Opinions/Experiences of "Aspie Support Groups"?

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You know - some health professional or a proactive aspie sets up a group for aspies to get together. What are they like (the groups)?

I s'pose the theory is you are amongst "like minded people", but are you?

As the old saying goes: if you've met one aspie you've, er, met one aspie...

So what's a structured group like? Part of me thinks it might be interesting (not that I'm likely to have access cos of where I live), but most of me thinks: oh god - what if that person wants to talk at me about penguins for 20 minutes.

Any thoughts/experiences?

Though I've enjoyed my experience with them for the most part, I can't say I really connected or related to the other people there. They generally had different interests from me and many were more outgoing, which made it hard for me to fit in.

I've been to a few, and that's not including my previous college and university groups.

As every aspie is different, the quality of aspie groups are very dependent on who's there. Some of them are filled with great like-minded people; whereas with other groups we didn't share any interests and we were too introverted to talk about anything else...making me wonder if that group of NTs laughing, having a good time at the other table would be a better place.

In short: certainly try going to them, but it's a roll of the dice as to how good it's going to be.

Pointless.
I went to one which was more of an autism therapies group than a support group, but there was that element. They treated us like we were severely intellectually disabled, even though they knew from our neurological testing (we were a test subjects group) that many of us were of above average cognitive intelligence.
They went into patronizing things like teaching us how to order drinks for ourselves at cafes - I can do that even when I am completely nonverbal.
I was no more able to "connect" with the people there than anywhere else, and like everywhere else, they found me scary and off-putting. I watched as people in the group began to "clique," but was as outside it as always.
The other was a straight up adult autistics social group, run by neurotypical facilitators. All they proposed to do was go to different restaurants and eat. I'm misophonic. No thankyou.

Thanks for this thread. I've been frustrated at the lack of *anything* for Aspie adults within a reasonable distance of my home. After reading through here I'm less frustrated, because I've already been to enough gatherings where it goes to "cliques" or people are patronized. (Churches, other disability support groups, book clubs...)

When I think about it, I spent more than 30 years in gatherings like that. It was called "my job". But at least I was paid to show up there