how do i control my behaviour and stop hurting those i care about???

As me and my brother have the condition, I understand what you mean.  I'm lucky that I have a job but I have to go find people occasionally in a large office that I've not met before and all I'm given is a picture of their face.  Unless people have had some experience with people on the autism spectrum they aren't going to understand why that's an extremely difficult thing for me to do.  I recognise people by their clothes, walk, hair, and other prominent facial features like squint teeth etc.

The problem is the anger all this frustration causes.  I've had CBT, which helped a lot, but the best thing is not to get wound up because of what you can't do, but focus on what you can do.  Again, there are days where I struggle to contain my frustration.  Like today my sleeping routine was all messed up last night and I'm quite tired today, I'm really not in the mood to face people, which is why I'm on here, and I'm being very blunt and straight to the point (most days I can put on my brave face and attempt to be a bit more tactful in my sentences). 

I spent a lot of my childhood receiving psychiatric help and I think without that I'd have bigger problems now.  The best thing to do is to get the support you need.  It might take some time but talking to your GP and starting that process will help a lot.  I wasn't diagnosed until adulthood but when I was younger I would scream at people, cut myself, be very disruptive in school, get myself chucked out of classrooms, got bullied, steal from shops, break people's sheds, vandalise, etc.  I can proudly say now I have got support and grown out of all that (well, I can still be rather argumentative and disruptive at work) but I didn't know how to release my frustrations with the world and I didn't know why the world seemed different to me than everyone else.  But with CBT and support I'm a much calmer person.

Also, my relationship with my aunt has been getting stronger recently because she started work with special needs children and has been doing courses on the autism spectrum and now she understands why I am the way I am and knows what can wind me up, etc.  It maybe an idea, if you can, to get family and friends involved by showing them information about the condition, or if you have trouble explaining it to them they can get all the information they want from here. 

It's just some ideas, it may help it may not, but all I can say is I understand how you feel.

davek75 said:

hi im david age 38 with aspergers... how do i control my behaviour and stop hurting those around me that i care about??... its really fustrating!

 i cant understand facial expressions and dont understand people when they murmor or do sign language??...

any advice would be a great help??

thanks david

hi I'm Daniel I'm 18 years with aspegers I'm really stuggling to understand the world I use like signes or something like that is visual to see for u and whoever some signes I use are help , stop ,advice , talk ,  happy, sad , and ect so I hope this helps thanks Daniel  :(

I don't like other peoples' emotional facial expressions, it's just too much input for my brain and it wants to shut down, thjerefore avoiding looking at them is far easier.  I think if I trust them and am having my own conversation with them it's OK, but my brain is always cognitively processing and it's very exhausting.

I find very visible demonstrations of emotion in others very stressful.  I find subtle expressions and tones of voice impossible.

It's not that I can't look people in the eye, it's just that frequently it can be too uncomfortable and I think there is also a self-protectionism going on too.  I don't want them to look at my eyes, although I couldn't explain why.  I remember feeling very invaded as a child when anyone, even siblings looked at me.  I loathed and detested it.

@Longman I think the reason comedians help, is that despite what they say about us not understanding humour, we can be very quick-witted and our take on life can be very funny.  So we can translate that into a tongue-in-cheek way of presenting ourselves to deflect from the difficulties of doing it seriously.

Sorry OP, that didn't answer your question.  I think perhaps trying to speak up about what is difficult for you and why, may hopefully help people to avoid triggering negative reactions?  I don't know what else to suggest.  It's all about autism awareness from others.

If the scientists understood it better it would help. They seem to think it is all down to gaze aversion and can't seem to fathom why we still have problems when we look at or in the general direction of other people's faces (as if anyone can tell whether or not you are making eye contact).

Certainly facial expressions and voice intonations matter, but I don't think it is an exact science. 

I did buy lots of books on body language at one stage and they were no help at all.

I'm a habitual people watcher.  I try to be discrete but may not be always. I try to analyze the looks and expressions where two people are chatting - I sit in cafes sipping coffee, or on trains or buses, or anywhere basically I can sit and watch (I also try to confront and analyse noisy or unsettling places). I can work out there's something going on in a conversation, but after all that I couldn't offer you much in the way of rules.

I suspect that's why health professionals seem dismissive of the whole body language thing - it isn't something they do consciously, and they aren't aware of it happening, and it is likely to involve complex mental processing, which you cannot really expect to emulate.

The solution - I've read many postings on here saying the same thing - is you more or less have to take up acting. There are exaggerated gestures that actors use to convey the script they are talking through, where they have to artificially structure what they convey.

I was stuck on body language for years but at 41 I took up teaching - primarily lecturing, but tutorial, seminar and practical based teaching as well. Most people seemed to think I wouldn't manage but I did. I worked hard on lecture plans, worked out how to put it over and make it interesting both to me and my audience. I tend to go about it as an actor, using the dynamics of the room, changing my position and direction of talking and pitch, as if I was acting. It seemed to work, so I gradually carried it over into daily life. OK I'm a little bit thespian and over the top, but my confidence has grown with technique.

I find watching comedians helps, especially Billy Connolly for some reason.

OK I still don't know how to read other people's faces properly and I'm still in constant trouble because my tone, or facial expression or attitude isn't right for some people, but I blunder on regardless and most of the time it works.

As someone else has said on a posting today, don't be too self conscious about gaffs, you'll probably find most people don't pay as much attention to them as you think, and if your acting is good, that'll impress them enough to overcome any details.

Not perfect some days, bad days, in noisy rooms etc. But its all I've got....