First time in history!! !! The NT/AS open hotline ! !! !! !

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Ok thank you. I am working on two projects right now, one for my home town and another that is a scifi book that heavily involves Asperger's Syndrome. I guess that the only thing I can do is keep fighting and remember that I should just try to live life to MY satisfaction, not what this ridiculous world says will make me happy. Never giving up is the only thing I can think of...

Personally, no. I think NTs do feel nervous when meeting new people and things but not anxiety. Usually things come automatically to you but sometimes you do have to think what you're going to say, for an example, A job interview.
It depends on what you do with peers. However, It is quite relaxing when you're with your close friends. You feel quite comfortable but If it's friends of yours you aren't really that close to, It is seriously awkward and make you (more like me) feel sick.

*Sort of.* I'd try to suffocate myself when I was very stressed but that's about the extent of it as I was a major chicken and scared of pain. I doubt all Aspies try to injure themselves as kids, by the way.

Question for the normals...Just when are you allowed to say something other than 'fine' in response to 'how are you'?

Seriously, how do you say 'I have severe vertigo' in body language/nonverbals? (besides the nystagmus XD)

You are allowed to say something other than "fine" when you are prepared to have a conversation about whatever it is. If you say anything other than "fine", the subtext is "I want to talk about whatever it is that is not fine" or "I need help with whatever it is that is not fine". So be prepared for that. If you put your hand to your forehead, people will understand that something is wrong and ask what it is. The body language for severe vertigo would be apparent difficulty balancing, such as holding onto the wall or the furniture you walk past. The catch is that then somebody will want to take your arm and guide you to a seat before you topple over. So be ready for a pretty sustained interaction if you say anything other than "fine".

Thanks, that IS fair enough. I don't mind talking about whatever the issue is, I just hate that I'm expected to say 'fine' as a default answer...



Sorry yeah, that's what I was getting at, I should have phrased my question better, what I was trying to say was that other than the obvious stuff (nystagmus and falling) that you can't do anything about anyway, how are you supposed to rely on body language? It just seems excessive and illogical for example to say 'fine' when you actually mean 'I can't look at you because my brain thinks you're moving at 100 revolutions per minute' and count on someone's people reading skills to know you're lying, and to use that as a normal form of communication...

Thanks for answer.

I'm a not-quite normal, but, here goes anyway.

Actually, I would say you can say other things besides "fine" without saying things aren't fine. "Well enough". "Good". "Can't Complain".

You can also say something specific good, though that gets into the same thing of potentially opening up a discussion.

To me "fine" seems like what you say to someone you don't know, or someone you don't know well and aren't wanting to get into a conversation with.

There's also the issue of, not just how much you want to engage with the person, but how much they want to engage with you. Which is, of course, harder to judge. Though, if the person says "how are you?" in passing and continues on without waiting for an answer, well, then you don't have to give one, not even the standard "fine".

Gerhardt, I´ve got advice from NT classmate recently. She was nasty to me, because I do not talk in class. When I wrote her to explain that I am aspie, she siad: .."if only You joined the collective more and told to people, they surely would react better on you.." ...Well, it didn´t really help me, as I cannot talk or "join in", but maybe You will find it helpful for Yourself

How can a NT calm an aspie down or do we have to ride out the storm even if it last hours of ranting and lecturing and faultfinding?

Well, in general, the "storm" will either be caused by sensory overstimulation, or it will be the result of an excessive build up of stress resulting from a type of social overstimulation.

In order to calm down someone who is having one of these "storms", you have to understand what causes them, and you have to know the person well enough to know what sensory things that make them happy and calm them down. Social overstimulation really isn't much different than sensory overstimulation. They are both caused by stressors that the person doesn't have the necessary neurological tools to deal with. In the case of social overstimulation, the person is sort of at the end of the rope with being able to process and deal with social situations and the result is an outburst directed towards anyone that person has to interact with. In this case, the person either wants to be able to interact with others but is too stressed out to do so, or the person just flat out doesn't want to have to deal with people. It is necessary to understand that when a person is in one of these "storms", the person is not rational at all. In either case, don't argue and don't try to rationalize with them because they are probably in a state that nothing you say really makes very much sense at all.

In the case of a person who just doesn't want to interact with anyone, the answer is simple: just leave them alone. If the person wants to be able to interact, then you really have to know the person well in order to calm them down. It also really depends on the type of relationship you have with this person. If you are really close to the person, remind them that you love them and don't mean to upset them. No matter how frustrating they are being, you have to stay calm yourself. You have to be really simple with what you are saying. The person is upset because they have lost their grasp of what is going on in their social world. They are confused. They don't know your intentions. They don't understand what you are saying. It's really really important to remember this.

Finally, offer them the most basic sensory things that they like. I believe that most aspies have sensory things that they really enjoy, like the feeling of certain fabrics. If a certain type of music calms them down, then play it. A good example would be Temple Gradin's hug machine. In my case, I have a blanket that has a texture that I really like. However, I don't like it so much that it will calm me down when I'm really freaked out. This is where you really have to know the person. When I am freaked out, being held tightly will calm me down instantly. However, it is common that ASD people don't like to be touched, especially when they are upset. If you held an aspie who doesn't like being touched, this would really set them off even more.

