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Aspies without social difficulties?

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ramsamsam
Deinonychus
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14 Nov 2011, 9:12 pm

Quote:
I) Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following:
(A) marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body posture, and gestures to regulate social interaction
(B) failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level
(C) a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interest or achievements with other people, (e.g.. by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people)
(D) lack of social or emotional reciprocity


I don't really consider myself as an 'aspie' though drs keep saying that I have traits of an autism spectrum disorder, despite my protestations.
With the first one i struggle with eye contact a lot, but i think its strange as it's not always a problem. Like this girl i met who was diagnosed with AS i noticed with her (at first i was unsure about her DX as well I think some drs just say you have AS because they find you annoying and its not something they always get) that even when I'd look towards her she wouldn't generally respond to my gaze, or if I showed her something like on my phone and i was talking about it, i'd have to tell her that she should look at the phone otherwise she wouldn't whereas normally people (i'm not going to use the phrase NT, I believe that alythough there is a 'average person' on paper, very few people conform to it across the span of their life time, and 1 in 4 people suffer from mental illness, and that ultimately whatevr).
(b) i think affected me when i was younger, less now though lots of people think I'm crazy or weird and I can struggle with relationships but that's for other reasons maybe like ADHD and emotionally unstable personality (which yeah they change my diagnose a lot).
I'm not sure whetehr this is more C or A but I failed to show spontaneously the recquired emotions when the dr asked to smile or whatever. Its definitely a.

(d) can effect me as I find sometimes I don't know what to say empathetically, though I do have a theory of mind and i feel empathy. I find it hard to hold back when talking, i talking more than others. But I'm not like an old school friend who doesn't seem to be aware that he shouldn't talk over others, I struggle more to hold back, like I interupt not because I don't read the cues I find i finish other peoples sentences and stuff, which i think is kinda an impulsivity its not that I don't care.



Ollytheaspie
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14 Nov 2011, 10:49 pm

how do I learn to enhance my social skills? :) :)



Ai_Ling
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15 Nov 2011, 2:17 am

Gamarabi wrote:
If you want to get an idea of what the popular aspergers test says about me now, here ya go. Note how the only two Aspie traits I kept a large amount of were the talent and perception, and yeah a little bit of the social aspect too, but it is useful in the right situations.

Image

Your Aspie score: 66 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 155 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical


You seem to have predominantly NT characteristics with strong aspie talent and perception. The results for my tests were:

Your Aspie score: 94 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 101 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits

My predominant aspie traits were talent and social. My NT traits were hunting and perception. Whereas, communications and compulsions were a mix of aspie and NT.

If I would have taken this tests before I was diagnosed I think would have a higher social, communications and compulsions score.



Gamarabi
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16 Nov 2011, 4:21 pm

Ai_Ling wrote:
Gamarabi wrote:
If you want to get an idea of what the popular aspergers test says about me now, here ya go. Note how the only two Aspie traits I kept a large amount of were the talent and perception, and yeah a little bit of the social aspect too, but it is useful in the right situations.

Image

Your Aspie score: 66 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 155 of 200
You are very likely neurotypical


You seem to have predominantly NT characteristics with strong aspie talent and perception. The results for my tests were:

Your Aspie score: 94 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 101 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits

My predominant aspie traits were talent and social. My NT traits were hunting and perception. Whereas, communications and compulsions were a mix of aspie and NT.

If I would have taken this tests before I was diagnosed I think would have a higher social, communications and compulsions score.


One thing I have always wondered though is what is the "optimal" setting for an aspie. Which traits do we want to keep at all times, and which ones do we want to use only in certain situations, and which ones do we pretty much just want to eliminate entirely. There a a couple of situations for example where I can think of an aspie social style would come in handy, and I can definately think of the perception and talent ones and a bit of the hunter. But how much? I'm always trying to improve to what I think would be an optimal setting but what do you all think? How much would give us enough to where we actually may possess an advantage to the average NT?



Ai_Ling
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17 Nov 2011, 4:11 pm

Gamarabi wrote:
One thing I have always wondered though is what is the "optimal" setting for an aspie. Which traits do we want to keep at all times, and which ones do we want to use only in certain situations, and which ones do we pretty much just want to eliminate entirely. There a a couple of situations for example where I can think of an aspie social style would come in handy, and I can definately think of the perception and talent ones and a bit of the hunter. But how much? I'm always trying to improve to what I think would be an optimal setting but what do you all think? How much would give us enough to where we actually may possess an advantage to the average NT?


I think aspie talent is something worthy of keeping. For me, I worked particularly hard on reducing the compulsions, communications and social. I retook the test as a child, I got a 121 for aspie traits and my most significant differences were higher compulsions and communications. Those are two areas which I attempted to reduce as I got older. And I do wonder what exactly aspie hunting is? The descriptions made us sound like animals. I scored very low on the hunting score but to think about it, I actually should have a slightly higher score but the questionaire did not ask the right questions. At work, I'm able to fit in small corners and sneak past people, actually quite handy. I'd suspect that's as aspect of aspie hunting, not entirely sure. some aspie hunting would be handy.

Id say ideally would be:
high aspie talent
moderately low aspie compulsion
low aspie social
low aspie communications
moderate aspie hunting
moderately low aspie perception

This is just my perception. Hopefully I dont offend anyone, but honestly with the exception of talent and hunting, most aspie traits don't serve of good use in an NT world.