Asperger's and Scripts

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My BF and I both have AS and we're seeing a couple's counselor who specializes in AS. He said that each person with AS lives out certain "scripts" and expects others to participate in those scripts. He said if we can learn what our scripts are, we can teach each other and come to compromises, etc.

Has anyone else heard of this type of therapy? We've found it's working very well.

yeah, I have my head full of scripts. they sometimes play out pretty well, like a few weeks ago I had a doctors appointment which I heavily "rehearsed" in my head beforehand. it went very well, I even made the doctor laugh with my (rehearsed) jokes.

only at the very end when he was telling me how and in what dose I should take the perscripted meds I was so concentrated on staying "in character" that I didn't understand a word

I guess that doesn't contribute much and I have no idea how that would look like on a therapeutic level... I think it's worth a try.

I haven't heard the word 'scripts' in this context but from reading this, I think I know what you mean. I have all kinds of ideas about how people should act and ect. If I could let go of them I might be able to understand where my husband is coming from sometimes I tend to reject his explinations of his motives and behavior because it doesn't fit into my translation.

I don't think it would be limited to people with AS, don't NTs do that too?

I think I have the script to "Pride and Prejudice" running through my head.
"Mr Darcy..."

My interpretation of "scripts" is a bit different. I am PDD-NOS and my son is mildly autistic and we both rehearse scripts. I believe there is a program called "Skill-streaming" which offers similar solutions for social problems.

An example would be:

A: Hi, how are you?
B: (look at A) I'm fine, thank you!

A: How do you like my new shirt?
B: (actively look at shirt) I think it's very nice.

That sort of thing.

I do this but I think my 'scripts' are actually useful to me, especially at work. If I have to take phone calls, I have a lot of set phrases I use which are mainly copied from someone I used to work for. I find this gets me through most phone calls ok and I give the impression of being 'normal'.

I don't know if this is what you mean, but I have certain things I fall back on to make myself seem as though I know what I am talking about/know what's going on or, failing that, I draw attention to it and laugh at myself (a good skill for anyone). You have to switch to these 'back-ups' quickly though or it's obvious you're covering up.

For example, you say something 'off-key' because you've missed the point and people laugh at you you/look at you strangely/say 'eh?'/react in some way that lets you know what you've said is wrong, then you need to quickly switch to a back-up that you've learned. It's like a cross between acting and lying. You have to say it confidently.

My most common back-up is 'I'm just joking'. An person with autism with whom I and someone else were speaking the other day did this but he did it badly and turned away, mumbling crossly 'I was just joking, it was just a joke'. He didn't need to because we didn't think badly of him - he interpreted it wrongly

I can't think of any better examples though.

Basically, although I can read body language and vocal patterns most of the time, I do think I use more intellectual knowledge than social instinct than most. Does that make sense?

I don't know if this is Aspish or if I'm just analysing what I do more than others analyse what they do. Probably the latter Anyone know?

Actually, come to think of it, it really isn't Aspish (what I wrote in my post).

I constantly rehearse what I'm going to say someone. Very rarely do I use it though. I mean, obviously I have expected social protocols and am surprised sometimes when something is socially accepted which I thought wasn't or the other way around, but, IDK.
EMZ=]

I may have "scripts". It's true that I often try to plane the future social situations : how all is going to happen, people behave,... If things are not what I've imaginated I can feel lost and/or angry, it depends on what kind of situations...

When I have find out an explanation for some people to have or not to have something, that I feel quite sure about it, and that they come with a other explanation... It can be hard for me to accept it's true.

Glad to find this thread. I've been thinking about this idea a lot lately.

Being that "scripts" are one way I have learned to deal with people, I am trying to objectively examine what role they play in my life, for better and for worse. From my point of view, scripts are a tool that people use to navigate social interaction when the people or the place may be unfamiliar. They are basically pre-determined speech and action, tailored to produce certain results within an expected setting. Just like a movie script. I think that a lot of people do this occasionally in small ways... but that problems arise when the use of scripts persists and spreads into more involved areas of social interaction. As in, I may commonly use a script when talking to people at the post office, but it can be awkward or potentially hurtful if I start to use scripts with a family member or significant-other.

One job that I do right now is substitute-teaching, and everything about it is heavily script-based. There are specific rules and expectations in a highly regulated, scheduled, planned environment. I have developed a variety of scripts to use depending on what school and what grade-level I am teaching. When I teach, I am an actor. And because I work at a different school almost every day, the act never gets old. This process usually works pretty well, and I am successful at this job.

But then I go home, and I have to really make an effort to transition from this way of thinking and interacting... to being "myself" around my family. Certainly, living through scripts can call into question just exactly what "myself" is. If being "me" is something that I have to TRY to do, just as much as acting through scripts is something I have to TRY to do, then it gives the impression that everything about me is not quite genuine... that my words and actions are always forced, and that I am not being natural, honest, and "myself".

This is where Asperger's comes in. Since one of the defining traits of Autism and Asperger's is a person's lack of ability to interpret, mirror, and internalize social behavior, it would seem understandable enough that autistic people would develop scripts to deal with others... intellectually-derived patterns of speech and action to use in expected everyday situations.

What I am really curious about is how one can learn to grow beyond "scripts" and get to a point where they are no longer necessary... where social interaction can be more of a natural, flowing, dynamic, "normal" process... where a person can consistently be "themselves", and still succeed...

Is this possible for autistic people?

What are your thoughts?

I wouldn't use the word script to describe it, but as 'routines' and 'imposing those on others'. My ASD makes me expect everything to go a certain way, every person to answer me a certain way and so on. If it's not like that, I'll be on a scale from mild annoyance to meltdown. Gladly, I'm usually right about what people will say (though not so about how things will go) so it's not too huge of an issue in social contexts, just sort of medium or mild.

Yeah, only for us the "scripts" are consistent with objective reality and the way things are supposed to work. So I would say AS people's "scripts" are the normal rules and objective reality.

IMO, AS people live in an objective reality and have a strong relationship with formal rules. It's the NTs who are acting out irrational dramas with their unwritten, shifting rules, according to ego-behavior-patterns that I would describe as highly individuated "scripting" of social reality.

From my perspective, then, we AS are realists and objectivists whereas it's the NTs who are full of egotistically-themed personal scripted behaviors and illogical, inconsistent social games. And they make up "unwritten rules" as a short of shifting cultural modification of the rules to the current group's hidden soap operas (meta-scripts).

I guess the therapist was just speaking from his perspective, and that is how we look from his perspective.

I agree. My BF and I stopped seeing that therapist because we were sick of the talk about scripts.