Explain the social problems

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i was not exposed socially as a child and that caused aspie in me.

You're saying you developed asperger's because you weren't socially exposed as a child? No, not being exposed to social situations does not rewire your brain. It might make you a little more socially awkward, but it's not asperger's.

To the OP, someone told me how to explain it well once: Imagine yourself in a different place where it's a completely different culture than what you're used to, and everyone speaks a different language. Since you look like them, they automatically expect you to know all of their social rules and ways to talk.

Before I was diagnosed, I still felt social pressure. I noticed that if you weren't like everyone else, you got teased and made fun of and kids bugged you. So I would try and be like everyone else like pretending to dislike what they dislike and like what they like and I even did bullying to fit in but none of that worked because I was still different. I was not aware of any social rules or non verbal cues. I wasn't aware that body language existed even though I knew of the word but I didn't understand it. So I had enough self awareness to know I was different and that you get picked on if you aren't like the others so you have to blend in to not get made fun of. I would try to be like them so they think I was just as good and like me and not think I was stupid. Apparently I didn't understand there were other rules like how to bully people so that was why I still didn't fit in. One of my aspie friends did bullying and bullies accepted him and became his friend or got afraid of him because he knew the social rules about it and picked up on it. I just did it wrong.



If you asked me as a child how my social skills are poor and what makes them poor? I wouldn't have any idea because I wasn't aware they weren't good. I probably about have said my friends keep telling me to go away and are mean to me and they talk about boring stuff and never want to play. They only want to talk. I would feel they were saying it's my fault my social skills are poor because my friends were being difficult and treating me different.


Now as an adult I realize sure one of them was mean to me but the rest telling me to go away were not. Sure they were blunt because that's what kids are, they are direct and blunt and say what they mean and I think ten and eleven year olds will still tell you to go away and not mean it in a bad way than giving off subtle hints they don't want you around and making excuses. They probably didn't want me around because I didn't play by the social rules and to them it was like having a little kid around. I was probably annoying and said the wrong stuff and they didn't like it. I sure don't want annoying people around and I would want them to go away too. So it wasn't that they were treating me any different, I am sure they would tell another NT to go away if they weren't following the social rules so therefore I wasn't treated any different. Also I think they were at an age now where they started doing small talk and ten and eleven year olds start that. Before, they just play and then all of a sudden they just hang around and chit chat and do nothing when they reach a certain age and I wasn't good at that so I found it boring. But my ten-twelve year old perspective was different then because I didn't have the self awareness.

4th grade was when I started to feel left behind with my peers so I went for the younger age group where I could relate to them and had things in common. I realize now I have always had social problems but they weren't that noticeable then until I reached a certain age.

i still feel that if my parents had exposed me socially then i wont have this problems.......
and if my parents were themself aware about social rules and behaviour i would not have ended up being a
confused adult

My daughter is almost 6yrs and until now has been a free spirit, oblivious to pressure to conform. But, on Saturday, we went to a music concent for kids and, according to the flyer and website, the kids had to dress up as aliens, as the theme was space invaders. We spent a lot of time designing an outfit and she was really happy with it. But, when we got there, only a handful of kids were dressed up. She was feeling a little out of place and needed encouragement to switch on the flashing lights on her eyes on stalks. I managed to comfort her with the knowledge that they were supposed to be dressed up and there were prizes for the best costumes (she never won). However, I am a little bit concerned that the innocence is going and she'll start to feel self conscious at an earlier age than I was (7 1/2). That's when I became painfully shy and that's my worst fear for this girl, who's full of confidence just now.

To put it simply all those social things that just come naturally to you and you probably don't even think about don't come naturally to some people. They either just don't understand it or have to purposely learn it and think a lot about it to do it.

I wasthat way too until I suddenly "woke up" in middle school (of all places) I spent much of my teens feeling like a puppy that was just born trying to go back into the womb only to find out it was exit only.
Before middle school, I was pretty much in my own world totally oblivious to any social rules, I also had a hard time understanding what others were saying, but for the most part I did not care. I had no interest in humans whatsoever. I even spent a good portion of my time acting like a dog, tiger, cow, or cat...or imitated the three stuges which horrified my mom.
It was not until middle school that I recognized other humans as people to try to interact with.

Once I recognized a need to interact with these people, I slowly realized there were rules that nobody was telling me by trial an error. I used to think they held meetings to discuss these rules and I was somehow left out of the process.

Jojo

From what I perceive, there seem to be two types of Aspies: those who desperately, anxiously try to conform, and those for whom the logic-motivation to act pathway is so intensely-fused that they don't try in the slightest to go through rituals which are to them unnatural and quite silly, as many of us find NT social customs to be. One person doesn't have to be just one type either: I used to be the former, and as I've gotten older, am most assuredly the latter.

I also think the lack of theory of mind bit is hogwash, except in describing differences between diverse groups, IE, if Autistics lack theory of mind toward an overwhelmingly NT society, then that same lack of theory of mind can be said to exist in an NT oriented society tenfold toward the Autistic. The empathy Autistics feel is invoked at different times and shown in different ways than NT's, because the underlying mechanisms and therefore behavioral patterns produced are different. Different =/= deficient.

