why ppl stop socializing b/c they find out they have Aspy?

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i have a question about my brother who claims to have Aspergers.

i know when he was young he had friends and got along okay with other kids his age, as far as i could tell. i know that in High school he had friends. He used to go to thier houses and he went to parties. i know for a while at least, in college he seemed to have friends; he was active in some sort of environmental club thing at college.

He said that some chick at college came up to him and flat out asked him if he was Autistic. He told her no and she apologized and she explained that she was studying early childhood something and he showed signs of Autism. He did some research and he decided it was true. He did further research and figured out he had Asperger's.

But it seems to me that he had a pretty normal social life for a while. i always thought he was a bit weird but aren't we all a bit weird in some way? It just seems to me like when he found out he was Autistic/Aspergers he suddenly became anti-social. i am on Yahoo Answers alot (M-F from around midnight 'til about 4a.m. lol) and i have seen a few other posters also say that when they found out they had Aspergers they stopped hanging out with friends, going out, etc. One person said he threw away his collections when he found out he had Aspergers. I don't know what his collection was, he didn't say.

i just don't understand why someone could go from having friends and socializing to having no friends and being a hermit just because they have Aspergers. Could someone please explain?

People with AS may have varying degrees of social difficulties. I generally tended to be rather friend deficient in childhood, however most people with AS that I have encountered do manage to accumulate small groups of friends, though this seems more common amongst those diagnosed very young because their parents try more to help them socially.

It's thought that some girls with AS go unnoticed because they embed themselves in a group of friends. I don't fit this profile, however my roommate, who has PDD-NOS...essentially AS with a few small exceptions, has lots of friends, not because he's a social guy (he's not at all) but because people find him approachable for some reason neither of us has figured out yet. He always had a group of friends growing up because they would seek to include him.

People who's social issues developed later in life probably don't have AS. They may have a schizophrenia spectrum disorder or other things going which have made them less social. This is one reason why formal AS assessments exist.

I couldn't really say why someone with AS would become more withdrawn after a diagnosis. This might be a psychological response. In the Love and Dating forum we occasionally hear from wives of men who have apparently "stopped trying" socially, after being diagnosed.

As for the boy who threw away his collections, it may have been an attempt to counteract the AS.

well when i was a kid, i was sociable but only pretty much because my parents made me. boy scouts, church events, school events, that kind of thing. i do remember wanting to just stay home and play video games but i still did want to do some things.

i hated boy scouts. lol

i also didn't identify with anyone at school, particularly high school. well, i was bullied but that's besides the point. i hung out with some people at like, lunch or so but i never really identified with them. and i never stuck around after i ate my lunch, i just went elsewhere.

as i got older, i was getting less and less sociable, probably because my parents didn't make me do stuff as much

now i pretty much don't socialize at all. i mean i tried in college like a few years ago but now, no.

funny thing is that i forgot i was diagnosed with aspergers for the longest time. and even when i remembered like 3 years ago, i didn't know what it was. i just knew the name at the time. wasn't until i did research i was like "yea this is totally me"

anyways my point is, being sociable as a kid can also be a result of parents wanting you to be sociable.

In my case, what used to get me out and trying to socialize was the hope that things would improve. As my social skills got better, I really thought that I would be able to actually make friends and relate more to people.

In the last year or two though, since realizing I probably have aspergers, I have realized that most normal people have unspoken emotional connections that no amount of social skills can make up for. I don't mean that I don't feel emotions about people but that when most people are conversing, there is an emotional element to it that bonds them in a way and that makes them take more enjoyment from "hanging out" than my "job well done in deploying social skills" feeling.

I guess that I am saying that it was hope that made me go out there and try to socialize and maybe getting a (formal or informal) diagnosis makes me feel the limits of what is possible (or not possible).

Sounds like he decided to toss them away because he was ashamed of hainvng AS.


I used to try to make friends where ever I went. Be it school, work or at a place I knew people with the same hobbies would be at. Sadly no matter what I did or said there is always an invisible wall I can not pass to feel like a friend. Even with my family in law.

My opinion....

When I didn't know about AS, I tried so hard to fit in with the crowd.

Now that I know about AS, I accept that I will likely NEVER fit in with the crowd. So why put all this effort into something likely to be fruitless when I could do the things I get more pleasure from?

Since learning about AS, I've had to force myself to be more social so that I don't become a total hermit. Not that I don't like interacting with others, but somehow accepting the truth about AS changes how I look at things.

People change throughout their lives.
Aspies are no different.

I don't get the question.

There is, by the way, no comparison between the social environments of childhood, adolescence, and high school,
and the environment of college and later adulthood.

People often force themselves to be social because they feel that they 'ought' to have friends. That they ought to WANT friends.

Finding out that you have AS, can give you permission to say to yourself 'i really don't enjoy this', and spend more time doing what you DO enjoy, which usually isn't social for aspies.

I think Wuffles hits it on the nose, at least for some of us.

I came to the Aspie thing late in life (mid-thirties), after a lifetime of working my butt off to fit in and be normal. It's taken me another almost-decade to realize that I don't even WANT to do a quarter of the social things I do...I do them because I've always done them, and because I'm (still) afraid that not doing them will get on people's bad side and somehow disrupt my life. But the truth I keep seeing more and more clearly is that I'm really just not a very social person, even though my life has been structured around social things (including marriage and parenthood).

Now, I'm an introvert as well as an Aspie, and I'm sure there are extroverted Aspies who enjoy social things. But, for me, social things are always a lot of work--even when I enjoy them--and usually an obligation I feel I cannot avoid without terrible repercussions, for me or my husband, or our kids.

Check out these threads:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt164871.html

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt139262.html

and this article (it's long and a bit of it is quoted in one of the threads if you don't want to read all of it):

http://archive.autistics.org/library/more-autistic.html

It may give you more insight into his changed behavior.

i can not answer your question because i do not know the details that are responsible for generating it but....

i have little ability to blend with other peoples minds, and my native disposition renders me unusual to others, and i see no common ground between me and other people (mostly..(rarely i do)).

i am so much more content when i am not interrupted by other peoples desires and whims that serve to derail me from what i was relaxedly doing.

people all have some agenda or another and i can do without propagating them by fertilizing them with my attention (ooooh how narcissistic. hey? (not quite if you only knew)).

so i am happy to remain engaged in my own private world of curiosity about what i like to learn, and i have little to no interest in social conversations.

if i had no idea i was autistic, i would still be the way i am because i do not consider my autism ever except on occasions where it is the subject of discussion (like on this site) when i write posts.

He sort of mirrors my experience.

First of all.. when you're in high school you have constant daily contact with the same people for years at a time... such prolonged contact does help a lot in letting someone with AS establish some form of friendships.

College however is a different environment. In college I could be friendly with people but never made any sort of friends.. going to clubs in college or events does not mean friendships are made..just that he is trying to function in an NT environment.

When I found out about AS and learned the 'why' of my socializing issues I stopped trying to do things I knew would not work.. because i had tried them dozens of times before and didnt and because now I knew the why they didnt work. Being hermit-like is the result of no longer trying to do things you know wont work. Give him time, he will figure his way... or you can help him with that.