Please read (and maybe reply) if you have an NT friend!

Post Reply New Topic

I tell some people I have asperger's, not everyone though. I just say I'm weird, there's plenty of weird kids all over the place. If they think I'm retarted, I prove to them that I'm not by outsmarting them. If someone tries to bully me, I tell another person right off the bat and it usually stops.

Just say that you're weird or dorky or eccentric, there's lots of people like that all over the place. People get uncomfortable when you start talking all psychological, its an extremely controversial topic.

I remember my one friend told me that the whole asperger's thing was the same thing as the whole ADD scare that happened a couple of years ago. If he could see the college based asperger's support group filled with smart as hell weird ass people, then maybe he'd understand.

I have dozens of NT friends and I've never told any of them that I have AS. I don't think it wise to let anyone know, friend or not.

yeah i have an nt mate and he worked with people on the spectrum so he understands.

I mention it very casually, and usually several months into the friendship. Usually they haven't really got much of an idea beforehand, because when they think of autism they think of more pronounced cases. Which is fair enough. I am of the opinion that my social issues are mostly trivial compared with those of many college students.

One exception was when one student who I get on OK with but I am not that friendly with mentioned that he was trying to detect who in the maths and theoretical physics classes in college had AS. He speculated on a few people, some of which had a connection to AS that I could kind of understand and some of which I couldn't understand at all. I didn't like this idea so I tried to silence him by mentioning my own diagnosis. He was fairly surprised, his words being roughly that "I thought you might have had AS when I knew you in first year, but I ruled you out recently because you have a very active sense of humour". There you go.

Virtually all of my friends have not been diagnosed with AS and don't show much sign of it in my book. I had trouble making friends in primary school but in secondary school I got on with pretty much all the guys (I've always been awkward with women) by the time I left.

I have an NT step-brother that I now kind of consider a friend. I told him one time that I had AS but he kept asking, "Why can't you just quit being that way and be normal?" He could not grasp the fact that I can't just "turn it off." Of course, I can't expect him to understand anyway. He once said that he didn't know what diagrams and schematics have to do with blueprints, and he is pursuing a career in engineering!!

That scares me....