Hello

Welcome. What do you work as? 

HiCoppo and welcome.

I am very similar to you, I communicate at work, but don't have friends outside of this 

You've made a good start joining us on here.

I have joined a couple of in person autistic groups too. The first meet up I attended made me realize how different being with autistic people is. It allowed me to be more comfortable in my own skin. It might be something to consider.

Hope you settle in here soon.

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Hello Coppo, welcome.

Coppo said:

they say(psychiatrist/paychologist) I might be able to connect better with other autistic people.

I guess a good first question is what do you want to do? Post diagnosis I took on board some of my therapists advice and some I elected to ignore as it didn't feel right to me.

If you want to connect then we typically do so on the discussion threads of the forum - there are some serious ones and plenty of frivolous ones so contribute as much as you want when you want and you will be very welcome.

If you are after more one-to-one conversations then there is also private messaging on the site but most accounts are setup be default for you to need to send a friend request and be accepted before you can send messages that way.

Coppo said:

just need some friends as I have none. 

Making friends is a particularly common problem for older autists as making friends in general gets harder as you get older and being autistic seems to drive people away because we seem "off" to the non autists - our social skills are often poor and we rarely go out of our way to develop these as the process is quite painful.

Do you feel that you want friends or do you fell that you should have friends? Many on here have reached the conclusion that friends are an expectaion of the non autistic majority and many don't bother with them.

That's enough from me for a first response - let us know how we can help.

You are amongst kin now, but we are probably as dysfunctional as you so please be patient with us.

Welcome aboard!

Hi Coppo  I'm a similar age to you, also autistic and regularly join in and post on this website.

I find it gives me a chance to practice "being myself" amongst "like minded people" a lot of the time.  In perhaps the way that has been suggested to you.

Friendship means a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of people - mutual trust and support comes easier here than perhaps in other places I find.

Hehe, although I for one have made mistakes to learn from along the way on here as just using the written word can sometimes mean context and intention about how and what one is communicating can get misplaced sometimes.

The sort of affection that is sometimes associated with friendship not widely for me here yet.  Although I haven't gone out of my way to look for it myself as I guess it's not what I personally come here for.

Lotus and Stuart333 have made wise responses to your post and I think are good examples of the sort of helpful people that "hang out" here!  

Looking forward to learning what you have to write :-)

Best wishes :-)

Hello.

Likely it is because work is a formal space with boundaries, so it is easier to know what to expect. You also are prepared.

Outside work it is a surprise, so no time to prepare, and it is harder to know what topic might arise or how to respond.

It is fear of being caught out or freezing. It's the small talk issue.

Hi and welcome to the community. I'm in my sixties, female, and retired. I've found it helps to be on this forum and share experiences and interests, so I hope it helps you too.

There is private messaging if you wish to do that, although not all of us accept friend requests. I would suggest you start by joining in with conversations or posting about your interests, and when you've been here a while you could then start friend requests to those who you think you'll feel comfortable doing that with.

I hope that being on here helps you feel less alone and more part of a community.