I don't mean to be insensitive. This is what annoys me.

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You come here because there are other people just like you. AS, or HF people, telling you about their life experiences, but to a certain degree it can be annoying, especially if you come here asking for advice.

That's me. I was looking for a forum where I can learn a little more about AS. I talk about my problems and I need advice on how I can get better with my life. I specifically ask for advice, but I get none. All I get is everyone's life story, no good advice here, not one who is knowledgable(as it seemed to me.) with their disability. Hey, to be honest, I'd love to hear about your experiences, it reminds me that I'm not alone. But I want advice on social skills, and how to survive and deal with the disorder. I'm an adult, I've been one for a short time. I want to know how to act like an adult, how to deal with adult-oriented issues.

I love this forum. Everyone's nice and open-minded.(Unlike Autie Speaks, flame wars and ignorant members.) But really, I need a site that can help me, not hear people talk about themselves all the time.

I understand that many AS and HF's have a compulsive habit of egotistical speech, but it gets annoying.

Ah, you've made an obvious mistake then: If you want to know everything about duck-billed platypuses, you don't try talking to the platypuses, but to a zoologist.

Maybe people are trying to give you advice by writing about how they deal with things.

I haven't seen any of your other posts, I am not on here all that much so do quite a bit of skimming... however I have some pointers.

You probably won't find that much advice on socialising because we all suck at it! I myself don't' socialise that much because I don't like it. And am, therefore, really bad at it.

As for knowledgeable about their "disability", apart from using a different word, I would suggest many here are not experts in psycology. There are many here who have taken the time to learn all they can about it. A lament that those people are few and far between so they might miss your posts (not everyone reads them all) so maybe you might need to just ask your question two or three times to get a proper response.

As for the life stories, yeah... that doesn't happen a lot. My first suggestion for you is to read them and try and understand the disorder though it. More specifically if you ask a specific question and you get a monologue, you'll often find a version of an answer in that monologue that can actually be very instructive and informative.

Apart from that, good luck in your search for answers.

I hope I wasn't insensitive.

lol... of course you were! you're an aspie! heh

Actually, as if usual with people on the spectrum, the only way we can relate to others is by having it relate to ourselves. So, what happens is, when you say x thing happened and I didn't know how to deal, then 25 other people say, hey, x thing happened to me too and I didn't know how to deal, either. Sometimes, people actually do go that extra step and say, but next time, I will do this or the next time I encountered the situation I tried this and this was the result. There are little nuggets of wisdom from beentheredonethaters, but sometimes you have to weed through everything else that was said.

This further compounds the situation because by virtue of being on the spectrum we sometimes can't weed through all the stuff. We want to say x thing happened to me. Then we want someone else to say this is what you do.

That's precisely what I'm doing in many of my posts.

The reason that I write about all the additional context in my life is not to be "egotistical" in any sense of the word. It's because I don't think you can understand how I do things, or did things in the past, without the context around it. I learn from other people's experiences best if they are in context, rather than plucked out of context and placed in as abstract terms as possible. So that is how I do my best to present information to other people. Also, writing about my life in this manner makes it easier for someone to know whether something might be inappropriate to their circumstances but appropriate to mine.

That is how I write about most things, really, whether I am writing about my own life or the life of someone else I know. I am generally no good for summarizing information about how to do something and condensing it into checklist form, nor am I particularly good at applying information that I find only in checklist form. So I write in the ways that I can write. It is a way of writing that has to do with describing particular situations in great detail, but they are particular situations that pertain to wider events. It bothers me to have that considered merely self-absorption, because self-absorption is rather the opposite of what I am doing at the time.

Here's a description I previously used of how I write:



So the way to read my writing is not "Here's some specific person's experience, it is worthless non-advice and self-centered," but rather "Here's a particular situation this person is writing about, and from this situation I might be able to get information about various other situations that have (or don't have) key resemblances to it, and what to do (or not to do) in them."

I would not be surprised if this was what some other people were doing, too, judging from other responses the OP is getting including the one I am responding to.

That is nothing specific to people on the spectrum, nor is it universal among those on the spectrum. Nearly all of the vaunted "empathy" of non-autistic people is the exact same thing, using oneself as a model for all others. Autistic people, by virtue of being in the minority when it comes to experiences, actually tend to have more practice at really understanding people who differ from us. But as far as our innate capacities go (prior to life experience creating more experience relating to non-similar people) I have seen no evidence to show we are more self-centered in our appraisal of others than any other group of people.

Chimchar -

I'm someone who's guilty of going on about my own experience, when asked for advice. Personally, I have a hard time knowing just what to tell others. And I get most of my information from watching others going about their business, so my hope is that others will benefit from my experience the same way I do from theirs.

I'm more than happy to tell you how to live your life -- I have a solution for world peace (I'm only being partly facetious -- but I don't think my directives would necessarily fit for you.

Use your own judgment. You're the best authority in your own life.

Cheers
K

If you want good advice, you should see a counselor. It's their job to give you advice.

Sometimes one learns more about people from a novel, than from a textbook.

Sometimes people give advice by explaining what they experienced and how they dealt with it because this method avoids telling the other person what to do. If you give advice directly ("Try ___", "Do ______") it can sound like you're giving orders. Some people don't like to be given advice this way.

When a person describes their own experience and what they did about it, you can compare that experience to your own and decide if it is similar enough to be of relevance. You can evaluate the way they handled the situation and decide if it is something you want to emulate or avoid doing.

Does that make sense?

Yep it is true that most (including me) reply by relating, its the only way I know how, but I've still learnt a lot from reading others posts. Im a member of a self harm support site where im one of the few who struggle in this manner and I actually have found I've learned more here in a few months than I have in the years there. Its kind of irrelevant because I don't share a lot of the issues on there but this relating back can be super helpful.

lol

Hit the nail on the head right there.