 If any kids are watching this, anybody who's younger, even adults, you really need to, you know, get this stuff sorted. If it's a problem for you and you're sad and you're lonely and you're depressed, and you're turning to social media so that you can message people and turn these groups so that you can get attention and all those kind of things, it's really, really not healthy for you. Stop messing about. Hello fellow Aspies, neurotypicals. Hello, welcome Asperger Square subscribers and anybody else who has happened to stumble onto my video today. This is poorly trimmed beard coming to you for another video. And today we're going to be talking about extraversion, introversion, and their possible links to autism. Now it is worth saying that this is not going to be a scientific and logic and factual based video. It's basically more of a motivational and just a video that can show you my experiences with being introverted and being extroverted. Basically this video is going to be about how I perceive people on the autistic spectrum who talk about being introverted or talk about some of the limits that having autism can have on your social life. Now what really sparked this idea was my personal experience with it. Coming back from Thailand recently, actually only the previous day to make in this video, I've been reflecting on my different conversations with people and the work that I've done personally to improve myself in my social standing and to improve my body language, my facial expressions, all those types of things that have helped me feel a lot more confident in myself and feel a lot more socially accepted and confident. So why do I want to talk to you about it? Well, I want to help people. That's one of my main reasons for doing all this stuff. Main reasons for science, for sport, I want to inspire people, I want to help people. And one of the problems that I see a lot in the autistic community is either lack of confidence, motivation and just general abstaining from all kinds of social interaction, particularly with people who you don't particularly understand like neurotypicals. You may think that neurotypicals are irrational and maybe they may be in comparison to our logical brains, but they don't act in an irrational way in terms of their emotions. They are more emotionally driven, but if you understand them and you understand yourself, you can better break down the barriers and get a bit more communication going, which can help you a lot in trying to make friends in the life because whether you like it or not, most people are not autistic and we don't live in an autistic society, but it's very open to the ideas of aspes and stuff who want to share these ways of living because it's not, it's not, that's how it works. The majority rules in most cases and we need to learn to adapt. And does that mean we should shy away, cry and be introverted and not talk to people for the sake of anxiety, all those kind of things? No, you shouldn't be. If you are anybody out there who has desire, who has passion to do well in life, be happy, then you should have the passion to overcome problems in your life as well. And this is not a separate thing from extroversion and introversion. I want to make sure that I made a distinction first that, well not first, I've rambled a bit already, is that if you're comfortable being introverted and you've got no problems being on your own, you know, doing your own stuff, having your own interests and going for our life, feeling content, you know, that's fine, you don't need to do anything. But if you're an introvert and you don't have that many friends, you don't have that much confidence, you know, you want to go up to girls, you want to interact with them or you want to go to guys and interact with them, then you should really try and take on a lot of what I'm trying to say in this video. It's not uncommon that autism has been very significantly correlated with introversion, but introversion and extroversion is quite a difficult thing to characterize in terms of psychology. If you want to read more about this kind of stuff, you can look at Grimes. If you type in Grimes, then extroversion and autism, you'll be able to read some papers that will kind of lead you down a good path of information on that. But as I said at the start of the video, I want to give you a breakdown of some of the things that I've learned myself, because I reckon about four or five years ago when I was in my school days, although I was quite passionate about talking to people, talking to girls and all those kind of things, I did classify myself as an introvert typically because of my autism diagnosis. I felt like it was more my prerogative to just follow the trend of being autistic and realizing that you're not really going to get on with anybody and you're going to feel alienated for the rest of your life, which is not the case at all. It's not the case. So if you've got something in your brain that's telling you like, I'm autistic, I can't do that, you're wrong. Mind this though, it will be significantly, depending on your diagnosis, depending on your personality profile, it's a bit of a mouthful, it will be hard. It will be really, really difficult. There are two main barriers to learning and growing that I've kind of highlighted for myself. The first is number one. I have mentioned it a little bit before in this video. You have to be willing to accept that your views are not imperative. Although you are more, tend to be more logical, and tend to form a more logical thought pattern, it does not mean that your thoughts on socializing are the top. Once you accept this idea, you can begin to work on yourself socially, you can break down the stigmas and the stereotypes that you give people, particularly neurotypicals who have more of a loud, more extroverted personality. My mum's just come back from home, so she's very anxious to talk to me. I've got to finish this video. God, what was I talking about? Yes, the first thing is you need to pass that, because although you may look at people at school who are loud, obnoxious, whatever, they'll put you in that same kind of category of being weird, and they'll give you a stereotype. If you give them a stereotype and say that you could never be friends with them because of the way that they act and the differences that you have, then you've got to really ask yourself why. And ask yourself, am I really in a position to claim that my way of thinking and my thinking about socialising is more important than theirs? The second is motivation. Aspes tend to have a lot more anxiety when it comes to socialising, typically because of eye contact. Our body language is not learn passively like people. If you want to be good at socialising and you put all the effort in, you do years and years of ongoing research, you look at YouTube videos, you look at papers, you work on yourself, you document yourself and your interactions with other people, and try and work on those things, the barriers to your loneliness or your ability to get on with people, and you need to work on those things. The thing is that actually on the low level, if you don't have any interest and you don't try, you're going to be very much socially impaired and you're not going to be able to do as well in a social realm. But if you're interested in it and you work at it, you'll