What is your difficulty in socializing?

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So what's the difference between AS and Social Anxiety?

The one definition I've seen is that with SAD you know and understand all the social behaviour/cues/nuances but still have anxiety. With AS you have trouble following/understanding social behaviour/cues/nuances and that creates anxiety. I have read some articles though that kinda do think there is some overlap between SAD/AS/HSP/Introversion. One Introversion-Autism link article was posted here previously:

http://etd.fcla.edu/CF/CFE0003090/Grime ... 005_MA.pdf

Also if one subscribes to the Intense World Theory of Autism, I don't see a major difference between SAD/AS at least with respect to reasons for social anxiety or maybe I'm misunderstanding it:

"However, contrary to the deficit-oriented or disconnected Amygdala Theory and Theory of Mind of autism, we propose that the amygdala may be overtly active in autism, and hence autistic individuals may in principle be very well able to attend to social cues, feel emotions and even empathize with others or read their minds, but they avoid doing so, because it is emotionally too overwhelming, anxiety-inducing, and stressful."

"The lack of social interaction in autism may therefore not be because of deficits in the ability to process social and emotional cues, but because a sub-set of cues are overly intense, compulsively attended to, excessively processed and remembered with frightening clarity and intensity. Typical autistic symptoms, such as averted eye gaze, social withdrawal, and lack of communication, may be explained by an initial over-awareness of sensory and social fragments of the environment, which may be so intense, that avoidance is the only refuge."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... -00224.pdf

But I am very aware of social cues, and like I mentioned before, I'm good with understanding body language and emotions of other people, and I am very good at empathising and putting myself in other people's shoes, and if I get friendly with NTs who are mature and easy and not so judgemental, I can be like a NT without many anxieties with asking them questions and starting or continuing a conversation. And I understand jokes, puns, sarcasm, ect, and the only reason why I can understand them is by ''reading'' their facial expression and tone of voice (which most Aspies find hard). So I don't have one ounce of difficulty with all that. Sometimes I find it hard to have a conversation if I know somebody else is listening in disguise, in case they might be judging me or something, but otherwise I am pretty good. The people who I find most hard to get along with is teenage girls, popular people, judgemental people, deaf people, and people who are likely to snap or moan at you. And I can tell what sort of mood people are in as soon as they walk into a room, and when I meet new people I can tell what type of person they are after a day or so. Sometimes I can even recognise what type of person somebody is just by looking at their face and clothes and even posture, and usually I'm right about it. That's where colleagues find it very hard to recognise any AS symptoms in me, but teenage girls seem to recognise some symptoms in me more than anyone, which is why I choose not to mix with them so much now.

So if there was one AS symptom I could get rid off, I wouldn't choose the social difficulties. But just because I don't have so many social difficulties as the book says, it doesn't mean I am coping. Life is also hard having anxiety with routine change, anxiety with loud noises, anxiety with being unable to persue my special interests.....

Yes, I agree. The thing that causes the most difficulty for me is the performance anxiety I felt at work due to dealing with multi-tasking not necessarily socializing. I had the same problems in school. Good in lectures/theory, challenged in the lab/practical component because the latter does involve a lot more multi-tasking.

I seem to have difficulty dealing with customers, but I think it might be due to shyness with strangers. I'm OK with asking them things, but when I get a difficult customer who snaps at me, I feel very sensitive towards it, and always want to burst out crying - obviously I don't cry in front of strangers, but I always feel like it. Also I do have difficulty explaining things, even to anyone, but it's nothing to do with social anxiety, because I even have trouble explaining things to myself. So if I've got to explain things to a customer (for example, like advertising bargains or something), I just cannot do it. I start getting tongue-tied, and I stammer, and I never seem to say things clearly to them.

Yes, I'm scared of people screaming at me or getting mad at me because I don't understand something. I get panic attacks. This is part of SAD, I think.

It's several things.

For one thing, I'm remembering the last really big social gathering I went to. I could map out in a sensory nonverbal way the entire social pattern of the room. But I couldn't use or understand language. And I couldn't appear like I was understanding anything at all. And I just sat there in one spot and saw people coming up to me and gesturing and making noises out their mouths and then eventually they'd stop and do things like wave their hands in my face or make even louder noises then they'd go away. Then I eventually had a seizure because of the lighting and went home and crashed from the combination of overload and post-ictal brain-scramble. I can't even begin to say where that all went wrong, it was just wrong on so many levels.

I can often tell the shape of social interactions from a distance, but when I insert myself it all goes haywire because I have to track myself and them at the same time and that just isn't happening. Plus they always want language, but then they also want non-language stuff, and I can't do both at the same time.

