meeting people for the first time

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this has probably been covered to death, and i apologize in advance if it has.. but i find one of my greatest difficulties is meeting new people. i pathologically avoid it, to be honest. every way i deal with people, it seems, is based on my knowledge of them, my experience of them. i get a great sense of security out of knowing their likes and dislikes, and/or other information about them. it seems to inform the few comments that i make, and makes me a more intelligent listener.
so basically without all that background info, i feel naked. and it's less logical than that, too, probably. i dread making first impressions, because so much of that is just based on how your posture and body language is, and mine is completely f****d. and yeah. without having any topic i know THEY like talking about, i really have no recourse other than to talk about things i like talking about, or just waiting for someone else to pick up the conversation, which just usually results in me looking completely dull and perhaps even ret*d. shrug.
the thing that's bad about it is that i know it's not good, but i still kinda feel like.. totally justified in trying to get out of meeting new people. i know i'm not, i know this in my mind. but in my gut, i feel that i am completely justified. it's a conflict. dunno what else to say.

is there any way out of this besides just looking in the mirror and giving yourself the stuart smalley treatment? (i'm good enough, i'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me...)

Dead, I know in my case that the first thing I had to do to make progress was to learn to be honest with myself. In this case, I'm referring to the fact that I warm a room by leaving it. It's not a pleasant realization, but one I've found I ignore at my peril.

Consequently, what I do when I have a chance to meet somebody new is to ask myself why. If there's not a good reason to meet somebody new, I generally don't. I've had to realize I'm not a people person. I let them do their thing, and I do mine.

wow. so i got two very different responses. one person says, "just let it be. don't stress about it or press the issue too much, or else you'll make it worse." and i can see the logic in that, definitely. in some ways, it's more or less the approach i've come to take. though i think avoidance kinda brings its own set of issues. it's more or less a loss cutting strategy, innit? the devil you know over the one you don't, or the lesser of two evils..

and the latter person what seems to be a very well thought out and articulated plan of action. what you've written looks very intelligent and i'm sure is quite socially correct and would help a lot of people out if they went by your instructions or guidelines. the big doubt i have after reading something like this is... i think in our LOGICAL, CONSCIOUS minds... some of us (like me) already know a lot of this stuff. but KNOWING something in that part of your mind, and having it INTERNALIZED or wired into your SUBCONSCIOUS for automatic use is sorta what separates us from NTs in the first place. in other words, this will help to some extent, but the main thing that throws people like me and a lot of people on this site is that we can't get to that knowledge fast enough. it's all about the difference between learned/stored knowledge and acquired knowledge.
please don't take offense to what i've said as i do think what you've written is very intelligent, correct, and probably useful to many people. and maybe i'm overly doubtful or pessimistic, and that's the problem more so than my doubt actually being correct. and i think we should all thank you for taking the time and trouble to write something so comprehensive. that's a big service for real.

this is what new pepole look like to me.
and it scares me.
theres always somthing about them that makes me feel...uneasy.

Hi DeadOperaStar,

I totally understand what you're saying here. There's a big difference between something making sense when you read it on a page and being able to apply it in real life (just ask anyone who has ever taken a test in school!) However, I never intended anyone to read my guide and instantly become a social skills master. Instead, the guide was designed to lay things out in such a way that you could learn the concepts and then practice them--and practice is the thing that gets you from head knowledge to actionable knowledge.

If you watch any athlete or musician perform, they do it instantly--there's no awkward pause to think about where to place their foot or what note to play next. But they're only able to do that because they committed many hours to practice. Do people come with the ability to play a beautiful song hardwired into them? No, not unless they're some kind of prodigy. Can people become great musicians through practice? Certainly, even if music doesn't come naturally to them.

It's the same thing with social skills. It will take you many hours of study and practice before you're able to feel comfortable socially, but it will happen. Don't think that just because your brain is wired a certain way that something is impossible for you. I'm just as much as Aspie as you, and I figured out social skills--and there's plenty of other folks who have too

Of course, going out into a conversation without any clue of what to do doesn't really count as practice (just as mashing notes on a piano doesn't really count as piano practice.) You need to have a sense of what you're supposed to do so you can work towards it. That's where the guide comes in. It will help you figure out how to improve, so that when you put in the hours you need to practice, you'll start to see some real benefit.

So it's not like it's a magic pill that you can take and instantly solve your problems. But it's a ladder that, if you're willing to climb, can take you where you need to go.

Does that make sense?

Dan