Study on adult male aspie happinness

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I am a male and I am happiest when I am by myself. I really don't understand the need for friends or having other human contact. I tried being around other people but I start having anxiety attacks as to what they are thinking and what should I say if someone speaks to me. I am content and happy in my on world.

I can speak for myself. I seem know what makes me happy. Listening to birds, watching the stars and just going away in my mind.

You're right that it's hard to measure happiness or contentment. Adding more life experiences to cookie-cutter happiness measures would yield a more complete picture of someone's life. This is especially true if you have people rate their mood when they think about various life experiences they've had.

This is a really good point. I need to read it again, but I didn't see mention that any of the men may have been solitary by choice.

Something I REALLY liked was that Helles directly compared his population to Swedish males in general, which was very helpful to me. When I did my study I only had numbers to compare to the US and UK but not all of my participants were from those areas. To know how autistics are functioning it's important to know what is normal or average for the culture they are in.

Helles' study brought up another point, although, again, I need to read it again to see if he specifically mentioned it- some things, such as living alone, are not as prevalent these days because of different economic and social climates. Older people and people in their twenties are less likely to live alone than they used to be, so we can't necessarily say that when autistic people live with family at these ages that it is abnormal.

Human contact is needed for reproduction, defending yourself if you're attacked by a group, and making a living if you don't own the means to produce everything you need. Were it not for these pesky needs, everyone else in the world could really go f**k themselves.

I've had to spend most of my adult life moving toward finding a break in the landscape where I could have a chance to begin finding happyness and peace, still some years to go but I hope I will get there with persistence. I used to think I was a negative person or deliberately feeling downcast or just inept but my journey in mental health over the last five years displayed that I have always had a very positive inner glow that was struggling against several cloaking fabrics and stormclouds which were dimming it. I don't even know an emotion that would convey how I'd feel if my life continues to progress along this hill I've begun walking up, the freedom and opportunity would probably seem 'normal' to many other people who have not struggled to reach such shores, just as my concept of reaching happyness will be held within a supremely different frame to someone who'd been enslaved and beaten for a decade.