good friends who are aspies or close to it so we can relate without any effort. There's no real reason to socialize much with the rest of the world.

I've learned to simply shut up.

I have advanced, I'm not as obnoxious and annoying as I used to be.

I seem to progress and regress spontaneously when it comes to social skills. I always have...and probably always will.

I make progress when I'm feeling good about myself and life in general. I get out there and socialise and it feels like such incredibly hard work every single time, and I always seem to offend people with my blunt remarks and the sharing of my opinions.

Then I feel so drained that I must regress back to me...my home...my children...my handful of oldest and dearest friends...my comfort zone...and this seems to be my vicious circle.

However, as I get older, I seem to be more at peace with my periods of regression. It's who I am. I deserve to be in my comfort zone when ever I please

Yes, definitely. I spent decades constructing a whole host of behaviors and anxieties to try and stifle my annoying/strange stuff. Now I'm more in control, I'm learning to take those structures down and see if I can stand on my own now. I'm doing okay, though very hermit-y.

Definitely, I was diagnosed when I was in 7th grade and the doctor I had made sure that I knew exactly who I am. She was really supportive of me, gave me all sorts of pamphlets and books to read up about AS. Learning about AS became my new passion and it carried on with me into high school. In order to catch up with my peers socially, I would study their behaviors, the way they dress, how they acted and sorted through what I liked and what I didn't and I altered things to fit my own personality. Lots of experimentation, lots of studying, but the best part about it all was that I still kept my quirks. I can look people in the eye really well now and I have my own friends that know about what I have and still love me for it. It was a lot of work, and it was draining at times. I've met a lot of other kids like me through group sessions and making friends and it really makes me happy to know that even with my NT friends there are others out there who really know what I'm feeling and how difficult some days can be. It's not always easy. I believe though that AS can be a gift, it makes life challenging but there are so many other talents that come with it, aspects that make everyone who has it special. I'm new here but I'm really glad that I found this community!

I have improved my social skills and social awareness quite a bit but paradoxically it has made me feel more lonely. When I was younger, I would talk and talk about whatever my current interest was to someone and never noticed their glazed eyes. I mistook that for connecting with people. Now I notice if they have any desire for me to keep talking and if they want to have more of a connection with me. The answer is usually no. I am pretty good now at social chit-chat but have almost no friends. I actually feel more lonely than I used to and I have less hope for feeling otherwise. I always used to think that improving my social skills would help but it only gets me so far when most people think so differently than me. When I see normal people's friendships I don't really want those so I don't know what would improve my situation.
Most of the time though, I am reasonably happy and have many hobbies and ways to fill my time but it is not always true that social skills = less loneliness.

I think I have had net improvement over time. Honestly though there are some times I feel like working on it and other periods of time where I just say forget it because it's so much effort. But there are a lot of things that I've identified and found ways to cope with/interact more palatably with others. And others I've allowed myself to relax about except for special situations. The flip side is the older I get, the more and more things I realize that I do that are not considered "normal" that I don't didn't notice or have pointed out before, and when I look back on how I behaved in the past I feel embarrassed because I didn't realize how far off I was at the time. So that makes me think that 5 or 10 years from now I'm going to look back and think the same thing.

Yes. very Much so. I can do all kinds of stuff I couldn't do pre-2008. before 2008 I was very introverted and could not do a lot. now i can do all kinds of things, but I still have my limits.

Next week I will be hosting a birthday party. I don't know if I would secretly choke myself with tears on that day, because my guests wouldn't know how much their presence would mean to me: I'm turning 22nd and it will be my first attempt at celebrating my birthday.

3 years ago I was diagnosed with ASD, but my life before then was already on the fringes of society. It was just 2008 when I developed schizophrenia from the maddening social isolation, and was driven to do some really stupid, lethal things. But then I met a therapist that turned my life around. A man that truly cared.

Sure, I still get the blues. But now, I am finally experiencing and appreciating the sort of "social interactions" I'd never see myself doing 2 years ago.

My therapist's advice was: Find your niche.
I hope it works for you too.

I have absolutely no doubt that I have improved socially. I'm 49, and a LOT of my improvement has come in the last 2 1/2 years.

As I said in another thread, I'm in a relationship with a hyper social guy, and he has been wonderful in teaching me how to behave socially. I no longer need such detailed instructions but when we first started going to events together he would tell me beforehand exactly what to expect - how many people, what kind of food/drinks to expect, indoor/outdoor, if there'd be a band, etc, etc. He would coach me on who I could expect to meet, how to react toward them and WHY I should act that way. Afterwards, he would let me know what I had done RIGHT, only pointing out errors if they were huge (and usually even I knew that I'd messed up. Didn't know quite what i did wrong, but knew it wasn't right). Having a patient teacher go over the "rulebook" with me has made a huge difference.

We went to a party about a month ago with over a hundred people, most of whom I did not know -and I ENJOYED IT! !! !! ! First time in my life that's happened. He was actually ready to leave before I was. Yay me!

That said, however . . . I still have absolutely no idea how to "make friends" with someone. I have learned how to react appropriately when someone approaches me, but I simply don't know how to initiate an interaction. My social skills are very much learned behavior, and sometimes I forget my "lessons," as they are not fully internalized.

I've had my up and down throughout life. I struggled socially in HS until I turn 16 and was able to get a job from McDonalds. There, I was pretty influential with all my fellow co-workers, most of which came from other HS around the area and didn't know of my past. After graduation, I found new people to hang out that shared the same interests at the time (magic: the gathering and video games) despite losing contact with everyone from McDonald's.

I was doing great until I met with my current wife back in 2000, that's when things hit the skids, and got even worse after the birth of our kid in 2002. Up until earlier this year, I've been mostly a hermit, making no effort to socialize with people in work or outside in general. Now being enrolled in a trade school has been the best thing for me as I gotten a lot of that social swagger that I lost many years ago.

Today my family had a barbeque, as is tradition when the weather is as nice as it has been. As per usual they started talking about work, faux-politics, "old times" and how my second cousin's shorts seem to be getting shorter and shorter.
For the first time since I can remember I actually managed to engage in and contribute to not one, but 3 (!) conversations. Even going so far as to steer a conversation towards autism (and other disorders).

I'm feeling pretty good right about now.