Finally fixing up my social anxiety!

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Alright, so I'm aspie, and like many aspies, I was bullied quite a bit as kid. As a result, through my high school and college years, I had crippling social anxiety. I was unable to make very many meaningful interpersonal connections, and now, I'm starting to grow apart from those friends I made in college. And that's okay, I've come to terms with the fact that people grow apart, and that's how life works.

I'm now faced with the rather daunting task of staring my social anxiety in the face, flipping it the bird and fighting against it as hard as possible. It's no easy task, but something that I find is that just engaging in casual chitchat with people usually results very positively for me.

I understand that everybody works differently, but for anybody out there that's in a similar situation to me (IE At a point in your life where learning social skills is essential), I would most definitely recommend the book "The Social Skills Guidebook: Manage Shyness, Improve Your Conversations, and Make Friends, Without Giving Up Who You Are" by Chris MacLeod. The author of this thing does an absolutely wonderful job of laying out everything I could have imagined about communication, and I'm just a mere 160 pages into the thing. It's 400-some-odd pages. I've had the book only 2 months, but with a lot of highlighting and a lot of being proactive [IE Going out on Saturday nights], the change in my social aptitude over that short time has been huge.

Now, something that I noticed recently is that as far as social anxiety itself goes, one must realize that social anxiety distorts your view of reality; "Oh, this person just kind of laughed at my joke; she must hate me." In my personal interactions with new possible friends, the anxiety has certainly been there. I catch myself in moments like that; "Oh, this person didn't reply to my text? They must not wanna communicate with me at all," or "Oh, I made this small social error? Oh crap, I must look so silly."

But really, in my treks thus far, I've found that simply, briefly discussing your social anxiety in situations where you feel a little overwhelmed is usually just fine. At a party once, I mentioned it, and a fellow even took a bit of time to talk to me about a few social errors I was making.

Let's talk about this stuff. It's very important. Anybody other aspies here suffer from social anxiety? Let's share information and experiences pertaining to the topic.

Drewskee, yes, I have the same problems with social anxiety. I don't even keep in touch with my sister or parents as much as I would like. I now recognize that I need friends, though. As I get older, I realize that I have kept everything to myself for too long. The challenge to learning to open up is that most of the time I am content to be alone.

Also, I only recently realized that I have AS, and I am afraid I will over share. That's one of my issues--My brain-mouth filter doesn't work. I am in the Army and expect that I could lose my job. So, I am hoping this forum will be a good place to vent anonymously. Then I may be able to make small talk. Thanks for the book recommendation.

I have social awkwardness and anxiety in spades. Thank you for the book suggestion! I'll definitely check it out.

Chris, I agree with you, over-sharing seems to be the most difficult thing to avoid. I didn't find out I had Asperger's until a few months ago, and at that point, I had burned way too many bridges (inadvertently) due to over-sharing and stuff. I have a new job now, so I hope that the things I've learned will help me out. Just remember-if a job ends, it's not the end of the world. And thanks for your service.

Been meaning to find a good SA book. Will definitely give it a try.

Looks helpful! It's lovely that most of the info is on his website. Now the challenge is committing to studying, remembering, and actually applying the stuff!