A.S.: How can I train social skills in real life?

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Hi! I'm new to this forum.
I'm a 15 year old girl from Sweden, diagnosed with Aspergers.

I want to train my social skills, but I don't know how, I only have 2 best friends (they're NT's) in real life and the only thing we do is to sit in front of our computer and don't even talking to each other. Not social.
I can't come up with things to say or do which makes me very annoyed.
I want to have more good, honestly friends in real life, I got pretty much Internet friends from other countries. On the Internet, you don't notice so much AS.
I'm getting depressed because I'm feeling lonely, please help me by writing here or by sending me a private message.

// Maja96

Hi Maja96! Welcome to Wrong Planet! Check out the many interesting and helpful forums here. Sorry you've been having problems with social issues. That's common for people with Autism/Asperger's spectrum disorders. You are among friends here at WP!

[Moved from General Autism Discussion to Social Skills and Making Friends]

Unfortunately the only thing that really really works for me is to study specific cultural behavior and human interaction and then go out and practice it in the first person. The hard thing is that everything is so situation-specific that it's necessary to be able to improvise in social situations, and it's slow-going for me to be able to formulate a response, which often leaves me behind while everyone else in the situation has already moved on.

It would be good if you had a friend or someone you trust without Asperger's who would be willing to tell you how social interactions usually go and be there to explain why things happen a certain way socially if and when any questions arise.

Of course, if you don't have someone in the immediate vicinity, there's always the Internet. I'm sure people here would be more than willing to share their experiences and insight.

I've taken courses on cultural anthropology, sociology, interpersonal communication, and life skills (the last one was a group class I took through a mental health office). The Internet is good, but it's easier for me to glean social knowledge in a structured setting. Yes, they cost money and time and effort, but those efforts have really paid off for me. If I had more money I would take even more classes.

If I had to choose one course to recommend to you it would be Interpersonal Communication. Especially if you get a good teacher that class can be a godsend.

@Senath, that interpersonal communication course sounds really interesting!

To Maja, Personally the fact that I discovered I have AS is the most important thing. I was diagnosed when I was about your age (16) and from there on out I started like trying to "fix" my AS. If an AS critiria says "no reading of facial expressions" I started actually looking for the expressions in people's faces. This is sort of a mistake I guess, because changing who you are is the last thing you wana do. Because when you're old and tired, you obvoiusly want to have no regrets.

Anyhow, it would sound cliche but you should go out more. My shrink actually told me going places alone is okay but I am truely against that, because going alone makes one feel more depressed. So if you got some girlfriends, just give em a call. If they are the type of girls that don't actually return calls don't worry! just call them every so often to keep in touch and try to invite them to a caffe, or movie, or something. They not returning calls to you DOESN'T necesseraly mean they're not interested in you. And if you sit by the comp all the time, try to get out of the house to breath some air and do a walk. Why not? Swedish summer is probably amazing. The key thing here is definitely getting out of the house and it worked for me as I improved my social skills.

Another thing you could do is to improve your self esteem/confidence. From personal experience, jogging/running outside is BY FAR better than all those sh***y anti depressants that I take. When I'm back home half dead I feel like king. And that's one thing you can do alone. Perhaps go shopping for nice clothes, (I did that too BTW) to improve the way you feel about yourself. One last thing that worked for me is doing house chores. I cleaned, Ironed, Cooked, walked the dog and whatnot. View everything as a learning experience.

And remember, people don't actually go out with friends every day so don't be depressed if you don't. We aspies love are alone time for our special interests. And yes even NTs have their alone time at home with the familiy and that's okay (although unlike us NTs are ashamed about that so they only tell you about how they got drunk at some club lol).

Buck up

Watch movies, tv shows and plays to figure out which women are heroes. Then imitate their successful social skills and styles that mesh with your personality.

I spent a year as a cashier in a grocery store and it was the best training ground ever. You can watch and learn from the other cashiers to learn small talk and turn taking. Also there is the structure of the interactions so you can practice the same things over and over, like saying hello, making eye contact, trying out jokes, and much more. And any awkward moments only last a few minutes then it's on to the next customer. And you can learn how to tell when people are not interested in talking and when they are because in that setting people are usually in more of a rush and are not as subtle as in normal situations, this made it easier to recognize the same thing in more subtle situations. I found it was one of the most helpful things I have ever done. I will say that interacting with co workers was a big challenge, but the more I learned from practicing with customers the better my interacitons with co workers became.

Look at internet memes like "socially awkward penguin" and you will learn what NOT to do.

One thing to keep in mind is that knowing how to act doesn't mean you can use it in real life. So you can read about social skills till you are blue in the face but if you can't put it into practice it will do you no good. The other thing is there are a lot of subleties to social interaction. I don't really know why I suck at making friends. I'm pretty mild so it isn't like I'm picking my nose in front of people or talking for 10 minutes without stopping about diagnosing diabetes. It is these subtle things that will kill you because that is what gives people a "strange" feeling about you. I seriously doubt anyone knows (except for the 5 or 6 family members who know) that I'm autistic or that I'm anything but just a little weird.

I think you just have to get out there and try though. And practice. I know I stopped trying because I could talk to people and they seemed to respond well to me, but I could never get it past the acquaintance stage. Now I kind of wish I was back in school where people are everywhere, and nowadays if I want to meet people I have to really try because people kind of move on once you're done with college and it gets a lot harder to find people.

Just observe what people your age do and how they act. You can watch realistic television programs for people your age. I'd recommend Degrassi: TNG, not the new ones that come out now but the ones from a couple of years ago, they have box sets. I found this show a very realistic teen show dealing with all kinds of issues that teens go through. You can learn things from the Internet and buy books about making friends, AS and emotional intelligence. You can look up YouTube videos of Aspies, there are a lot of vlogs there.

I'm not saying change who you are but these are good examples of how to improve social skills. You need balance so don't jump to one side and be all dramatic, just be you but at the same time try to adjust your social skills at the same time.