this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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Find an activity group focused around something you enjoy - there should be plenty on campus. If there's a public event that interests you, go, even if you go alone - even if you don't interact with anyone, it will give you practice engaging in a social setting and help with your anxiety.
One trick I've found is that people like it when you like them, and expressing a small compliment on a positive quality of theirs you note can often break the ice and signal that you'd like to be friends without being too forward. It also subtly expresses that you're confident enough that they will like you enough to care about your opinion.
Use small talk to start a conversation - simply remarking on something you're both observing is a start. "Nice weather we're having, ey?" is cliche as fuck, but it works. Angel the conversation towards points of agreement. Each point of agreement further enhances the ease of communication between the two of you.
Be willing to ask how others are doing, and be willing to listen. Most people aren't too choosy with casual friendships, and as long as they feel that you like them and are somewhat interesting to be around, they'll want to hang out with you.
Acceptance, sensitivity, positivity, confidence and loyalty are generally the traits folks value most in a friend. If you hit a couple of high notes in any of those categories, that's usually the start of a friendship if you have shared interests.
Good luck - if you've got anxiety, remember that the thought of going out and doing this is much worse than the actuality. Once you're out there, it will come naturally if you relax and let folks in.
I think you must be of the kind that does not automatically tick off people simply by existing in their space, that makes things easier for you and things like "just have some smalltalk with them" and "if you do that and that they will like you".
There is no statistic but I would say that the vast majority of us are not of that kind.
Nobody knows what kind you are but you. If you think of yourself as a person that people won't like, they'll pick up on that. I've never met a person that's annoyed others by simply existing, and if someone told you that in your past, they're wrong, a bully and a fucking asshole to boot.
I do not look like an approachable person - tall enough to be threatening, mouth like a sailor, glasses, smoker, bad teeth, hair past my shoulders, and the mean kind of skinny with a healthy dose of paranoia and anxiety. In my youth, I unwittingly isolated myself because I assumed people wouldn't like me because of past bullying growing up. Because I assumed they wouldn't like me, I never gave them an opening to begin a friendship.
People you'll want to be friends with won't care what "kind" you are. They'll see you for who you are and want to hang out anyway. But you have to give them an opening to like you, and there's no way you can do it if you don't know what you like about yourself.
What makes you a good friend? Focus on those qualities and use that self-analysis to strengthen yourself when you doubt yourself. A friend doesn't expect you to be perfect. They just expect you to be good for them.
Side note: the "like others and they'll like you" approach works fantastically for my semi-verbal fully autistic son. His language is on the level of a five year old (he's an adult now), but he's simply so cheerful and happy when he meets new people that he's ended up with more friends than I'll ever have.
Okay I see that this is about your non-vocal autistic son. While I speak about Asperger struggles, a completely different world.
There is quite a lot of research into that already on the Asperger side. There is something with our faces that makes normal people feel unwell and you can not turn that off. It even works with simple portrait pictures. It just scratches something in their brain.
You de-validate my struggles, and the struggles of most in the Asperger Autism community. The statistics to loneliness and worklessness, the high suicide and low lifetime expectations do not lie. Why we rank so high for depression and illness.
No, that was an example. I'm not devaluing your struggles (as I share them), and you're simply ignoring that to indulge in self pity while simultaneously devaluing mine. Nobody cares whether you have Aspergers or not. They care whether you're nice person. Nobody wants to share in your misery - they want to be able to take joy in your companionship. If you can't take joy in your own companionship, how can you expect anyone else to?
This is a terrible thing to tell someone who’s having difficulty making friends due to systemic discrimination.
You’re either deluding yourself or gaslighting Alexmitter. A lot of people will discriminate, belittle, harass and leave aside autistic people for things intrisically related to them being autistic, mainly not sharing the same instinctive nonverbal communication, but of course almost none of them will admit that they do any of those things due to the target of their discrimination being autistic. Please leave the motivation porn bullshit outside of this channel.
It's terrible to tell people that others care whether they're a nice person? What fucking crack are you smoking?
Do you care whether someone's autistic or not? Or is it more important that they be nice to you?
If someone is discriminating against you for a condition you can't control, then it's a problem with them. If you're not a nice person, it's a problem with you. Alexmitter is claiming no one will be friends with him because he's got Aspergers. This simply isn't true, and he's shooting himself in the foot before he even begins because he assumes people won't like him.
Finally, the actual question asked was How to Make Friends. I answered, and as someone with Aspergers and multiple family members on the neurodivergent spectrum, I answered based on half a century's worth of experience dealing with it.
I never said it was going to be easy. You're never going to be friends with everyone. There are assholes everywhere. But if you're an asshole, you won't be friends with anyone.
That someone took issue with the answer because it's difficult advice to take, doesn't classify it as motivation porn. These are basic social tools that folks on the spectrum don't have easy access to, and lessons I learned the hard way as I became an adult. You can either accept or it or reject it as you wish, but by trying to devalue my experience because you don't like what I have to say is pretty much what neurotypical people do all the time to the neurodivergent.
How can someone just be so full of themselves. It impresses me. You did not even read what I wrote and think that I am just a friendless loner.
I must have already been a terrible person in per-kindergarden. Or maybe you are wrong.
JFC stop with the self-flagellation already. It's not about you being a bad person, or being different, or being right or wrong. It's about you liking yourself enough to project that to others. Right now, you're projecting as someone who's been so badly hurt that they can't realize when someone is trying to help them, and strikes out at those who are willing to help them.
Who would want to be friends with someone like that?
Had to think about this today and really have to tell you how amazed I am how oblivious you are to reality.
Those Bullies, have they just made poof and vanished from the surface of this world? No, they are still there and they still do what they always did.
If the People did not like you when you were young, they don't like you now either and that for the same reasons, and you are just too blind or naive to smell that.
Self love comes from seeing that others love you, if others don't, and you still act it, you are just acting narcissistic and everyone knows.
You tell us all, in all honesty, that how we are is wrong and we should be different for people to like us, and rejecting this ridiculous idea makes us "so badly hurt that they can't realize when someone is trying to help them, and strikes out at those who are willing to help them.". You are so full of yourself, and you love yourself, we can all sense that.
You're still going off about this? Dude, you've been blocked for weeks. Nobody's got time for your whining. It's clear that you're so miserable with who you are that you want to take people to task for liking themselves, and yep, no one will ever want to be friends with someone like that.
Seek help. Seriously. This is indicative of more going on than an autism diagnosis. You have severe self-worth issues that you need to engage with a trained therapist. I'm reblocking you as it's clear you're not in a state to have any sort of meaningful conversation until you do a lot of work on yourself.
Better then being full of myself, clearly.
I may need help, but so do you Mr. Giant Ego.
So you say.
Since kbin's got a bug where I still get notifications that you'd rather pout at random internet strangers than get help, here you go:
10 Best Online Therapy Services
Go whine at someone who's paid to care.
That's the consequence of your own action. You gave advice that is simply said dangerous, you seem to have absolutely zero clue about the life of aspergers outside your imaginary rosa glassed world. And now you wine about being told that to me, and to SuddenDownpour who you called high on crack. You are a danger and you need help. You should really be taken your rosa glasses off, you need a dose of reality, its something you need to endure to understand reality.
Yea, I guessed you just wanted to help. You don't, you are just full of yourself.