Ok try this for a practical example.

I know that you are supposed to smile at people when they smile at you.

You, an NT are probably also aware of this and smile at people.

What is the difference between you and I?

Well I have to think about it and I have to notice that someone is smiling at me, which is only one cue among many hundreds of potential cues that your brain processes automatically and reacts to every second, for me I have to consciously notice that someone is smiling at me and consciously remember that this means I should smile back. Unfortunately this takes anywhere from 5 to 30 seconds depending on how much other stuff is going on around me and the normal time window for an NT to reciprocate a smile is a fraction of a second.

This means even if I correctly interpret the social situation and pick the correct response the time delay has already put the other person on edge because they have unconsciously sensed that 'something' is wrong due to the time delay.

I also misinterpret subtle facial cues, for example when getting mugged, I smile.

Why?

Because it wasn't until I was watching a nature documentary of aggressive chimps baring their teeth at each other that I realised the shape of the mugger's mouth was in fact a show of aggression like the chimps baring their teeth and wasn't in fact a friendly smile.

My problem with most people is they assume all interaction constitutes a relationship. My only satisfactory relationships are with shopkeepers because they get it.

Ah, the learned social things. Even though I've watched and tried to do things the same way as everyone else, I still fail, and I still can not always figure out what the different voice inflections mean. I know louder tends to be more upset or excited, but that is it. Anything else, and I get thrown off. I can detect facial features a bit easier, but not subtle or easy ones, and so I don't know how to react the right way.
One of the biggest things I've learned is people react a lot more favorably to those that smile. So, when I go out, I've learned to just have a soft smile on my face, or smile when people talk to me. I'll be walking around with a soft smile, even if I'm just shopping and looking at clothes, etc.
NT's can pick up and understand more what one another are thinking, by automatically interpreting (usually correctly) what another NT's facial features, body language, and voice inflections are conveying, and so they are able to respond back with what would normally be considered acceptable or relevant to what was just said. However, a NT has difficulties with this, so they will respond back either later than normal, or what's not considered acceptable or relevant to what was just said.

Wich forms of communication clashes and misses? Please explain how that looks like. By clashes do you mean they get into conflicts?

I know it is not as simple as i wrote. I wrote it on purpose knowing it was not right, too explain how i feel about it. Because it is hard for me to understand where to problem lies. I feel like "but we are just humans going up too each other and you just say or do something" Probably if i knew someone with non-mild asperger i would get the problem. Maybe there is no other way to understand it properly.

But about conversation: would you say the lack of conversation skills is another word for just saying "you just have nothing to say (making you quiet like i am in some situations (wich would mean i have a aspie trati? :S) OR... would you say it is the certain processes of normal conversation you dont understand and use automaticly? I.e. knowing the right things to formulate in certain situations. And does this have the sideeffekt of making it difficult too hold a conversation?

Could you say by "social impairment" the problem is that they lack all those kind of skills having to do with adapting to people and the situations? And the side effekt is: behaviour and responses that dont fit well to the situations (or lacking a response when is should be there
)?

From my perspective, social skills for most NTs is mostly intuitive. Sure in the elementary school years, its taught but like 25% of it is taught but 75% of it is picked up intuitively by just going through life experiance. Whereas people with autism, we can likely say that little to no social skills is picked up intuitively and it needs to be taught. Sure there's those with autism that self-teach themselves(i surely did) but we have to focus very hard on picking these skills up. So once we pick these skills up, it can come across as very rigid because we are using are intellect to socialize not our intuition. We are simply trying to follow the "rules" where as with NTs its not rules things just go and flow. NTs don't or rarely have to think about socialization unless you have social anxiety or some psychiatric condition.

For example in a small talk conversation a aspie might've developed a rigid script on how to conduct that conversation. Whereas an NT hasn't really developed a script, there are "scripts" there but its more go with the flow intuition where the NT can easily adjust the script for the situation where as for the aspie its a lot harder to adjust the script on spot. Us aspies need to develop 10 billion conscious algorithms whereas an NT can just adjust as things go.

Nonautistic people know their place in the hierarchy. Everything they say, do and think is dependent on the hierarchy. They aren't aware of it at the time, they believe they're "all just people". It's perhaps impossible to explain to someone within the hierarchy what it's like to be outside the hierarchy. Powerwindow, imagine you're an ant. You cut up bits of leaf and follow scents and do ant stuff but you believe you're playing and dancing and falling in love. A human zoologist can only see you perform ant functions for a colony. Different perspectives, see? That's the difference between autistic and nonautistic. We're like zoologists, you're like ants, only human-sized and with weapons.

Ai Ling: if you stop letting other people decide the rules then you have no rules to follow. I never bothered trying to blend in. But even without rules you still have a problem relating to nonautistics because they process social information differently. If I could teach autistics one thing it would be that there are no rules.