New (Possibly Loony) Idea For Socializing

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Maybe, on the first day of some activity where you would be interacting with new people (i.e., moving to a different area, trying a new church, joining a new group, etc.), we should avoid trying to act as "normal" as possible.

Maybe if we let our aspie traits show (not making direct eye contact all the time, stimming behaviors like rocking or fiddling with a pencil, stuttering if we tend to stutter; that sort of thing), people will just think "Oh, this person is just kind of socially awkward" and will be OK with it.

That way, the group would just accept "aspie" behavior as just being how so-and-so behaves. We wouldn't wear ourselves out trying to look normal, we would make friends with people who are okay with AS traits, and it wouldn't come as a shock when and if we choose to disclose.

I've never tried this, so I could be totally off-base. What do you think?

While I still filter myself somewhat (self censorship) most of the time I'm just me now and much happier.
The people that don't accept me are people I'd rather not be around anyway.

Try doing that in high school and see where it gets you.

I DID do that in high school I ended up hanging out with the 'weird' people but by then I could give a rats behind about peer pressure, being popular, or the other social traps in High School.

Spinning feels so good but I can just imagine doing that around a bunch of strangers! LOL!

Ummm, I hate to break it to you but people already can see you are weird. An aspie trying to be normal is like an ostrich putting its head in the sand. You're not fooling anyone.

You can either wear yourself out trying to act normal, or wear yourself out putting up with the extra attention that comes acting strange and trying to attract friends. Aspies tend to be asocial for a reason.

Sorry, there is no "right" way to behave that will make life happy and stressfree and make everyone like you, especially if you are different from most people. Aspies spend so much time worrying about other people not liking them they forget that they don't like other people either.

Its potentially a decent filtering method for seeing who will really be willing to be your friend and who wont. But then you face a few things:

1) The potential that most people will reject you
2) The potential that the people who dont outwardly reject you will feel sorry for you and just get to know you out of sympathy vs. people actually wanting to get to know you and appreciating who you are.

I tried it once and it didn't work out to well. It created even more ackward silence then I am used to. It's actually kind of funny now thinking about it.

Everyone is 6 billion people. Nobody can handle that kind of social demand.

I disagree with your characterization of Aspies as all not liking other people. I like other people(at least some other people).

What about positive attention? I think the key is to know who you are and find out how to "work it". People like eccentricity. I've given up trying to be normal and now I'm trying to find out how people decide good weird from bad weird. I don't have to change myself, just how I display myself.

It's working pretty well for me...

I do this in high school!

I'm friends with all the 'eccentrics'. I get the piss taken out of me by the other kids, but the friends I do have - I wouldn't trade them for the world. Go for it!

I don't know everyone or every aspie. Its just a common thread I've noticed: Complaints about other people not liking and accepting them, and then elsewhere turning around and complaining about how boring and stupid other people are.

What about positive attention? Another thing I've noticed is that aspies often interpret positive attention negatively or just find it annoying. Positive attention can be just as draining.

Yes, I bet you, like "everyone" else, like some people and not others. My point is if someone is an aspie that pool of likable people is bound to smaller due to cognitive and other differences.

I think a good strategy is act confident but... "clueless", for lack of a better word. If someone calls you out for acting weird just say "so what?" in a innocent and non-confrontative way. Just act like what you do is normal, because it *is* normal, for an aspie anyway.

Social skills are a means to an end: power, money, sex, status, job position, feeling good. If the end is feel comfortable and "natural" in a typical social situation, then that goal is unrealistic.

I think that the secret to "manners" and social skills amongst NT's is thoughtfulness. Not always, obviously. People in general will be nicer to you if they know that you're paying attention to them and looking for ways to be nice to them.

Doctor Who seems to have very few social skills, zip in the way of theory of mind, and little practical knowledge about the culture of Earth, but he still ended up being the most popular guy in the episode "The Lodger".

I guess my conclusion would be, allow eccentricity to show, learn some basic body language (that way you know, for instance, if someone has had a bad day or if you're about to get in trouble), and generally try to be helpful to people. Even if you are pretty lousy at it, people will still realize that you're giving your best effort and will dismiss your behavior as "clueless but nice" or "a good kind of weird".

I never act normal or even try to & people tend to have a very negative opinion before they know me a while. I make horri9ble first impressions & people write me off before they take a chance to get to know me

I actually do like a lot of people. I just hate it when I like someone but can't get through to them. Or especially if I like something they are doing or into but I don't know it yet. How do you show that you're interested before you know about something? I know, ask questions. Here's the problem, there's not always a good way to do that!

And I don't find positive attention draining if it's the right kind of positive attention.

Crap I just realized the language barrier here. How can I define my own personal view of what is positive and negative in relation to myself?

In some cases of what I call positive others might call it negative and negative others might call it positive. It seems like it's beyond description.

Personally, I hate being complimented for being quiet, because quite frankly this is NOT a personal preference. I notice a lot of the kinds of things people say and do in conversations that look really really fun and I would be doing them all the time. I'd even be a bit of an a-hole and I'd LOVE IT! if I just had it figured out. But when people tell me being quiet is a good quality it makes me afraid that if I learn how to do these things and then do them that everyone will start hating me.

In the rare case I can get out a snark remark, or something sarcastic, or something just minorly a-holish in a conversation I LOVE it. If I could do this more often I'd be happy and I could stop envying the people around me who are doing it more and I could quit worrying about how when I'm older and less people are into this that I'm going to be hopelessly depressed because I'll wind up figuring out how to do this at a time when I don't have an outlet for it! But it's just NOT fair for me to be denied these experiences! I need them! I will get rich and I will hire servants to tolerate me and interact with me as I choose for them if it comes down to it because I will NOT be denied these experiences.

The weird thing is I actually get criticized for NOT doing these things very often AND I WANT to do them!

And the worst part is most people don't know that I'd prefer to be hanging out a lot more to get more experience, to do more things, so I can know how to do these things, and have fun with them so I wind up alone more often than I want because don't know I want to hang out.

I went off on a tangent but back to my main point. There's also negative attention that I might find appealing just as there is positive attention that is not appealing.

I honestly don't care about being liked, I want to be recognized, known, understood. I want people to know how I really think and feel about things on the inside. I don't want people to misconstrue how I feel about things whether or not they personally take it as positive or negative.