Life with AS is a living hell

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N THe fact tht no two ppl are the same makes the ‘helpful’ advice irrelevant or redundant here as we often presume someone else’s autism is like ours n it’s really not

Aren’t you unhappy with not being able to make or have friends?

Why do you assume that people on the spectrum are unable to make or have friends? It's certainly not true of all of us. I'm on the spectrum & am able to both make and keep friends quite easily. I have more friends than I have time or energy to hangout or keep in touch with.

Just curious, where did you find and make your friends? Because now, I don’t even know where to look.

Public school, business school, trade school, various places of employment, at the kite beach where I kiteboard, at the beach I hang out at almost every day after work, car clubs/internet forums, parties/gay parties, gay hookup app Grindr, craigslist of all places, through friends, neighbours etc. I also have a lot of family in the area.

Literally every place you go and spend time that has other people at it is a potential source of a new friend. Maybe your issue is that you don't go spend much of your time in places around other people? Like going to school or work every day, or to a public place where people congregate whether the beach, a park, a pub, or church.

Also, like finding a significant other.. you don't really go "looking for," friends. They just sort of happen when you're going about your life interacting with other people. You click, vibe on the same wavelength, and then boom - friends happen.

Goldfish21 I have noticed since joining this site that often your posts seem to assume everyone’s ASD affects them in a similar manner to yours. It is a btoad spectrum as well as overlapping with other conditions as you know. I for instance attend many events and go everywhere but I don’t make friends casual polite acquaintances but not friends and it has been that way since childhood not for lack of interest or trying but simply from inability to sustain what is an extremely uncomfortable unnatutal and self imposed level of socializing fr me.
When i did make n maintain friendships my friends had to understand my ‘quirks’ or difficulties n accepted that my type of social talk n presence was minimal n i HAD to retreat or my own sentences wd begin getting jumbled up as well as other thibgs.

It is lonely but i accept it. I wish ur what comes off as smug tone was not so presumptuous about others. This may be offensive but I have observed that you seem to want that resoonse anyway

He also doesn't factor in that not everyone here lives by a nude beach and indulges in drugs like he does. This is partly why I rejected any of his so-called "advice" (Which was really boasting in disguise) and I suggest the same to others.

Oh nude beach is the name of an eyeshadow that I do not own now I want it again though it is not made anymore
-off topic ‘special interest’ tangent

You're assuming that making and keeping friends has always been easy for me.

While it's true that I had enough friends and family around all my life, there were certainly difficult times during my elementary school years, but most of all 6 years ago when my ASD symptoms were at their strongest. I thought about this while I was just outside shovelling snow and was returning to this thread to post it when I read your post. Anyways, 6 years ago my ASD symptoms were so bad that I had to isolate myself from the close friends I have in order not to subject them to my misery & potentially lose them as friends. In turn, they equally avoided me for understandable reasons.

The last ~6 years have been night and day different for the better, though, as it was 6 years ago that I figured out what causes my AS symptoms and how to treat it. I've been successfully treating my AS symptoms for the last 6 years and have been INFINITELY more socially connected than the rest of my entire life combined. Now I literally have friends who don't know I'm on the spectrum and compliment me with statements that I'm far more "socially intelligent," and "socially successful," than they are as it's very easy for me to make & keep friends. This guy is an NT, but apparently he suffered some minor brain damage in a car accident 15 years ago and one of the results is that he has No verbal filter whatsoever and sometimes the things he impulsively says, especially when he's drunk, are quite off putting to others around him. But still, my point is he sees my social abilities as far superior to his and compliments me on them - that's the type of difference that treating my AS symptoms has made in my life, and now that it's been 6 years I take these things for granted just like being able to breathe and walk and talk. It takes reading a thread like this to remind me that I was once completely socially repulsive & I've come a VERY LONG WAY since that time 6 or so years ago.

Wtf does a nude beach and social drinking/drug use have to do with the price of tea in China? (meaning wtf does that have to do with anything whatsoever at all?)

I could go to a Church, sober, and make friends. I could go to a hiphop concert and make friends. I could go shopping at the mall and make friends. I could go hangout in a coffee shop, pub, or club, and make friends. Name a place and type of people and I'll go get along with them just fine and in short order be sharing meals, drinks, conversation, jokes and laughs with my new friends. These things are not exceptionally difficult for me to do & to suggest that the only reason I'm able to do them is because I'm intoxicated at a nude beach is absolutely laughable. I just happen to frequent that place and enjoy a beer and a toke (both 100% legal!) with my friends there instead of going to Church, or shopping malls or other places - but my ability to click with others is a transferrable skill that I can put to use in any environment with any group of people. Engineers, Doctors, Lawyers, business owners, homeless people, blue collar workers, white collar workers, financial types, hippies, scientists, gangsters, musicians, whoever.. when you're an educated chameleon of a human being that others like to being around it's not difficult in the slightest bit to strike up a conversation and make a new friend. Sometimes they're just in your life for that moment and to make those memories, others they turn into actual friends you keep in touch with and know for the rest of your life.

