Connecting is natural, and bad social skills are a barrier

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The same thing, with books, music, etc. Been thinking a lot about why I can't control my interests. I just suddenly get into something, sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for years, and then my brain is automatically closed for anything else. And, when the interest is gone, I can't keep it up deliberately... I ruined my academic career for the only reason that I suddenly had enough of linguistics.

I didn't mean that they literally make a conscious decision. I meant what you said here.

That's basically what it's always like for me when I work. I get absolutely nothing out of that kind of interaction. Then when I get home I'm lonely but just don't have the energy to "go out" and meet people. The sad part is I'm not a natural hermit and I get really depressed, so depressed I'm unable to function, without some form of meaningful social interaction every day.


When I meet someone I like in an environment that's conducive to conversation I can go for a long time. People will tell me their life story and I'll lose track of time. The thing I can't deal with is group interaction. I can't deal with interruptions. I can't hold my thought and continue a story or joke once I've been cut off and I get offended when people don't ask me finish when the conversation resumes. I think I just feel hostile, like I'm in a game to compete for attention. I just don't get it. I do well one-on-one with people in the right circumstances with someone I like. The situation just doesn't present itself often enough for it to lead to friendship. I'd also have the problem of running out of things to discuss. I need to have a common activity to do together but most people are always too "busy" for that. It seems like people over 30 just don't want new friends, even if they're single. If you're over 30 and don't have any close friends left where you live, you're pretty much screwed.

There's always pathetic stuff like this: http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva/ ... 57945.html

I did this in Austin and met a nice aspie girl to hang out with for awhile before I came to D.C. I did a BPD one as well and got tons of responses but was too overwhelmed to respond to any of them at the time. Another option for some of us would be a "social anxiety"/ AvPD one. Of course, you're lucky when you're me and have lots of official professional diagnoses to potentially use to find people who think like me. So I'm going to try the BPD connection thing here in D.C.

If nothing else, you can connect with people on the basis of disabilities, if you both have disabilities that prevent you from making friends. I've gotten lots of Facebook friends and chat buddies from the Borderline and NLD FB groups I'm in. NLD is usually rigid and judgmental, but the BPD one is a pretty good source of understanding people.

At this point, I usually jump to one of my favorite subjects which is the critique of modern civilization that seems to exterminate everything "meaningful". People get hooked on shopping, silly TV shows, superficial political ideas, etc., how can they be expected to produce, or even think of anything meaningful?
"Busyness" is a strange thing, by the way: I know people who push paper in the office 8 hours a day and consider themselves "busy". Unfortunately, my work includes some meaningless activities, too, but the feeling is quite the opposite: by the end of a busy workday I mostly feel that I've done nothing. Considering this, wasting the rest of the day on watching TV would be pure self destruction. But as far as I can see, the "normal" majority is ok with that.

(Disclaimer: I might be biased here because of limited experience. I haven't travelled much, so I'm not sure what's going on in other cities/countries, but all I see round here is that people do nothing but work for money and buy things... And all these things, like "I want new kitchen furniture" or "Buy yourself a new phone, yours looks awful".... I hear this even from clever people. This is definitely not what I would like to talk about.)



This again depends on the social situation. My interests would be mainstream among educated people some 200 years ago, but now I keep them to myself in order not to look odd.

We are genetically different. Accept that you will never be able to form true emotional connections.
Live alone, f**k prostitutes, make money, live the life of a baller.

Um, why use prostitutes? The ability to get women to sleep with you without paying them is usually highly correlated with the ability to make money. So if you have to get prostitutes, you're probably poor.

There's a stereotype in the South of white women who have identity issues dating interracially. I have had some good results from Asian women, but I am not that attracted to most of them. I think I am going to try something else, so I joined a white man-black woman group in D.C. to see how it goes. We'll see. At least once I get my mood disorder under control.

Yes, I don't agree with the title, although perhaps it could be true depending on how you define "social skills". I think what's more important than "social skills" has more to do with understanding of self and other rather than being able to execute that understanding. I can relate to your experience back when I tried to perform "social skills". However, because being able to perform them is often incompatible with the autistic mode of sensory and cognitive processing, it led to burnout, hence getting shyer and withdrawing.

