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Aug 15, 2012, 06:49 PM
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Few others I think can understand the frustration and difficulties that come along with being on the spectrum. I found an interesting website that sums up the loneliness…
Quote:
There are all too many causes of loneliness that it has become an epidemic. One cause that often goes entirely unconsidered is Asperger’s Syndrome. Aspergers loneliness affects people with this disorder in drastic ways. Since people with Asperger’s syndrome deal with its repercussions for life, it becomes overbearingly difficult to control the loneliness that results from it.
First of all, persons with Asperger’s have so much trouble with normal social interaction that they often do not attempt it or they find only failure when they do. People living with this syndrome find that people will usually form many misconceptions about them: they are distant, unemotional, arrogant, or excessive.
Asperger’s syndrome may cause a person to go off on a subject of great interest to them, leaving out context and explanations and without paying attention to the audience’s interest. The person does not often make eye contact, seeming impersonal, and does not read other people’s body language or social cues to see how their words are being received. Also, the person does not look to make it a two-sided conversation, coming across as arrogant and uncaring about the perspective of others.
Additionally, a person with Asperger’s is likely to have irregular patterns of speech, using words in idiosyncratic, metaphoric, or generally abnormal fashion that makes their interactions awkward, to say the least. Clumsiness is also often associated with this condition, furthering the person’s lack of confidence in social situations.
Because it is so difficult for other people to relate with a person who has Asperger’s syndrome, the person often is unable to form friendships. Children and teens suffer this more extensively, but even adults have not been able to learn coping strategies and remain alone.
People with asperger loneliness often feel the choice is to be alone and lonely or to sacrifice parts of themselves in order to conform to how society expects them to be. They feel abnormal and as if there is no way “normal” people will ever understand them or relate to them. To have this syndrome increases the likelihood that the person feels that no one wants to bother with their eccentricities, and if they did want to bother, they would have to work hard at it, climb a mountain, so to speak, in order to understand him or her.
In all, aspergers loneliness can become a way of life for afflicted people. Instead of working to overcome it, they will throw themselves into other interests and ignore social activity altogether. They may attempt social interaction and then give up on it, or they may only put up with it when they have to, and then retreat into solitude as soon as possible. Maybe one day others will understand them, so they might believe. Unfortunately, many feel so lonely that there is no more belief that it will change.
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