It's fairly obvious that Autism adversely affects one's ability to be a "nice and popular human being".
(Otherwise we wouldn't have to do "masking"!)
For those of us who's doctors express surprise (whether warranted or not) at what we have been able to achieve in life, how did we do it?
In 1995, I got depressed, took a course of prozac, and in an amost unique in my life occurence, immediately decided to give someone some physical payback for a couple of months of psychological messing about/bullying that they had been handing me. Prozac made me dangerous on that and another occasion in a way
As one of the "friends" that deserted me during that time told me, "people have been putting up with you for a long time, now you have finally gone too far" which confirmed what I had long suspected, I needed (and was consciously providing) to bring somehting else to the party other than my sparkling personality, in order to be "acceptable".
In short I'd realised in my late teens I needed to "pay my way" or be a hermit, semi-subconciously, and had evolved a protective mechanism, (which at it's peak made me a very popular little person indeed, but failed eventually, when people (including myself) stopped focussing on fun and started doing more grown up things).
I've since replaced it with a system based more on honest & mutually productive interactions, which has the bonus of requiring me to deal with far less people on a daily basis.
What particular things do YOU do that you know make people value your being on the planet?
I'm hoping we can find a grab bag of instantly useful things that will help struggling Autists to improve their lot.
