What is the most difficult issue people with an ASD struggl

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Mine struggle is keeping freinds, Making eye contact and also it does effect my school work

I struggle with eye contact, the most. I also struggle with my powerful emotions.

For me, it has to be dealing with misunderstanding and being misunderstood [and oh, how good it feels when I can talk to someone who can think the same direction].

I talk defensively, but I simply cannot predict or recognize mainstream reactions with any accuracy, so what I thought were best friends react to me as the green monkey. I am used to it - but I have never been able to shrug it off.

Social skills. I don't mean to say the wrong things or come off wrong. I talk to people online and then they stop talking. Same has happened here too. I don't know what I am doing wrong. Then I get accused of being manipulative and I don't know what I was doing but maybe that perosn was just saying it to make me look bad, painting a picture to make herself look innocent.

For me it's not being able to flirt properly. I can't look a girl in the eye and ask for a date with a straight face and a calm voice. I can keep friends without eyecontact though.

I don't bother trying with the social stuff anymore. If I tried I'd still suck at it and it wears me out too much. For myself it's inertia and executive dysfunction.

Multitasking, anxiety, obsessive behavior (when I don't take my pills), and fitting in with groups that aren't keen on my eccentricities.

Sensory overload, anxiety, and the world around me going WAY TOO FAST.

Issues of discrimination and inequality.

Not being able to express myself to people. It's very frustrating for me to try to put what I want to say in language. Usually I just get confused looks from people or nervous laughs.

Too many to list, so just "life".

I don't know if I have AS or not but these are the things I struggle with most out of all the traits that make me suspect I have it:

Not knowing what I am supposed to say and being constantly misunderstood
Utter bafflement at the weird, illogical world that everyone else seems to inhabit
Fatigue
Having crying, shouting, rocking episodes that would be called "tantrums" if I was 2 but I suspect are more likely at my age to be meltdowns
Not being able to "get the jist" of anything or see the whole picture unless I look at every single little bit of it ... which means I read extremely slowly and any film or TV show that has much action just whizzes past me (I hate that. Try as I might, there just isn't enough time for me to process each bit before something else happens. I ask questions like "is that the goodies' spaceship or the baddies'? and receive astonished looks from anyone who doesn't know me. Alone, I just rewind!).

Emotions (expressing/interpreting), wandering mind, only able to take on a few things at a time (cannot multitask that well), misunderstood, misunderstanding others, some literal interpretations, inability to picture what some people are saying (ie, some instructions), some eye contact (have to turn my eyes away when im talking to someone from time to time), no real grasp on non-verbal (and some verbal) cues . . .

that's only what ive noticed thus far.

Don't worry - I've seen at least one description of normal conversation which says that the speaker only needs to look at the listener's face occasionally while they're talking......it's done when they begin to speak, and at the end, and (ideally) whenever they're saying anything that might be particularly difficult to take on board. The rest of the time you can look away. The downside is that the listener is supposed to gaze more or less constantly at the speaker's face.....though possibly it's enough to just make sure your're more or less facing them, without actually having to stare into their eyeballs - then the speaker can still pick up your facial cues, if you're transmitting any. If not, it probably helps to nod every time you've digested the little bit they've just said, just so they get the message "yes I hear you."

I don't know what my most difficult issue is. There are many of those. Probably my inability to shift focus rapidly.....that seems to be the main thing that limits my social life and possibly it's also the root of my executive disfunction. My social intelligence seems to be at least comparable with that of the general population, and in some ways I can appear more perceptive than they are, but it's slow. I can't fault my general intelligence, but if only I could hold the big picture in mind while I'm focussing on the details, I'm sure I'd be better organised and wouldn't keep disappearing down the tunnel of high focus and scaring myself half to death in the process.

Last edited by ToughDiamond on 24 Feb 2010, 12:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I struggle with People

For me its meltdowns and sensory issues. Meltdowns, while infrequent, do have a serious effect on me and people close to me.