Does This Forum Encourage "Naval Gazing"?

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I am of the mind that making posts here actually weakens social skills. Look at the titles of many of the posts; they're so introspective! We talk about our symptoms, tenuous correlations between other occurrences and Asperger's syndrome, life as a person with Asperger's syndrome, etc. Few of the topics promote a more expansive point of view. That is, instead of looking at all that's out there in the world, we constantly come back to our symptoms and deepen the ruts we've been tracking over again and again.

I have found the way of speaking about personal experiences does not go over so well among NTs. In fact, it makes one seem downright egocentric. At least in my case, the sharing of symptoms and problems here has led me to have a more egocentric way of conversing in general. I think it would be best for me at least to get more face-to-face conversation in with NTs to build fluid, reciprocal conversation skills.

Does anyone else share this sentiment? If so, are you trying to overcome it? How do you keep from focusing on yourself in all your posts and topics of conversation?

My bad, I thought the post was about watching sailors....

I think if we're going to do it, we can do it here, and the save the wide world for the social stuff...

I have noticed this, but I am of the mind that it is not a problem. I see it as though had a bunch of duct tape repairs, some of them I didn't even recognize as repairs, and some of them were repairing what wasn't even broken. So now I am tearing all the duct tape off. It might seem like a step back at first, but I will be much better in the end.

I think that doing it here gives us an outlet when we know we can't successfully do it with NT's. While we may argue a lot, there is a level at which we understand each other. I think that that is good.

I, for one, would be "navel gazing" whether or not I'd found an online forum such as this. Posting here has actually been more "social" for me than how I'd spend that time otherwise. If a person has preferable alternatives to participation here, more power to them. For those of who find communicating online, with strangers, to be of use in getting through another day, WP is a resource/support.
At least here I can fill a couple hours, try to stave off feeling grim & gloomy-in hopes that my mood will brighten, if I can just be patient. I may not be "outward-looking" in my interests/viewpoint, but WP is not a causative factor. If being a WP member is what's holding a person back, no doubt they'd be well-equipped to quit this and find other activities that suit their level of functioning. Right ? Pardon my sarcasm or hyperbole or whatnot...
Point made by Neanthumain is valid, but it's not an absolute-it's up to each person to decide if this applies to them.

If anything my participation in online forums has helped my social skills. I actually do occasionally converse with people now instead of looking off into space. For years I only talked when I HAD too. It wasn't regarded as anything recreational.

I gave up on social skills a long time ago... well actually about two years ago... now I gaze at my belly button instead.

I agree with you NeantHumain, i thought exactly the same thing. Although having egocentric discussions isnt so bad, I thought thats one of the reasons why this forum exists - to let out our feelings. But at the same time it can go overboard and do little to actually help a person.

I often find after someone creates a thread about his/her problem, most of the the replies are of the 'yeah same here, this happened to me ...' kind of nature rather than some constructive comments. Again, im not saying thats a bad thing, its natural for it to be like that. Ive got nothing much against those replies, i mean i do it too, a lot.

I tend to find myself coming to this site not on a regular basis but only when im having trouble with my life or had a particularly embarrassing social encounter. And I come out none the wiser. We should be confronting our troubles not simply drowning our sorrows. I would say since i had discovered that i had AS (well ok i havent been officially diagnosed) i have become a whole lot worse because its like ive given up.

So sometimes i feel that coming here we are all feeding off each others miseries.

I cherish my egocentricity. I think many times it keeps me more logical because I don't compromise just because somebody else wants me to. I compromise if it is the most logical thing to do, but otherwise, no. And since I love Psychology, this is an awesome place to talk about symptoms, etc.

I really don't feel like I'm dwelling. I talk about Aspergers et al. because I love talking about it. It fascinates me, along with a vast number of other disorders. I talk because I enjoy it. What better reason could I have? And thinking and discussing symptoms doesn't get me "down" or depressed, concluding that I am hopeless. I don't pity myself at all (unless I've had a really crappy day, but this usually isn't because of anything AS-related).

If talking about one's symptoms only gets one more and more depressed and cynical, I agree: it isn't good to dwell then. But otherwise, I see very little harm in introspection and the potential for much gain. So it's up to the individual to gauge what they're getting out of it.

Loss of social skills by posting on these forums, IMO, is just another thing that you can easily hedge yourself against by being aware of the potential for it. As long as I don't let myself get too absorbed in this way of thinking and keep myself from going too far off the deep end as to lose any viability in the NT world I think I'll be fine.

I think the issue is when we really draw a hard-line segregation between ourselves and NTs and then end up pulling out the elitism. IMO elitism is not only a displacement of blame and show of low self-esteem but it progressively makes someone worse off just because aside from the thrill of talking to others on the forum who are like minded, its completely counterproductive IRL. Yeah, we all have our complaints and commentaries about certain areas of society but we have to keep ourselves and perspectives well-grounded in the human condition.

To be fair, about half the threads you just described are your own.

Well, I never claimed we were better and I never claimed anything I said about NT's made them anything less. I don't know how the heck to explain all that to people when they aren't hyperanalyzing things or aren't seeing the world in a machievellian form at times but it's allright, I'll let that one slide. Elitism takes not seeing both sides and believing one side is better than the other, for as much as I may run my mouth sometimes I neither think we're better than them nor do I have a problem seeing how the human condition has the whole world bent.

For anyone else who's misunderstood my threads a bit, I'll explain to this to you as well. My reasoning as to why I say those things and don't feel its putting em on blast - life, choice, opportunity, when you demistify it it's all economics. If I ever talked about NT's being less for it, it's the way of the world all the way arround. I've also been backing off some of those assumptions more and more lately because I realize I've been working with some real pieces of work for about 5 years, have seen way more than my fair share of fake, shallow, and opportunist people where I work, and it was jarring my reality a bit. I'm not just backpeddling either, I'm trying to figure this out as much as you guys are and sometimes I take my views too far out on one angle or another (the ideology I was on earlier was largely to smash a lot of the things in myself I thought were holding me back, bring my expectations of the world way down, in general bleak the hell out of it to prevent myself from being hurt when I did see that kind of crap - make sense?).

Lol, I actually thought this thread was going to be about some sort of navel fetish!

Funny you should mention that. Ever since I found these forums (after reading about William Freund) I've been addicted to them. Almost to the exclusion of everything else. Reading about other people who also have AS makes me want to dwell on my AS more, yes I hate to say it.

But I try to be less and less self-concious around people and tell myself that I could care less if they think I'm a wierdo. These forums increase my awareness of how many people share my quirks and help me do so.