One of the good things about dealing with upset ASD people is that the answer is generally a lot simpler than that for an upset NT. It's just that NTs kind of have a difficult time understanding this, since it is not the case for them. It's kind of like dealing with an upset young child, really. I hate to say it, but it's often true. When a five year old is upset, if you hold them and give them their favorite blanket, they calm down and are ok. Similarly, if I as an 18 year old am upset and you hold me and give me my favorite blanket, I will calm down. You can probably agree calming down an upset NT 18 year old is not anywhere near that simple.

Edit:
As far as the lecturing and such is concerned, the things they say may cause you to think that they are in a very rational, but upset, state of mind. However, I can tell you from my own history that usually the arguments stem from the things that I have made up to fill the space that I find to be extremely confusing. It's sort of like an algorithm or a program: even though the upset aspie brain is over-wrought, confused and unhappy, the rationalizing mechanism still continues to run. The problem though is that these rationalizations stem from nonsense, and so what comes out of the person's mouth often doesn't really even make much sense to themselves.

I have to add though that you can't really assume that every time an aspie is upset, they are having a "storm". We can get upset for real reasons just like any NT. If an aspie is upset about a real issue, then you can't just pretend like they are having a "storm" and calm them down the "simple" way, because though that may calm them down for the time being, you will find that just like in any relationship, NT or otherwise, the issue will come up again and again and damage the relationship. If an aspie is upset, before you try just calming them down, you need to be rational yourself and ask yourself if they actually do have a reason to be upset. It may seem like this is kind of obvious and I'm being condescending, but this can happen quite often in a relationship between an aspie and an NT, and the relationship becomes damaged because they don't realize this. The unfortunate thing is that if an NT acts like every upset is a "storm", often times the aspie will come to believe this themselves, and will become depressed and feel like they are just a burden, and that they deserve to be belittled every time they get upset about anything. I feel the need to say this because this happened to me a lot when I was younger, and it caused me a lot of anguish.

You see, and where I come from it is unpolite to say You are fine, people would think You are showing off

Thank you for clarifying for me what I have experienced. I am seeing that there may be nothing I can do to calm him because he doesn't want anything, not touch or food or milk or anything but to keep on for hours about how he has been wronged.
When no amount of apologizing and declaring love and caring is enough, what can be done?

I take it that this person is your son and that he is probably a teenager. If this is indeed the case, then as with any teenager he is more than likely struggling with his identity and social role and such. However, considering that he is an aspie (or somewhere else on the spectrum), he probably feels like he has been cheated out of a lot of the stuff that NT teens take for granted. I'm going to base most of what I'm saying on what I experienced as a younger teenager, so what I may say may not at all pertain to him, but I figure there are probably some similarities. I remember during the first two years of high school that I struggled a lot with my desire to have an active social life, and my conflicting need to avoid people and social situations due to the stress that they cause. This has caused me varying degrees of internal turmoil for as long as I can remember, so even if he is outside of the age range I predicted, this may be part of what causes him to seek conflict with you. If someone can't get along with themselves, then they are not going to be able to get along with the people they are around all the time.

He feels like he has been wronged, but I think he probably doesn't know yet that there are a lot of things he is not perceiving correctly. He probably knows that he can't cope with everyday things the same way that everyone else can, but he may not yet understand that this is not because you are wronging him, but rather because he perceives what you consider to be mundane or normal as something hostile and stressful. I think that what causes most conflict between NTs and aspies is a simple communication breakdown. Since he has to deal with a teenage world that is already horribly confusing even for NTs, I can pretty much guarantee that by the time he is at home from school, he is emotionally exhausted, and very prone to perceiving anything you do that is neutral or even kind as being hostile. Part of the issue is probably simply that you interact with him most after he has already used up all of the energy he has devoted to socializing, and so basically any interaction you have with him is exhausting and therefore very stressful. In my case, after a particularly social day at school, I will become aggravated with something as innocuous as "how was your day at school?" because I am mentally worn out from having to interact so much during the day. If he is indeed a younger teenager, he may have a lot of displaced emotions, as I did at that age. He probably doesn't yet understand completely that you don't really have much of an idea what goes on in his head. It is very possible that he thinks that when you communicate with him even in a way that is kind and innocuous, that you are intentionally trying to exhaust and aggravate him.

To conclude all of this, it may help to not talk to him at all for an hour or two after he gets home from school or work. This will give him time to get over the emotional and social stress of the day, and regain some of the energy necessary to understand social situations correctly.

Not a teenager but only recently diagnosed with decades of problems including agoraphobia.
But your assessments do seem logical. Thank you. Anyone else?

It's really not calming someone down, as helping someone calm down. I think even with kids that distinction can be important. With adults even more so.

Yes, I know I can never get anyone to do anything, only myself. It's hard to know what's enabling and what might be helpful. I do know the "storms" are very hard on me and I really want to eliminate them entirely. Maybe I can't do that but it would be beneficial to my own health if they would stop.