why stop socializing just b/c u got Aspergers?

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The total switch he made seems funky to me. I mean usually it is one or the other, social or not social. I guess I won't be too much help because I have been extremely extroverted and social my whole life. This didn't change when I was diagnosed a few months ago. I'm still extremely social and extroverted. My advice would be to talk to your brother about it and discuss with him that if he really wants to be diagnosed to go to the correct professional to get it done.

I have been fairly asocial my entire life. I do socialize because some of my interests mandate it (roleplaying games really need more than one person to work), but without tabletop or live-action gaming in my life I tend to stop socializing almost entirely.

I have not really altered my social behavior in response to my diagnosis, and I actually tend to have more contact with people than I did beforehand due to the access to medical care that I was lacking for several years.

Thats true. And the word "red" doesn't describe the form/speed/location/content of an object, just the color, and perhaps not even accurately, but it is still a word used to describe red-ish things.

Orange is reddish. why would someone describe it as reddish? I can understand using it to describe something there isn't another word for but this isn't the case. Why use antisocial when the word asocial describes it better?

Ahh, I think you missed my point. Casually antisocial = asocial and asocial = antisocial, weird I know. And for the red metaphor, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_red , professionally red has many shades and names, but casually it is just called red/pale red/dark red.

Oh you mean how people casually call someone who has Asperger's Syndrome ret*d?

Rascal77s, we just clash. I don't know why, but I did not mean to pick a fight with you. Read what you want into my response, I believe others might see what I really meant.

When you have no idea that you have AS, you spend your life wondering why you feel so alien amongst others, and wondering why it's all such hard work and why you feel and think the way you do, but you get on with it and accept it because you feel an enormous pressure to be like everyone else, and you do want to fit in and have some level of social contact. So you socialise because that's what is expected, despite the enormous discomfort and exhaustion it causes you, there doesn't necessarily have to be incredibly obvious signs that you are pretending. You know that you are not really happy but you think that this is what life is.

Someone external noticing signs of ASD has picked up on some perhaps subtle signs he's shown that you may not have noticed (although you say he's a bit 'weird' yourself). So maybe reading up on AS was an enormous relief for him, it explained everything about how he felt and he realised that there is an actual reason why he feels that way, so he can take the pressure of himself. He no longer feels he has to force himself into situations that feel alien to him. Clearly they did and do, because otherwise if he was happy with the way things were, he wouldn't stop having fun just because some stranger told him about a condition which doesn't fit him would he?

This of course doesn't mean that your brother definitely has AS, he would need to get assessed, but clearly the description resonates with him and this is just a possible explanation I've given for how he feels.

I'm also not sure I got it
You meant that the term "antisocial" describes the issue the best since there is no better term in Englsih vocabulary, right?

I agree that "asocial" describes being "not social" best (see my disclaimer in my first post about the matter), but I tried to explain how the word "antisocial" when used casually actually means the same as "asocial" (according to those three wiki links I posted ealier). In a casual conversations, the two words "antisocial behaviour" is best used to describe what formally is known as "antisocial"..apparently.

Could be he's taken the Aspie label to heart. I found it pretty daunting after my DX because I was reading about all these things I could no longer hope to be good at. So I lost quite a bit of social confidence. It came back eventually. It would have probably been easier if I'd had some kind of expert help. As it was, I went all quiet and withdrawn for months. It's a big thing to take on board.

Sounds like he was conforming to the label and letting the label define him.

That is the worst thing for a newly diagnosed person to do.

I don't feel I clash with you, it's just not that deep for me. I simply stated that I don't like the word antisocial used to describe people that are not antisocial and somehow it turned into a debate on use of the word. I simply stated how I feel, that's it. I understand why people use the word antisocial to describe an asocial person- ignorance. But the fact that people misuse the word antisocial does not mean it is equal to the word asocial whether used formally or casually.

Let me end this by pointing something out to you that is the essence of my point. Your definition of asocial posted earlier:



I understand what colloquial means. Now lets look at the word proscribed.





The colloquial use of antisocial is improper use of the word and I don't like it applied to ASD as a generality. That's all I was saying.

This is an ASD forum and people will pick out details and focus on them. I expect no different from you. Do you expect different from me? Clash? No. rigid adherence to perception of reality? Probably.