why stop socializing just b/c u got Aspergers?

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i don't know where to post this so i posted this in the Social Skills section too.

i have a question about my brother who claims to have Aspergers.

i know when he was young he had friends and got along okay with other kids his age, as far as i could tell. i know that in High school he had friends. He used to go to thier houses and he went to parties. i know for a while at least, in college he seemed to have friends; he was active in some sort of environmental club thing at college.

He said that some chick at college came up to him and flat out asked him if he was Autistic. He told her no and she apologized and she explained that she was studying early childhood something and he showed signs of Autism. He did some research and he decided it was true. He did further research and figured out he had Asperger's.

But it seems to me that he had a pretty normal social life for a while. i always thought he was a bit weird but aren't we all a bit weird in some way? It just seems to me like when he found out he was Autistic/Aspergers he suddenly became anti-social. i am on Yahoo Answers alot (M-F from around midnight 'til about 4a.m. lol) and i have seen a few other posters also say that when they found out they had Aspergers they stopped hanging out with friends, going out, etc. One person said he threw away his collections when he found out he had Aspergers. I don't know what his collection was, he didn't say.

i just don't understand why someone could go from having friends and socializing to having no friends and being a hermit just because they have Aspergers. Could someone please explain?

Why are you posting the same question in two different threads?

And considering that he had a normal social life until he "found out", I think that he doesn't have Asperger's and is either pretending to be something he's not or misdiagnosing himself.

I was a hermit who didn't socialise BEFORE I found out I had autism. It's not something that you can just switch on.

Did he say that is why he stopped socializing?

Maybe some people have struggled with socialising and found it a chore all their life, so when they find out that they have AS they see it as the excuse they've been looking for to give up with all the bother.

This, If he does have AS then you were - like most people - probably blind to the pain he was in due to socialising. i used to "socialise" but ever since I was diagnosed with autism I've decided "you know what? f*** it, I don't need this anymore".

Also, autistics can have friends and go to parties.

Some of us just get disinterested in socializing as we age. Like your brother I was more social, had friends and girlfriends in school the problem was as I got older it became more draining/time consuming because as children/teens age they take on more status seeking / judgemental characteristics and become very conformist / set in their ways and this becomes draining.

I always find it easy to socialize with the very young or the very old no problem, it's always people in between that make my life hell.

I talked a lot as a kid and had friends and even talked to grown ups too. Now as an adult I don't much anymore. My guess is because I am an adult now and as a child it was a lot easier to socialize. People don't get too mad at you or take it too personal if you say the wrong thing. They see it part of being a kid and you don't know any better. Then by the time you are in your teens or an adult, people expect more out of you so you will mind as well not talk nor say much until they know you better.

By the time I was ten, kids my age got boring because all they wanted to do was chit chat and I found it boring. I think I have always found it boring but they never talked about what I found interesting and I wanted to play, not stand around and chat. I think they got to an age where they start the small talk and chit chat. It was boring when I hung out with them but I did it to be normal. But I didn't say much because I had nothing to add. Plus I get pushed away too.

Heck even as a kid, even though I had friends, I had a hard time with them outside my home. I did fine with them when they were at my house but at their house, I had a hard time. Only time I did good with friends was when we were doing what I wanted to do. It was all about having things in common.

I gave up on friends in my teens because we didn't have things in common and they were all boring. I tried again at 16 but no use. I remember being invited in a group when I was 17 but I didn't really enjoy it so I decided to be alone.

How recent was it that he self diagnosed.
How long has he "been a hermit" (as you put it)?

If it's only a short while, then you might need to know that some people have an intense shock when they discover something so profound about themselves. Shock initiates shutdown and worsening of symptoms, and can sometimes lead to anxiety about how people see him.

The fact that a total stranger and NON professional approached him and, effectively, said :

You are so blatantly different from everyone around you, that I, an untrained observer, felt that you MUST know it, and that I could ask you about it bluntly, which in normal social behaviour people just don't do, and I assumed you'd be fine with it...

