Recently Diagnosed

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Hello,

I have been trying to wrap my head about having Aspergers. I recently got diagnosed. Over the years I had trouble being personable with people and it recently showed up in the last five years when I started a business and started networking. I often got comments that I appeared awkward, overwhelming, drunk(even though I don't drink). I feel frustrated that I don't know what I am doing wrong. This has affected my livelihood. There are times I feel hopeless

How does you overcome this. Have anyone overcome the social weakness and how do you do it.

Getting the official diagnosis was the biggest part for me. Now I know why I don't fit in, and no longer feel obligated to try.

If you want help with social skills, I'd suggest The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships by Temple Grandin. It's a big help with the "what am I doing wrong" question.

Do you live near a metropolitan area? Most local autism centers have a support group for adult aspies.

I can relate, business networking can be hard work.

I find smaller workshops easier to cope with. evrybody is there for the same reason and it gives you something to talk about at the breaks.

My suggestion would be to cut yourself some slack and try to find ways of dealing with situations and people that work best for you.

the suceedsocially website has lots of info which I found useful.

http://www.succeedsocially.com/

I find that my social skills are better if I limit my social contacts. I had a hard time coping with work and colleagues, and eventually I changed my work.
I work now mainly as an author, but I can only afford to do that because I have a partner who backs me financially. I also have a small parttime job as a personal assistant to a physically disabled person. Because I work with only that person, I manage well enough, and it feels good to be useful.

It's worth looking into alternative jobs that fit in better with your personality. You don't have to fit in with all the demands of the neurotypical world.
Judging by the people I know, most neurotypicals cannot fit in with all the demands either. They too have to find their own way of doing things.

Good luck!

Welcome to the site.
This is a common problem, try not to despair, there are ways to make this easier. As above I choose to limit my interactions with other people.

I can identify with what you experience:
Feeling awkward - This is usually anxiety so research ways to deal with this.
Overwhelming - Can often be due to being overly focused on one part and possibly getting over enthusiastic, also missing cues in conversation and not allowing the other person to talk. Try slowing your speech and paying more attention to the other person.
Seemingly drunk - Can be due to different mental processing speed, mouth can not keep up with brain, for me this is magnified when tired, including mental exhaustion from too much interaction.

When you have problems it is best to try to identify and separate them, rather than just looking at the whole, feeling like a failure and beating yourself up for it.

So there are things that you can work on for yourself, also think about ways that you can modify the way you work to reduce the impact. Try to keep networking to shorter periods of time and then give yourself time to recover after.

As long as the other 98% of the planet go on believing in how wonderful they are, there's not going to be a place for us. They'll go on judging us according to how well we fit in, and playing their own discomfort with us as a deficit on our parts. If only a few more of the autistic adults the statistics tell me are out there would recognise reality we could move things along. As they are, though, they're our worst enemies.

I once asked a family member why is it I couldn't land a date or a job and they replied "because you try too hard". I still to this day can't figure out what that means. Are you supposed to look for a job for NOT being eager or get a date by not acting interested? I still can't wrap my head around that.

I think that goes back to being too over enthusiastic again. NT types often can't understand the amount of interest we have, it's standard behaviour to be more reserved, being "cool", just like the "playing hard to get" game which I just don't get either.