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idontknowme
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13 Jun 2013, 10:55 am

Ive never had NT friends since elementary. I tried to be friends with them in high school but they treat me like I'm disabled. Yeah I have had friends with Asperger's like me but some of them suddenly disappear. Now I'm in college I want to have a social life and I want to make new friends. Is it more difficult in college to fit in?



Jono
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13 Jun 2013, 11:07 am

Not really. I've had a few friends when I started going to university. If people see that you're smart enough to do college work, they'll mostly respect you as an intelligent person. Some people are just ignorant.



wildcoyotedancer
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13 Jun 2013, 12:13 pm

I found it easier in college for sure to be friends with quirky NTs and people
who I suspect like me were/are undx'd HFA or Aspergers depending on where
I lived. Now that I live in Arizona, I feel a lot more isolated and have found it to
be tougher but some of that is also my own hard shell and bitterness
over some tough parts of my life and my poor executive functioning
skills and just being overwhelmed so because I am more isolated physically
I am much more of a recluse than I used to be. I'm 45 btw. But college
and my 20's were mostly good years. It was great not being bullied or outcast.
I'm artsy dorky so I fit in with a group of eccentric artists & musicians
who were always very accepting.



VAGraduateStudent
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13 Jun 2013, 2:10 pm

wildcoyotedancer wrote:
I found it easier in college for sure to be friends with quirky NTs and people
who I suspect like me were/are undx'd HFA or Aspergers depending on where
I lived. Now that I live in Arizona, I feel a lot more isolated and have found it to
be tougher but some of that is also my own hard shell and bitterness
over some tough parts of my life and my poor executive functioning
skills and just being overwhelmed so because I am more isolated physically
I am much more of a recluse than I used to be. I'm 45 btw. But college
and my 20's were mostly good years. It was great not being bullied or outcast.
I'm artsy dorky so I fit in with a group of eccentric artists & musicians
who were always very accepting.


I've noticed that quirky people are more accepting than regular NTs and are more likely to celebrate an aspie's "differentness" rather than look down on him/her. It's easier for NTs to understand you if you are descriptive about your opinions, feelings, and intentions, since it's usually just as hard for a NT to socially read an aspie as it is the other way around.


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I am a NT sociologist. I am studying the sociology of autism: Identity in ASD/AS, "passing" as NT, and causal effects of NT society on people with ASD/AS.


Kurgan
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13 Jun 2013, 9:42 pm

What worked for me, was finding more outgoing friends, but with common interests. You don't have to have similar personalities, but unless you have some interests in common, the friendship will have no common ground to start from. Very outgoing people can actually be quite tolerant of the Asperger's symptoms as well. :)



daydreamer84
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14 Jun 2013, 11:59 am

Kurgan wrote:
What worked for me, was finding more outgoing friends, but with common interests. You don't have to have similar personalities, but unless you have some interests in common, the friendship will have no common ground to start from. Very outgoing people can actually be quite tolerant of the Asperger's symptoms as well. :)


Yeah, I'm very introverted but my 1 current friend and another maybe friend and most of the friends I've had in the past have been really extroverted -those super-outgoing, hyper-social people who seem to have boundless energy. Since my teenage years when I became more socially aware I'm really anxious and insecure and I won't ever initiate a relationship. The other person has to initiate a conversation with me and they have to ask me to hang out with them or ask for my phone number to call me so they have to be outgoing enough to do that.

In terms of getting along with NTs I get along better/am more attracted to those who are really empathetic and emotionally and socially sensitive. Especially for professionals I work with , I like those with pleasant/expressive voices and faces and those that are really sympathetic and show it. They tend to empathize better with aspie problems too in my experience. Also I just get an initial feeling that I like this person more with hyper-empathetic people (I'm talking about cognitive empathy here).

As long as they realize that they have to go out of their way to be more direct with me. Sometimes those people are even harder to read then others even and I can't tell when they"re getting annoyed and then all of a sudden they're really pissed off at me (because they're so subtle with their cues). So sometimes I get in conflicts with these people because of that but sometimes they know to be direct with me or sometimes they just won't get annoyed with me because they're SO tolerant, I guess.

I can get along with NTs who are quirky in terms of their interests and routines and things like that (that can be a good thing) but usually not ones who are less socially adept. Another thing about some NTs with poor social skills (for NTs) or social anxiety or some sensory over sensitivity is that they'll sometimes have an attitude of "I got over this issue. I just had to push myself and try so why can't you?" They don't understand your issues are more severe and if they aren't very empathetic people to begin with then they don't empathize as much with people who have different or more severe issues from them naturally.



anneurysm
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14 Jun 2013, 8:16 pm

VAGraduateStudent wrote:
wildcoyotedancer wrote:
I found it easier in college for sure to be friends with quirky NTs and people
who I suspect like me were/are undx'd HFA or Aspergers depending on where
I lived. Now that I live in Arizona, I feel a lot more isolated and have found it to
be tougher but some of that is also my own hard shell and bitterness
over some tough parts of my life and my poor executive functioning
skills and just being overwhelmed so because I am more isolated physically
I am much more of a recluse than I used to be. I'm 45 btw. But college
and my 20's were mostly good years. It was great not being bullied or outcast.
I'm artsy dorky so I fit in with a group of eccentric artists & musicians
who were always very accepting.


I've noticed that quirky people are more accepting than regular NTs and are more likely to celebrate an aspie's "differentness" rather than look down on him/her. It's easier for NTs to understand you if you are descriptive about your opinions, feelings, and intentions, since it's usually just as hard for a NT to socially read an aspie as it is the other way around.


Agreed. It's important to be honest about your differences and advocate for situations that you find difficult...and be honest about how you perceive the world so that others won't make assumptions about you that aren't true.

For example: Several years ago in college, I couldn't handle a lot of social interaction. I really liked the friends I had made there and didn't want to think that I was blowing them off at times. So, I would be honest with them and I let them know that, during days when I was tired or anxious, that if I didn't want to go out, it wasn't about them, but about me in that some days I didn't feel like being social.

You have to have friends who are willing to support you and who accept that you'll have different ways of being sometimes.


_________________
Given a “tentative” diagnosis as a child as I needed services at school for what was later correctly discovered to be a major anxiety disorder.

This misdiagnosis caused me significant stress, which lessened upon finding out the truth about myself from my current and past long-term therapists - that I am an anxious and highly sensitive person but do not have an autism spectrum disorder.

My diagnoses - social anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

I’m no longer involved with the ASD world.


minervx
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17 Jun 2013, 1:24 am

90% of my friends are NT. As long as you are respectful, polite, make a decent attempt to improve socially, it'll be fine.