For instance, NT small talk is more about the emotional exchange than it is about the words, hence the social scripts, etc. To me, any verbal exchange is a sensory engagament that consumes me and leaves me unable to focus on anything else. Words carry a very rich meaning and, even when they are repeated many times, the associations don't fade. I think NTs can get rid of the meaning and switch between sensory modalities rapidly, so words can eventually become a symbolic empty shell. However, doing so is highly perturbing to my mind, hence it wanting the order of meaningful facts and descriptions. When disengaged from that for an extended period of time, it goes into overload, similar to an overload experienced from a lack of routine or familiarity in the environment. This is why performing "proper social skills" can be draining for us. Whether to be drained and see socializing as an ordeal, or to just be able to forget the scripts and be able to actually connect in a way that is more natural for us, is a choice all of us have to make.

I'm in the same boat. I'm really bored and lonely, but don't like interacting with people and trying new things. Go figure. I hate small talk. I absolutely hate it. It is the most boring thing in the world. People think I'm shy because I don't make small talk. If there's something I want to know and I think someone knows it, I'll walk up and ask them. If I have information I think someone else needs, I'll walk up and tell them. But in social situations, this is worthless. If I don't know someone, I don't know enough about them to ask relevant questions or provide relevant information unless they ask me, but since they don't know me, they don't know I know the answer so they don't ask. I remember a few years ago, I was at a wedding reception and there was a girl there who I thought was pretty. Because of the reasons I just mentioned, I couldn't think of anything to say to her. My one friend at the wedding (other than the groom) suggested I ask her where she works. My first thought was along the lines of, "How would that information be useful?"

I go to work, come home from work and watch TV or play a video game. That's pretty much my life in a nutshell.

From a NT perspective it can be very frustrating. I've met aspies that I absolutely love and want to spend time with but I've met with a brick wall, trying to get in contact is hard, it's impossible to hang out unless it involves one of your intrests and you don't reply to im or emails unless we initiate. Eventually due to this absent nature, we give up and hang out with those with whom we don't have to in a way "entertain". I had to leave one of the best friends I had because he never came out of the house to meet ups and said he didn't miss spending time with us as in his words "I don't have feelings". It hurt me too much to continue the friendship. It can feel like it is a never ending uphill struggle.

I'm not like that. Usually, the friendship fizzles in the fairly early stages because there's not much to talk about. I am not hard to contact. You're an NT woman. In my experience, my exhaustion comes because I feel like I'm always entertaining you, not the opposite.

My new pdoc thinks it's depression more than NLD/ASD and claims it will disappear with meds. We'll see.

So how do you get around performance?

You have to try your best to find some commonality with the person you are trying to communicate with. Perhaps it's easy for me to say because I tend to at least indirectly disclose (i.e. not necessarily giving the label but saying stuff like "I tend to be really logical" and "I only feel comfortable talking about concrete things"). It's not like NTs can't communicate like this, it's just less natural for them. It's best to try to hang around people who share at least some of your interests and try to ask the person what he/she knows about different things you're interested in to encourage sharing of facts. Even though I tell people that small talk makes me extremely uncomfortable, I still try to show my appreciation for people by doing nice/helpful things for them and giving genuine, meaningful compliments, so that I don't have to do stuff that feels fake.

From this, I would draw 2 things:
1) possible myriad of negative social experiences
2) extremely low emotional self-recognition
These two things can be changed and not all people with AS are hermits. I think a lot of us have become very sensitive to the slightest negative difference in treatment and have very particular ways in which we would like to communicate with others. From your perspective, I can understand that it is a real challenge to try to figure out how to approach someone who doesn't fully feel belonging in a particular social context but yet cannot articulate how and why so that things could be at least somewhat easier on your behalf. That's why these skills are perhaps the most crucial for people with AS to learn...

Yep, that would involve having interests other than neurological disorders: i.e. my own.

So, I think we're back to depression being a worse problem than autism. For me, I have a hard time focusing to do other things whenever I have a full-time job or school. I think I'd have to be on disability and sleep 12 hours a day in order to have interesting hobbies and interests.

For some people, connecting based on similarities in background is enough. But that is not going to happen with me. Don't even ask why, but it's not going to happen. Everything that you likely experienced in your childhood is not applicable in my case at all, and I'd rather not get into it here, though I've posted about it elsewhere.

There are tons of people interested in neurological disorders and it's a rather good interest to have, especially if it leads to extensive self-examination and self-insight. I'll look at the thread where you posted about this later, and then perhaps come back with more comments. I'm into this stuff, too, and have gone through my share of traumatic experiences during childhood. Just saying.