I'm also not capable of appearing "right" in social interactions or in the rest of the time either. I just can't generally look as if I'm sending out all the right social cues even if I know them. And I'm not even sure what a social cue is, to be honest. It's a language problem. I know how to use it but not what it means.

It's of course always hard for me to go from sensory-awareness to thinking-ideas and it's the second people want out of me in social interactions.

Various things about me cognitively have prevented me knowing certain social things. And lacking the proper social experience means I lack the learning experiences socially that nonautistic people have growing up. i've only caught up a little through interactions among autistic people, where the same lessons can be learned, decades too late.

More but a cat is interfering with my typing.

Um, yes, most of the time I recognise social cues, I know what I am supposed to say or do, but I just try to avoid it because I feel embarrassed by the very idea. Like this man that was ashamed to be seen carrying flowers so he never brought flowers to his wife (and made her angry a lot of times), despite the fact that he loved his wife and knew that it was a good thing to do. Don't know whether I am making myself clear but that was the first thing that sprang to mind.
Though, when I have to choose between thinking and acting, I choose to act most of the time and that's when I usually make faux pas.
I have trouble reading tone of voice, but it is rather the other way round than what I've read. I tend to register the tone of voice only and not the information content. So when somebody is talking animatedly to me, I may interpret their behaviour as hostile. Then again I am pretty sure that if somebody tells me 'I'll kill you now and there'll be a lot of pain before the end comes' really calmly, I'd reply 'Yeah, whatever' and try to go on with whatever I am doing at the moment - I just won't register what's been said.
I think though that my biggest problems with socializing are that I don't ask personal questions - any personal questions - ever - and that is interpreted as being cold and indifferent and that I view talking like a way to exchange meaningful information only. If I can't contribute to a conversation, I'll rather wihdraw than utter platitudes and silence fillers. Which is, as I gather, seen by people as being conceited.

What made you think of that example. Do you do that? I actually did have problems with that when I was younger and holding hands, showing too much affection, etc. It would make my girlfriends very angry.

I'm way too honest, and ignorance really is bliss to most people.

Um, no, actually. Just thought about it. But then I am on the side that is supposed to get angry because of not getting flowers Dear God, I do hate cut flowers.

But I think I know what you mean, I realise now that when I was younger I demanded too much PDAs from my boyfriends. Which is weird because I am not cuddly at all now. I know I shouldn't have behaved like I did and probably knew it at the time too.But I just went on embarassing myself on a regular basis.I guess it was my way to assure myself and everyone around that look, I am just as normal as you are. Didn't work - very mildly put.

Eye contact difficulties.

Inability to make 'small talk'. I can talk if I have a set topic to talk about, but after that I just lapse into silence because I have no idea what to say. I find it hard to start a conversation and am usually dependent on the other person to do that.

Talking about myself and my interest too much and forgetting to ask about them.

Failing to remember that when most people ask about something, they only want the briefest of answers, not ten minutes of details.

Lack of interest in what most others seem to consider interesting and important; hobbies that others around me don't share or consider peculiar.

A lack of interest in people. Why would you think I would want to hear about your brother when I've never met him, and, indeed, barely know you? I'm not very interested in people unless they've given me a reason to be interested in them.

I love flowers... but it wouldn't make me angry not to get them. I never really understand why anyone (especially other women) put so much emphasis on birthdays, anniversaries, etc. and why the partner is horrible and cruel for forgetting. Why does it matter so much? I often forget my own birthday; I certainly wouldn't expect anyone else to remember.



I believe that that's true for many NTs. The same as I have a belief that having friends is less important to them than being seen to have friends, and that this is the reason for the over the top greetings in public.

My main problem is that, in most situations, I simply don't have nothing to say. Many people think that I am shy, but I think my problem is exactly the opposite of a shy person - a shy person wants to talk sometinh but is to embarassed to talk; in my case, I usually don't want to talk about anything but (because I am ashamed if being always silent) I try to say something (usually some jokes, or something similar).

Well, this thread is full of people claiming not having relevant problems with social cues (in my case, I don't feel any problem in understanding the communication of other people - the problem is only in MY communication).

Another point is that I doubt that a psychiatrist making a diagnosis (specially in the case of very young children) could distinguish the two situations (and this problem is exacerbated by the philoshopy of the DSM that conditions ashould be defined by their symptoms, not by the cause of the symptoms).

I am too polite and formal even with people I know well. Which seems pompous to most people, but that's the only way for me to set some boundaries.
Also, I have some eye contact issue that seems to have gotten steadily worse over the last 10 years. Recently I've been pondering whether it is important (and, if it is, why the hell ) to make eye contact with the person at the cashier desk when grocery shopping. It does not seem important to me, but they seem not to hear what I am saying if I am not staring in their eyes. Or is it only me?