Most with Asperger's adjust to life's demands

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http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbc ... FE/9020309

"A team of mental health professions can help Asperger patients adopt the socialization skills necessary to lead life successfully." Is a bit of a dangerous generalization.

I've learned to meet life's demands, without a mental health team.

Ditto. I just need to work on the social part.

And to me it's about engagement, not conformity.

The only reason why I live in the NT world (daily crap, terrorism, murders etc) and not "my own little world" is because I am high functioning - I can cope with day to day things like going out, using the web to buy things, going for a drink at a pub etc. I do feel sorry for the low functioning Aspies who have anxieties and bad depression and can't go out and lead normal lives.

Yes, I feel for our low functioning brothers and sisters, too.

a team of mental health professionalists will not help u get laid. i concur with your statement lol

Often it's a case of the anxiety and depression being more debilitating than the AS itself! And a lot of that comes about from being treated like muck, or trapped in an unsuitable environment.

[Edited to add:] There's more to Asperger's than the social element. Many of us also suffer from organisational difficulties (executive dysfunction), and reduced ability to see "the big picture" (central coherence). Such things can make one less high-functioning than they would otherwise be.

Last edited by BPalmer on 03 Sep 2010, 4:38 am, edited 2 times in total.

With the exemption of social and non-verbal awkwardness,I have met my life's demands.

I can't help but thinking that this team of "mental health professionals" is going to be working on the surface aspects of social interaction. And that means, it's both going to be unsatisfying because it's a pretend, and it's going to be seen through a mile away because people are pretty savvy socially.

And so, I'll repeat, it's about engagement, not conformity.

For example, if I was back living in the college dorm, I would now have the skill to make one or two phone calls about billiard lessons, and maybe get some of the other guys interested in this. In fact, I've gotten pretty good at this kind of low-key leadership. So, instead of getting just passably good at sitting around (which I don't enjoy anyway), why don't I develop skills of organizing activities---which I do enjoy! To me, it's a no-brainer.

What's the point in conforming or engaging? I prefer to stay AWAY from humans! Online, it's different. I don't have eyes looking at me all the time, with their human thoughts pointing at me, laughing.

I can cope with those kinds of things too but social events generally cause me anxiety before and during - and depression afterwards because I so much wish it wasn't just a question of "coping" - that I could be like a NT and actually enjoy myself.

I agree, mostly. Occasionally I feel the need for social contact but most of the time being a hermit is fine by me.

I function up to a point. My horrible anxiety and perseveration certainly get in the way of functioning well though. I was functioning much better before I started having hormonal changes which seem to have exacerbated all the negatives of having ASD.

In reality those "teams" don't exist at ll.

No, they don't, really, but there are quite a lot of health professionals that see the need enough to try doing something along these lines. There actually are, here and there, some "teams" that have been formed with this goal in mind, but all are admittedly experimental. There is no set methods for dealing with this problem and there may never be. Still, there are many trying, and I don't think that's a bad thing at all. Seems better than nobody doing anything.