How is ignoring advice from people more successful at certain things in life that tell you how they go about achieving them working out for you so far? Having great success doing as you've always done and getting as you've always gotten instead of trying the tried tested and true proven methods of success of those who've achieved these things before you? Somehow I don't think that ignoring helpful advice from people encouraging you to try the things that have made them successful is working out so s**t hot for you. But feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Hi Goldfish. I'm new to this discussion but currently living in hell. Would you tell me how to make friends? Exactly, precisely? I'm not kidding. I'm isolated and afraid to go out; I'm not attractive; but tell me and I'll try it. Not sports - I use a walker.

The above is very wise advice indeed.


The above is especially good advice for autistic people. Many if not most of us have difficulties with multitasking. When we try and solve all our problems at once we get overwhelmed. When we hyper-focus on one problem or even part of one problem we are using a strength many if not most autistic people have.


There are always setbacks. I do not follow my own advice as often as I should, this is true for everybody we are not robots. A setback even a seemingly endless string of them does not quarentee ultimate failure. A mathematical way of putting it is this, if we give up we have zero percent chance of improvement, when we try we have a better then zero chance of improvement. Even a mimimally better chance is better then zero chance.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 11 Feb 2019, 9:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

Good for you
One thing to note- as researchers have stated mental development in ASd is different than fr NTs - my mindset at age 22 was close to that of a 12 yr old.
Many people used to comment on this. And this is after trying reading n pushing myself in all the ways recommended.

Right now I think I am about 14-15 yrs old in certain aspects (eg mental capacity, not vocab or reading, but output n absorption/retention)

and my social level as my own family has noted is about that of a 7 yr old in most situations-

with those I know my understanding can go up to my own age level but in technique n approach i am unsophisticated and still working on it

I have noticed the same thing in my 6 year old asd son - he is just behind his 2 yr old brother in most things that pertain especially to social skills (eg sustaining focus, getting another person’s interest, eye contact, self regulation). After a lot of therapy.
But the therapy, as the experts told me, was useless to him at age 3 for example, because his brain was incapable of retaining it. The development in most areas was delayed.

This progress and estimation of his skill level has been measured meticulously and graphed by his therapists.

So it is possible your level of development then is incomparable to now, that to sustain your current level of social skills not only your own work but your brain’s ability to process it, has improved it.

ASD ppl have a lot in common with brain injured ppl. For instance, the cycle of perseverance in brain injured individuals is very similar . That is why AsD ppl esp children have a tendency to wander, to an extreme degree. Because once they start they cannot stop n switch to other things .
Externalizing reminders n support is necessary fr both brain injured ppl n ASd ppl.
Not to say ASd is a brain injury but to emphasize that the delay is due to factors outside of a person’s control too. Our milestones are completely incomparable to an nT’s milestones- and I see this with my son as well as in my own life and my brothers’ lives.

I don't know you or your particular ASD traits or social deficits, so it's literally impossible for me to tell you "exactly, precisely," how you can make friends.

I've been completely transparent about the fact that eating my ASD symptoms the way that I do via diet, supplements, and intestinal cleanses has resulted in my functioning level improving dramatically - and with it my ability to socialize & make friends. According to medical stats, what I've learned and done should apply to 70% of people on the spectrum. Others? Perhaps their ASD is caused by something else. Each individual would have to go about their own journey of self discovery to see if what I've learned and done for myself applies to them or not.

Other than that, where & how do you spend your time? And around who? If you're a homebody who plays solitaire, perhaps you should consider joining a bridge club. If you haven't take a class of any kind in many years, perhaps you should enrol in one - doesn't matter if it's math, science, painting, a papier mache meetup group, basket weaving, aquasize, whatever. Join a book club, a knitting/quilting club, whatever. It's pretty easy to chat with people and possibly make new friends when you're engaging in some activity of mutual interest. It's very difficult if you're never around groups of other people.

How do you spend your time now? And who are you around? If your answers are all solitary solo activities, inserting yourself into social situations with other people around you would probably go a long way towards making friends.

