New here, could use some advice?

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Hey everyone and thanks for reading. I don't know where to start or where I'm going with this thread so I guess I'll just start from the beginning.
This is the first time I'm sharing this, even if it is on a forum. I'm going to start by saying I don't know if I have AS. I've never seen a professional and gotten a evaluation and I want to but I'm afraid. I'm 19 and still use my parents insurance so I'd have to mention it to my mom first and I just don't want to do that. I know what the symptoms are and I have a lot of them but if I do have AS I think I would be on the higher functioning side.

I was always shy and awkward when I was a kid, even in preschool. I never built friendships. I just didn't know what to do in social situations. As a result I spent the majority of my elementary, middle school, highschool, and now college years behind a a screen. Thankfully I wasn't bullied to bad aside from the occasional occurrence by this one as*hole who wanted to be funny for his friends. There was this one girl that got it pretty bad. She definitely was Autistic or on the lower functioning side of AS. I hate myself for not doing something about it but I was afraid I'd become their new person of interest. If I was able to go back in time and do it differently I would but this is something I'll to live with. One day after school had ended I passed her in a hall. She never really interacted with her before that day and I'll never forget the three words she said to me. "You're a jerk". I cried myself to sleep that night.

The only human interaction I get is on online forums. I've wasted so much of my life on them. I'm able to take time and plan out what I'm going to say. In real life I can never think of anything to say on the spot. Afterwards I think of a lot of things that I should have said but what's the use of that. I've had 4 close friends. Never met a single one of them in real life.

I would barley talk in school and didn't have close friends. I was miserable but I got used to it. It frustrating to me that no one picked up on it while I was growing up. My parents would always yell at me and tell me that I had to come out of my shell. Teachers knew me as the kid who never talks. I just don't get how it's never clicked that it wasn't a stage I can grow out of. I can go on about this for hours and I had a lot more written but it was about me rambling on about how teachers aren't trained properly and sh*t. Maybe some other time. I want to be pissed off at my parents but it won't accomplish anything.

I don't know how this community feels about weed but my friend didn't realize how bad he really was through out his entire life until he was reevaluating it while he was high. Now whenever he smokes he just becomes depressed and upset. On one hand he thinks that he can see his situation clearly when he's high but when he is high he realizes his situation is damn depressing. He even thinks sometimes that he was happier when he was ignorant to it.

If you made it this for thanks for reading and I really do appreciate it. I'm sure there's a lot more that I could write but I've been doing this for a long time already. I want to change but I don't know where to start. I don't know if I can do this myself. I'd appreciate you can point me in the right direction or give me advise on what to do to develop the social skills which I lack.

You're asking the wrong crowd for that, bub. You don't get useful advice on running marathons from a lifelong paraplegic.

In my experience, it's a Learn As You Go situation. Well-meaning morons can try to teach you social skills, but the thing they don't take into account is, your social skills are impaired because of the way your brain works - no amount of coaching or advice is going to make those behaviors come naturally to you in a social setting. Knowing something intellectually, or learning it by rote does not necessarily mean you will be able to put it into practice when that moment comes in real life.

For instance, no matter how many times an employer may coach me to say "May I help you with something?" it does not change the fact that when a customer comes through the door and I am thrown suddenly into a forced social interaction, my brain shuts down and I become effectively mute, until and unless the other person speaks to me FIRST. Knowing what I'm expected to do doesn't make me able to do it. If I can get out a friendly "Hello" it's up to them to tell me what they need.

AS is a learning DIS-ability, but not a complete IN-ability. We can learn rudimentary social skills, but I don't put a lot of faith in Behavioral Therapy techniques, I think you just have to get out there and fall down a few times to learn how to recover by raw experience. It can be painful and it can be embarrassing, but once you know what NOT to do, you'll figure out what sorts of coping mechanisms work for you. The painful truth is, if you are autistic, you're never going to be good at that stuff and it's never going to come easy to you. You'll never learn to do it well, but with time and practice, you'll figure out how to do it adequately.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Welcome. The great thing about this website is that there are so many threads already sitting here overflowing with advice, opinions and stories that you just have to start searching either through the main page and going through the most popular threads in each category or by searching with key words. That way it's a different site for each user, you only need to read and comment on the threads that suit your needs. Good luck!

Welcome to the wrongplanet! I'm new as well!! Hi 5!

The things that you have been talking about are exactly the same as what I go through. The teachers have started to get really worried about me and my mum has spoken to my house tutor (secondary school) and I am going to have a test for AS soon hopefully. I had to go and see a doctor on Tuesday (last week) and because the house tutor knew that I wouldn't be able to talk much she made my tutor go with me. Even with my tutor siting there as well, I was still silent as I ever had been. And what made it worse was that the doctor was waiting for a reply, and the longer the silence got, the less willing I was to answer his question. As you said, I can always think of something to write or say when I am typing but in real life, I'm really really quiet and don't say much.

My art teacher always tells me off for not talking, because when she asks me a question, I don't/can't answer. Then one day she lectured me about how art was communicative and I needed to be more enthuiastic. The truth was, I was scared and I didn't know what to say. But I couldn't tell her then that that was the issue. So I emailed her later, in the holidays I think, and I think she understood and she gave me a little bit of advice and she doesn't expect me to talk as much. She made me point to the answer rather than actually making me say it.

You said that you wanted advice and were confused on what to do. Well, I was nervous about telling my mum as well, and as I am only 13 (14 in 8 days) I can't really do anything myself. So I emailed my mum, at first she didn't think it was a big deal but when I pressed her into it a little more she decided to go and talk to my house tutor. She found out a lot of the things that the teachers were keeping secret from us. Like for example the teachers want to tell me off for things that I do wrong but they don't because they think I will cry. Which I won't...

I know that it is a different matter for you as you are a bit older than me but it really would help to talk to your mum or maybe someone you are close to about it. Because I know for a fact now that if I had not told my mum about it, I would have probably gotten expelled from my school by now. I apologise that this reply had to be so long but I hope it helps... at least slightly!

Fennecfoxes xxx