Unhelpful Social Advice

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"be yourself" is the worst social advice I've ever had. Also "relax" takes the cake. It's like telling someone to stop having anxiety or some other related disorder.

Totally agree, I've been told that stuff many times and I try very hard to change and improve myself, it often feels not good enough and/or not fast enough. I guess with most NTs, once they do have a change in heart, it'll lead to change. By for aspies, if someone wants us to change they need to break down the change into small digestible function able steps.

NT may tell the aspie, "ok you gotta talk to more people". The aspie follows the advice, therefore starts trying to make bits of offbeat small talk in awkward ways. And the other NTs end up thinking, "whats up with this weirdo trying to talk to me?" Or with me, I have social anxiety, I might just get very nervous and shifty and recoil nervously into my aspie self.

I think some of the worst pieces of advise i got were "just ignore them, they'll go away", "you need to get a sense of humor", and along the lines of be yourself, "just sit and talk to the other kids."

I heard A LOT of that! The worst was in middle school and the humor wasn't good because it is like the NT person expects me to all of sudden just get the jokes and see the metaphors in EVERY joke! As for sitting at a table with kids, personally, I had nothing to talk to them about and how many of them had bullied me at some point!