As for being unattractive, maybe don't go to a modelling tryout.. other than that it doesn't matter much - especially at places like nude beaches that are about body positivity and acceptance vs. showing off and excluding people who are different. Just making this point for the one poster who suggested nude beaches are somehow a negative place to be. Meanwhile, in reality, they have people of all ages, short, tall, skinny, fat, straight, gay, trans, hairy, burnt, scarred, whatever - just a bunch of happy hippie humans enjoying the sunshine together. However, in the textile (clothed) world, appearances to count for something. Make sure you're dressed neatly and pay attention to things like personal hygiene and grooming. No need to be unnecessarily off-putting to potential new friends by smelling bad or appearing unkept.

MapOfSteel:

"Life with AS is a living hell

I know this statement I’m making now has probably already been said a million times and a million ways before by countless other Aspies and autistics, but it is the statement that I feel most accurately describes how I feel (no pun intended) in life much to most of the time. The reasons are far too numerous and extensive for me to name, list, and describe them all, but it’s just the way I feel."

Many people have been dealt a really difficult card in this life and are deeply suffering. This is a fact. Also, to those who replied, sometimes, because of the hand a particular person has been dealt, they are lacking the particular skills to turn around particular situation. When my theory of mind was not developed to the degree it is now (it still needs to be developed further:-), I used to thin/feel that other people were basically me and therefore would understand and be able to assimilate the idea content I put out in the form a form that made sense to me, but this was a limited mode of my own perception and sometimes, in my case, often, people were thinking and feeling about things from a different angle.

To Goldfish, someone in my family has extreme salicylate sensitivity and has been very sick because of this, but the way you are trying to push the nutrition thingy on everyone, and you were doing it some years ago when I was here, too, and at the time seemed to me to be really obsessed with it, might be worth taking a look at. For example, people can become healed, even in some instances have a spontaneous remission from cancer, because of finding something very meaningful to do, becoming deeply engaged in that process and, as a result, feeling profound gratitude. This said, I do agree that some of the antidote for certain symptoms could involve nutrition. I am somewhat on the same tape with you about this, but what if a person is not able to take a certain kind of food/idea content from me? If I try to shove it into their mouth and it doesn't work but I keep doing it over and over, this would indicate something to me about myself. When I become over-identified with a particular personal interest, and this still can happen, I am,often unable to see certain things about myself.

To the person who said they have a walker, yes, this is your situation. It is not the same for every person. It is very easy for me to make friends, though n terms of activities I generally like to stick to myself, but I talk on the phone a lot with members of my family, ex boyfriend and present boyfriend, the latter even now that he has had a stroke. Anywhere I go I talk to people and make friends. That is just me, and some people are not like this, I understand. We each have our own situation and troubles to work on. (I am having a lot of serious problems and troubles right now, and my coping and interactive skills, which I thought were kind of advanced, are not helping me out much.)

To me one of the main things evidenced in this thread is that everyone's experience is not like everyone else's, but sometimes some people erroneously think/feel everyone is like them, so will magically understand what they are saying or where they are emotionally coming from. Imo this does not really demonstrates a lack of empathy, but it does show to me some kind of cut-off quality at a certain possibility of a making a connection between self and other that does characterize many autistic people including myself (though also some people who are not autistic) and this is maybe why autistics are often characterized as not having empathy, even though actually they do.

Personally I am not really attracted to people who are mainly preoccupied with how they feel. I am attracted to people who at least have some kind of skill in making an emotional, psychological connection between others and themselves, so more of a possibility of a back and forth exchange which creates a wider encompassing space, and then others who maybe are not able to interact in such a back and forth way are able to be included into that kind of place. But it starts with a back and forth exchange.

To those who have tried so many things but are still feeling cut off, this can happen, but I would not let a certain negative mode of thinking further fuel it,and you do have some control over that. If you do not have a certain kind of seed in you, it may be hard to make a particular kind of flower grow, but if a human being is alive and has the wish, there is the possibility to touch an inner place within oneself that has a seed to generate and ultimately sprout what will be green. How would such a thing work for someone who is, through no fault of his own, by the circumstances of his life, suffering and isolated? I think a possible way to start is by discovering how to use words. By the act and art of speech we all do communicate with our own inner selves as well as with each other.

Thing is AS is not just about social skills issues/bullying (unless u are really lucky somehow n then i wd question whether u are actually diagnosed)

There are issues like overload sensory n mentally , obsessiveness, lack of emotional self regulation (compounded by lack of socializing knowhow which wd help diffuse it), bad executive functioning, etc
Some ASders cannot communicate, only know self injury as they cannot process or do what they have in their mind to do, bad memory, etc
The problems thst ppl on WP talk about is not indicative of tje other problems that ASDers who cannot even talk, write, n have cooccuring conditions , wd have
(Edit- motor skills issues too)
So yes AS is a horrible curse in my opinion/experience

Last edited by blooiejagwa on 18 Feb 2019, 3:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.