Escaping the Aspie Desert

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The Aspie Desert is the subjective experience of isolation, loneliness, and alienation experienced by someone with Asperger's syndrome or high-functioning autism even when physically near other people. This comes about from lack of friendships and lack of the skills necessary to create close, meaningful social relations with others despite one's best efforts. Consequences of living in the Aspie Desert may include depression, low self-esteem, awkwardness, a sense of being too different from others to relate to them and their experiences of life, a feeling of not really being alive, frustration, resentment, suicidal ideation, apathy, inertia and lack of motivation, lethargy, a slight tendency to act out, the development of increasingly bizarre and idiosyncratic ideas, binge eating, etc.

I have graduated from college and now work full time in a fairly aspie-friendly occupation, but I still live in the Aspie Desert. I remember one year in college when I tried joining as many groups/clubs as I would not conflict with each other: Freethinkers' Society, College Democrats, Mock Trial, Rock Climbing, etc. I would set a goal of trying to talk to at least one person per meeting/event, and if it was round-table discussion, I would try to say my opinion (I often just didn't have one; lessening interest in the greater world is common when one is so isolated).

I am trying to get active in hobby groups/clubs again and volunteering as some ways to meet people, but it's just not easy for me to "connect" with people I don't already know. I'm still at a loss about how to get out, and I would like to soon because I'm 23 years old and life is really passing me by.

It is a little awkward to try to make friends, especially in a new place. I don't know whether joining a LOT of clubs makes any more sense than just joining a few you can concentrate on, though. Many friendships are built on common interests.

Been there done that. I don’t want to discourage you but I failed miserably. That doesn’t mean that you cannot succeed where I have failed, it just means that if you fail don’t be too hard on yourself. Now I am self employed where my clients seek me out because of my Aspie qualities and I finally met a wonderful lady who is probably an Aspie herself but doesn’t know it and I am relatively a lot happier now than I ever was. Good luck.

I think you have to hang around with drinkers.

I don't drink.

i am definitely in the Aspie desert I live alone with my best friend Saphie (a Tonkinse kitten), have few friends and no close friends. Have found it extremely difficult to make and keep friends or hold down a job. I do work part-time at the moment and that fills in some time but still feel lonely.

Yeah I wondered if that was the case. Thats how I came to have a social life in my younger days, drinkers and smokers and people with problems. You don't necessarily have to drink alcohol, drinkers quite like sober people cos they can drive and all but the whole pubs/clubs thing has it's limitations too.

I dont drink either and never really have I tried to in my younger days (18-19) the drinking age is 18 here so at that age i went out with some people from my school but i didnt like it. These days i generally dont go or dont drink. Being a probationary licence driver I am required to have .00 when driving anyway so therefore being on my Ps isnt a limitation like it can be for some people.

Catster2 can you do grafting? If so, have you thought about putting an ad in the Pennysaver (local paper) to offer your services. I had to pay a guy $120.00 to show me how. Also I’m sure you know that the fruit bearing plants that people buy from places like Home Dopot and Lowe’s are genetically different from the ones we buy from the market. You can plant the seeds of the ones from the market, let them grow a little and then advertise your services to graft your plants on to your clients trees.

That's interesting, about the Aspie Desert. I am a HFA.

I will reveal: I have nightmares and one I have often, and a lot lately, is that I can 'see' outside but there is a spiderweb gauze between myself/mind and the 'outside' world. This spiderwebbing is like a matrix pattern and multi-layered. I am inside and can feel with my hands through the spiderweb but it's nearly impenetrable. No one can see inside where I am. The webbing looks silvery and glittery and then I can see the triangular structure of spider silk, at the molecular level.

So, I do know what this phenomenon is (I do not drink either, never have or even wanted to).

Sometimes I feel very far away. NeantHumain, I think Autists are quite obviously isolated. And, true, too much isolation makes the cycle worse. I like being alone but isolated, or the Aspie Desert can be engulfing. Like my nightmare - no way out.

But I don't think 'life is passing you by!' You have a career, education - you'll meet others; you did before!

I suppose I should force myself to interact more, at a personal level, but I am shy and very academically inclined so this is my focus. It's very hard. I think the shyness kills me.....I can cry from shyness.

Dont you mean Paradise, not desert?

I used to wish to be out of the "aspie desert", but lately I prefer the isolation to the inane, barely literate company of the binge drinking commons.

I like the desert; it's quiet here.

NeantHumain, most everything you write on the forums resonates with my experience and observation.

But I don't know if all, or even most, Aspies have such difficulty establishing relationships as we do. I think, from what I read on WP, that many have good family relations and/or friends. At least enough to not live in the Aspie desert.

Many, many Aspies here mention friends and/or family. Especially the younger ones, who also happen to be those who didn't grow up in the shame and mystery of the symptoms, and who proudly plough ahead and look for others with similar traits rather than hang their heads in shame and wonder what's wrong with them. Many have life partners. There even was a thread not long ago where many Aspies complained about not getting from friends and family enough time for themselves. In a poll I posted on this forum once, only a few people out of all the voters voted having zero friends and family relations - which can be called living in the "Aspie desert".

I've started to think lately that maybe AS alone isn't the cause of massive social failure. Maybe it's some combination of traits of which AS is just one part, or maybe it's my personality, only worsened socially by the AS... Maybe it's the combination of having AS and having been given hell for it by immediate family while growing up. I certainly live in a social desert, very much not by choice.

So maybe someone with massive social failure should look into other issues to improve on, and leave the AS a bit aside, not as the central cause. I really don't know...

Last edited by Greentea on 14 Sep 2008, 1:44 am, edited 2 times in total.

this was me at a club last night. i just stood there while hundreds of poeple are all joking and laughing and dancing and talking all around me. i had no idea what to do

to the O.P. - just keep on with the clubs and volunteering and such. After a while, you'll have plenty of people to network with that share the same interests as yourself. I still feel 'alone' all the time, too, but I've come to accept it as being part of my personality. I will ALWAYS feel this way, so I have to counter it with getting out and enjoying life as much as possible, even if it forces me way outside my comfort zone. Just keep doing what you're doing- you won't regret it.