Comment Re:You cant teach tact. (Score 3, Insightful) 639
Just one viewpoint, take it or leave it.
Aspergers is to the body language and subtle social cues that define 2/3 of human communication as blindness is to vision or deafness is to sound. Only on the outside, no one knows you have an impaired perception. You don't get cut the slack that the person signing or the guy carrying the cane would.
You constantly monitor yourself every second to make sure you don't do anything wrong. You're labelled as weird, or rebellious, rude, or unpleasant to be around because you can't perceive the messages people are trying to send you. You have few friends because whatever secret magical language that's being spoken to generate new connections with people you totally miss. Many attempts you make to reach out to people end in disaster, and you can't for the life of you understand what the hell it is that you're doing wrong.
Those lonely nights spend in front of a computer are ones you'd probably rather spend hooking up with a girl you met at a bar instead of learning the intricacies of Yacc or device drivers. And it drives you absolutely fucking insane that everyone else is in on the fuck-fest that is life except you.
Amen to most of the above. I don't know how it affects/is applied by others in this situation, but for me it exhibits as an overriding concern for rules and rulesets. It's taken me about twenty five years to accumulate enough rules to get by in most interactions. There are times however when don't have good rules, and I stumble.
This fixation on rules has engendered a wealth of misunderstandings, ostracization and ridicule, mostly because the others don't realize that my socially awkward actions are based on something more fundamental than simple rudeness.
One effect I have noticed with my personal changes is that I am often underestimated by others, probably because my fitting in makes me appear harmless and somewhat uninteresting. So be it. Small price to pay to be involved.
The ever-larger rulesets can be a trial as well, until I realized that I can dispense with them at need.
The biggest frustration is to have the right answer/response, and being utterly unable to communicate it properly; a big (possibly the biggest) advantage is that after all this practice it is relatively easy to learn the appropriate accents, colloquialisms, speech timing and patterns, and topics of discussion ("skins", if you will) that enable me to fit in almost anywhere (within my prior experience).
Any super-abilities you might gain from this condition are cold comfort, as they're used more as survival skills to get around the enormous deficits you experience in being able to read people. The money that you earn from your impressive abilities has to be the substitute for having lots of friends who could help you do stuff (e.g. you pay someone to install an super-heavy air conditioner in a second story windows because you don't have many friends you can call on to help you). It's not really a preference for certain kind of social lifestyle, it's a crappy hand of cards you're dealt that you have to make the best of.
Or you can choose to regard it as a challenge to your abilities and will, and solve it. It's up to you.
However, if I had one piece of advice, it's this: don't let it fester. Learn to communicate in whatever way makes you least uncomfortable, because it is nearly meaningless to have the ability to contribute if you can't figure out a way to make a contribution.
None of this was meant to criticize any of what I quoted. I saw an opportunity to use it as a springboard for what I've wanted for some time to write.
