imaginary friends

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Is it normal for a grown adult with AS to have imaginary friends?

I don't know if it's normal but I do. I have an imaginary life too.

I basically LIVE in my head. I have imaginary family, friends and a life. a whole Imaginary world, which just got a sea change. Untill Monday i had the same Imaginary world since i was 11, thats 10 years.

My entire world is imaginary, everyone I meet is imaginary and everything that exists is imaginary.

Yep I think it's better to think of "imaginary friends" as more of a thinking style as a kind of mental rhetorical device to keep one's mind in shape and help clarify one's thoughts.

I think the actual term 'imaginary friends' is actually better called self reflecting and discussing amongst the minds many selves, with you just choosing a visual representation rather then just regular self talk.

the people in the outer world who mistreat me and behave like alpha dogs, in my inner alternate world are sweet and are my best friends. my inner world beats the daylights out of the outer world.

Is it strange that I also have imaginary enemies?

No, I just talk to myself in my head and have conversation with myself, sometimes pretending the other me is some one who I actually want to talk to, but I don't have the guts to. It's just self-reflection for me. I had a co-op imaginary world that I shared with my older brother when I was young though, and I narrated the life of an imaginary being(s).

I think for some of us it's normal. During my childhood I created imaginary friends to deal with AS related isolation. As an adult I don't rely on them like I did when I was a kid but I still like to think about them and that involves writing short stories about them or drawing pictures of them. If they were real I think my life would completely. If they were real none of the poor relationships I had with the real people in my life would matter and I could move on with someone there to love and support me. of course I'm OK with them not being real. The bottom line is that they are very therapeutic thing to have during the hardships in my life.

Yeah, what auntblabby said. My imaginary world with imaginary people beats reality by a mile.

This probably counts only as much as my previous reply, but I also create stories in my head, but they are just stories, I'm not a part of them. If I obsess over one of my stories enough I may starting writing it down in a verbal form, and before I know it I have an award winning short story.

In addition to my imaginary friends and enemies and my imaginary world I even have imaginary me. He has everything real me wants and can't have.

There was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode that I rewatched recently where she got injected by a demon and was hallucinating that the entire show was just her delusion and she was a crazy girl in a metal hospital. It was the episode "Normal Again" from season 6.

I know someone with AS who has these. She's 19, but extremely creative and visually oriented.

I create stories and fantasies about people who I want to get to know in my head...so in a way, they're like my imaginary friends. I don't know if other people do this, or if this is, in any way, normal...probably not.

On a test, I said I didn't have imaginary friends as a child. I thought it meant what my mother described: someone you pretend to others is there, so that they have a chance to acknowledge the friend and play at interacting. For example, it's someone you set out a tea setting for in your room or that you tell your mother you need a chair and place mat for at the dinner table. I never did that. But I had a very active, well populated imagination, and I still do. When I played by myself (which I did a whole lot), I pretended lots of other people were there for me to interact with, friends and enemies alike. I still imagine conversations and arguments with people I make up or that really exist but that I don't actually know. It's just how my head works. I thought everyone was like that. Was I wrong? Is this another way in which I've misunderstood NTs? Have I misunderstood what constitutes an imaginary friend? Help me out here. I'm confused. If NTs don't do this, what do they do?