And maybe he's reviewing his life right now and trying to piece it all together with the idea of Aspergers. Solving miscommunications that stumped him 5, 10, 15 years ago - some of us have an incredible ability to return to and dwell on (and disect) the past. Let him go through this.

If it goes on too long, suggest some help and connection. Send him here. But for now just understand that your bro has recieved some life altering revelations, and it takes a while to adjust. Encourage him that knowing is a good thing - that it can be a tool to identify and seek to improve on those things that have long stood in his way.

If he's been social up to this point, good on him. It'll help him, having those experiences in his history.

That's what I suspect, if indeed he does have AS.

But most Aspies don't refuse to socialize. We can be very introverted, of course. I am; I socialize no more than a few times a month. Still, almost all autistic people want some kind of social connection--anything from spending time with someone else in the room, to communicating with someone online, to doing a favorite activity together, to dating, marriage, and family. There are extrovert autistics, of course, though they're the minority.

Maybe he's one of the very introverted people. If you're that much of an introvert, it's not pathological to withdraw most of the time. (This is not the same thing as withdrawing because of social anxiety, though. A stable introvert is not someone who is afraid of people or hates people; he just likes being alone more than being with others and relaxes best when alone, generally understanding himself very well and having a few close friends rather than a lot of acquaintances.)

On the other hand, there are other disorders that can cause a person to withdraw from society and it's important your brother checks to be sure he doesn't have some sort of psychological issue. Anxiety disorders, depression, all kinds of stuff would create a desire to be alone, a disconnect from others. Introversion is harmless and part of the normal human spectrum, but some things that aren't harmless can masquerade as introversion.

I could have a ''normal'' social life parties every weekend and all the things that are considered protocol for my age. Without my diagnosis i would probably still be doing that. But with it i can understand myself better and realize that i dont have to do those things, i dont have to go along with pressure from society to be like everyone else and have a social life like everyone else. Without a diagnosis you dont get to read experiences of people similair to you. If you feel like you are the only one out there then its VERY hard to just say i dont enjoy socializing like everyone else.
Until i got my diagnosis i just put more and more weight on my shoulders to fit in, but that didnt work out at all.

I don't know your brother, but it's possible that he's going through something similar to me regarding friends. I probably had more friends when I was young than I did when I was college-aged.

I think that some aspects of socializing get harder, or at least more complicated, as you and your peers get older. I was able to interact as a friend or playmate on a child-like level fairly well, but as I became an adolescent, it felt more and more like there was an invisible barrier between me and others.

Whereas before playing on the playground together or showing another child my favorite video game was enough to make us friends, now friendship meant something more that I had trouble understanding. There's a line in a song from one of my favorite singers that sort of captures the feeling: "There's people been friendly, but they'd never be your friends." It felt like I knew how to be friendly, but I didn't really know how to be a friend.

I became more distant when I went to college and was no longer around the kids I had grown up with, and then again after I graduated, I found that I had even less in common with people my own age, as our circumstances and backgrounds varied so much.

I have only recently been learning to interact as a friend on a more grown-up level, and I am really enjoying it, but it does take more effort than it did as a child.

I agree with bicentennialman fully. As an additional explanation: I often attempted to socialize, not because I liked it but because I felt that it was something people expect from me. After the DX with AS and a laundry list of other things, I decided that I should not do such things because they are expected from me or 'normal', because, hey, I am not either...

Sometimes it's just being burned out.

I tried really hard to be social. I gave up on it because it just doesn't work for me.

Sounds like he read something about Asperger's and poor social skills on the internet and decided having Asperger's means not being social or incapable of sustaining relationships.

He should just be himself even if that means having a robust social life. Screw labels, self imposed or not.

Knowing about AS hasn't made me give up. The only thing that has changed is now I'm comfortable admitting that I suck at interacting with people. I didn't have a social life before, and I still don't, but now I know why and it doesn't bother me anywhere near as much.