Asperger's and low self-confidence are holding me back!

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I really feel my Asperger's and low self-confidence are holding me back from pursuing a career in social work! I know it shouldn't be that way, but it is. I'm also afraid the people who know I'm an aspie (except my family and close friends) will reject this profession for the very same reason. Finally, I'm also worried that my lack of experience in the field will hinder me from getting into any of the 7 schools I'm applying to for grad school.

Well, the only thing holding you back is your self confidence, regardless of aspergers. A trick to being confident is just looking in the mirror, and telling yourself everything great about yourself or your life, with NOTHING negative. If nothing comes to mind, just tell yourself your awesome, brilliant, and know what to do repeatedly. Your subconscious actually makes this true the more you say it, ideas will come to you over time. Also stand up completely staight if you don't already, roll your shoulders back to keep your head up, and... don't forget to act on any ideas that come to mind. Yeah. Weird trick. Anyway, good luck!

The thing is, a lot of my self-confidence issues are due to the Asperger's! I wish I could get some advice from other Aspies in this field, if there are any.

The thing to realise about self-confidence (lack of) is that your feelings are a bunch of know-nothing fools. Ignore your feelings. Don't let them control you.
Your feelings are the things telling you that you're no good at anything and that if you try, you'll fail and it will be the end of the world. Your feelings are dumb.
There is nothing physically stopping you from performing the actions that you want to do.
You can be scared of something and still do while being scared. Fear is just a feeling; it can't stop you.
And if you fail, you'll be embarrassed... so what? Another feeling that has no effect on what actions you can physically perform. Feel embarrassed, try again... eventually you'll succeed. And that will feel great, and that's a feeling that you should listen to.

As an aspie. Why you would want to peruse a career in social work? To me, That seem like trying to mix oil and water together. Not imposable but very hard.

Ok, I find this response a little insulting! There is actually a very successful social worker with AS named Brian King. I also found out that it happens to be a common profession among women Aspies. I feel that as an Aspie, I can better understand what people like me faced growing up on the spectrum and let them know that they're not alone in what they're dealing with.

Think before you write something like this.

I couldn't have written it better myself.

I didn't intend it to be insulting. I am just confused. I just don't see why an aspie would want to do something like that. it seem like it ageist are nature.

+1

I struggle with confidence issues all the time. I am so aware of my shortcomings and deficiencies, and I often role-model people who are really accomplished and more talented than I am.

I have to remind myself that the vast majority of people are there are mediocre half-wits that I could probably run circles around on any number of skills or talents. These people get into darn good jobs without being all that exceptional.

So, I think of all the times I did something I thought was nothing special and amazed people with real skills who were unable to do what I just did.

* Examples *

1. I constructed a spreadsheet to manage up to $3,000,000 in receivables held in trust for a lawyer who had limited computer skills (and he was into computers).

2. I configured two desktop systems for a new law library for a circuit court judge (somewhat tech savvy, but neither he nor his secretary could have done it and if they could they would be barred by personnel rules that required them to send the job to the IT department).

3. While nothing special now (more and more providers do this for you), I set up a document imaging system for a solo law practice and took him from using a Win98 PC and DOS laptop to a fairly state-of-the-art network with custom-built PCs.

4. I can do a lot of motor vehicle maintenance and repair myself. While not as knowledgeable as a certified mechanic, I can alert someone if they are being fed a line of nonsense about "needed" repairs, and I can even have a keep Dx of what's wrong with a car by just listening (some sounds are dead giveaways as to what's wrong).

All of these things are items I take for granted but indeed most people DO NOT possess the knowledge/experience to know these things.

These things help me to realize that I have a lot more "game" than I give myself credit for.

If anything, comments like yours lower my self-confidence even more!

I am not in anyway trying to lower your confidence. I am just warning you from experience. I am just saying from my experience that aspie + social can be a recipe for disaster. The last thing you want is to have low self-esteem only in the end to have the very thing you are pursuing blow up in you're face. It sound like to me that you are confident with the choice you made and in no way do I want to discourage you from your decision.

So, I don't know if this will help at all, but I often find myself in the grip of pessimistic and self-doubting feelings. I learned to adopt personas with other personalities. I often think of certain outgoing, optimistic people and ask myself what they would do in the same circumstances. I also try to imagine how they would mentally frame things.

For example, I will see that I am late and likely to miss a train. My natural impulse is to give up and try for the next one. Then I imagine what a friend I will name "Aries" would do. Would Aries give up? Hell no! She would push on. Maybe the train will be late and even if you miss the time, you'll be able to board...

This exercise means that when I play Aries, I end up catching trains that I would have given up on and missed if I did it my way instead of playing the "Aries" role.

Or, this morning, for another example--everything started badly. A cat was violently ill and had explosive diarrhea on the tiles by the front door, so the very first thing I had to do was clean up this disgusting mess. And there was no coffee! And due to a miscommunication about transport, I had to walk through the rain to the train station... So I was not in a very positive mood. And I had some challenging work to do today and I was feeling out of sorts from the (literally) sh**ty start to my day. And I started to think about communication problems I have been having with certain clients at work and sort of went into a spiral of very negative thinking.

Then I caught myself and thought, how would another person--who I will call Xerxes--think about this situation. And I thought about all the things I am very good at and how they can be brought to bear on the project. I thought about how Xerxes would treat the whole challenging situation like a game and revel in playing the pieces that show off his strengths. They would love him for doing his thing and this would change the whole situation. So I started to think through all the stuff I most enjoy, and suddenly realized how I could reframe the difficult part of the project so that I could use some ideas I have been playing with to make it much better--and the day turned around for me.

I came in and wrote a few lines of code that set up a template that will save me and my colleagues many hours of drudgery and free us up for more thoughtful work, then played the difficult situation with the Xerxes moves I thought through on the train. Now the difficult client is very excited to move forward with the new idea and I got to play and have fun as part of my job!! !


This raises my confidence like nothing else.

Good luck! Don't let your own treacherous thoughts keep you from your dreams!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwrWUlq7Xk4[/youtube]

I think you're confusing social work with social skills! Those two things are completely different! Get your facts straight.

Put all of that on your resume and bring it up interviews

Sadly I can't give you much useful advice because I need some myself over the same thing, but I can relate and I know exactly how you feel.

I feel that my Asperger's and low self-esteem and lack of confidence holds me back from doing most things I want to do. Actually, I don't even think it's the Asperger's itself, but mostly the lack of confidence, because some people with Asperger's can be chatty and confident with themselves and not mind about a social faux pas.

When I'm at work the thing that makes me anxious the most is being in a situation where I know I have to be dominant or assertive. I work at a care home, as a cleaner, but sometimes I face difficult situations with some of the residents where I am in a position where assertiveness comes in handy. I'm not very good at that. I see how some of the carers can be polite but firm at the same time, but I can't be both because, although I'm not a monotonous-speaker, I can't always get my tone of voice right, so without intending to, I'll either sound aggressive, or I'll sound too timid and act as though I'm in a cage of man-eating tigers or something. I've figured it comes from lack of self-esteem and lack of confidence, because there's another Aspie at work who is better at speaking to the residents than I am, and he's only 17.

So some of the other workers think I get anxious about being on my feet all day and doing a lot of physical tasks, but I'm fine with that once I know what I'm doing, because I can get myself into a routine easily and stay focused and get everything done on time. It's when I come into awkward contact with residents (or the general public if I was working in a shop) is what makes me anxious the most, but is what some NTs least understand because most NTs take that for granted.

I'm sure aspies can make great social workers.

As far as self-confidence goes, it's really a frame of mind that you may need to gradually build up over time.