A Helpful Social Resource

I have posted a lot in this blog already about my difficulties and overcomings with regards to social interaction; especially given it’s this area of life that autism has affected my life in the most and probably the defining feature of the disorder itself. I am yet again dedicating another post to describing a further development in my life with respect to this.

I recently started looking around again for resources to describe any new strategies I might employ or anything else I would find helpful. That’s when I found this interesting website written by someone with Asperger’s, the link being:

www.improveyoursocialskills.com.

I started going through the pages and I must say I was really impressed. Here was someone with Asperger’s who had not only gone around mapping out the territory of the social world, but had done so on an incredibly thorough basis and had written it up on it in such an explicit way that would be useful to others who have autism/Asperger’s.

For example, I really liked how he described conversations and how he compared it to his “Deli Metaphor” of a sandwich being slid down the table between two people where the person doing the talking was the one who had the sandwich. Also, it looked like he had categorized the process completely. He uses the terms invitation and inspiration to categories two types of responses you can give in conversation and proceeds to categorize the further concept of inspiration!

I seriously felt like I had stumbled upon what looked like the Holy Grail of how socializing works and how both camps (the autistic’s and the non-autistic’s) perceived it. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s certainly at the very least an excellent overview of it. None of the advice is really overly complicated, but gets right to the point and is very explicit (and a lot of us autistics love that word!). I have also purchased a the year long membership to gain access since I was so impressed with his advice (only cost $15), and as far as I can tell the author certainly deserves it.

Based on the advice I have gotten over the years I feel like this has to be one of the best things yet. The gap between how the autistic population and the non-autistic population learn social interaction is certainly hard to close, but it’s good to know others too are trying to bridge the gap, while taking into account the needs and desires of those involves whether they be autistic or not autistic.

It is after all one of the chief reasons why I advocate for autism awareness.