find that you'll be a lot more equipped for social situations than most neurotypicals like myself. And I'm not tooting my own trumpet. But I guess I am actually. Be quiet. Okay, so yes I am tooting my own trumpet. I've done a lot of work into this kind of stuff in myself and I've had a lot of barriers, particularly in stereotyping people and believing that my version of reality is more important than theirs. Once I did a lot of grand things to break down those barriers, those barriers between people and those walls, I was able to better connect with people by socializing and being open with my opinions and emotions and trying to really indefinitely understand people rather than submitting them. Rather than ignoring them and just getting rid of them because you don't believe that they have any logical backing to their reasons, emotions are complicated, as you probably know, and it's even harder as an ASP because we can't really monitor or see or experience our emotions as neurotypicals do. For example, I experience only the physical symptoms of my emotions and obviously the behavioral symptoms of them as well. And growing up and being an ASP, being a good ASP, a good member of society who can socialize properly is very important to understand your own emotions and try and find some way of understanding them logically and understanding the effects that some of these emotions can have on your perception, your behavior, and your physical symptoms as well. And they're really important free things to consider when you are going about life because although you may not notice them, emotions do have an incredible effect on your perception, your behavior, your physical experience of the world. One of the more interesting phenomenon... phenomenon... I can't seem to find my words today. One of the more interesting things about autism and existence in myself is that I am autistic and I hate enclosed spaces with lots of people, but I still find the ability to go out dancing and go clubbing and go to bars and go to social events and actually quite enjoy them. This may have been a result of just going to them, plucking up the courage and battling through the anxiety that comes with these kind of situations and a combination of, you know, the word I'd be doing myself, but obviously it's very strange because even in the first stages of me going out and drinking with my friends, I had a really, really good time. Obviously, if you're going to go out, you're going to want to have a good time. Previously, I'd had this cool down period of socializing and being around people that I'd have to limit, so I'd have maybe one or two hours of abilities, concentrate, work with my emotions. Obviously, at that stage, my facial expressions that I've learned and my body expressions are not autonomous, so it obviously plucked a lot of energy from me. But in dancing situations in clubs, the combination of the alcohol, obviously, which makes you more socially fluent and pliable, makes you a better socialite, and the music, which is rhythmic, it's very upbeat, and it can have a lot of influence on your emotions, whether you like it or not, whether you might admit that or not, and dancing as well, which is one of the things I'm most interested in as a possible help for kids and a possible help for adults who are autism as well. So you all know about the concept of stimming and how, as a young kid, we used to do a lot, most of us, most of Aspie's like to stim a lot. The abnormal, repetitive movements, abnormal for neurotypicals, obviously, that calm us down in situations, and we usually do them more in social situations, which can be disadvantageous for us because people will usually label us as strange or not part of the general population, which can be hard, there will be some people who are accepting of that and who will listen to you, but in general, reducing stimming when we're adults is usually a big thing that happens, especially in social situations and places where we're not on our own. So dancing. Dancing is a weird one. Dancing can be abnormal, it can be repetitive, it can be creative, it can be very energetic and large output of energy, which is very similar to stimming, actually. If I'm feeling stressed or worried in social situations, I'll stick on some head throws, do a bit of mild dancing, and that will seem to calm me down quite a lot, nearly as much as the strong stimming that I used to do, which was spinning around in my spot. When I go drinking, when I go out with my friends, obviously I won't go dancing right away, but I do actually tend to have more of a... more of an energy when I dance, like I do lots of different moves, and I don't want to dance right now because I'm not really in the mood for it, but I might do it at the end. Just watch out, watch right for the end of the video, you've got to watch it all, and then you get to see the present at the end, which is me dancing. But dancing, especially in a situation where it's acceptable, that's a very good opportunity to take advantage of. If you want to go into social situations, obviously you need to do the initial instructions with people and pubs or people that you already know, friends, and then you can get into a situation where the way that you can improve your friendship with people is to dance with them, and that dancing can also be very stimming as well, which can help you relax a lot, and obviously you'll have to drink as well, so it's combinations. I'm not saying go out there and drink, I'm just trying to highlight the fact that you can cope in these situations and dancing can be a very good outlet for your stress. So that's one way that Aspies can be very prone to being an extrovert. You don't have to be an introvert. I'm going to repeat that again. I love dancing, I love going out with my friends. It's very therapeutic, and after I've been out, the effects can last for a day or two after the confidence that you can get from being able to dance and open and feel good about it. It's very enriching for me, and in particular. So because of our very logical way of thinking and absorbing information, it may take us a lot longer to develop these social skills that are letters. You know, climate, human dominance, hierarchy, get some girls, get some boys, depending on your gender and sexuality, and also to get friends as well, is a very important thing for us. I'm not just talking about superficial friends. I mean proper friends that you can talk to, proper things that you can converse with in any way. They don't have to be Aspies. They can be neurotypicals as well. It just depends on you. It depends on how you take yourself and how much effort you put into it. I can tell you now that putting effort into it, putting effort into your socialising, rubbish, autism, propaganda on, just being yourself and just stimming and not trying to learn any neurotypical social skills, that's a very unproductive and silly way of going about things. Can you imagine if you were older, if you were 50, 60, 70, 80, never learning these social skills, never being able to use them in job situations, in friendships, to get a wife, get kids, get a husband, kids. Imagine that you won't have that support network that is very integral to humans. And although it may not seem important to you now, if you really analyse yourself, you do have those emotions as well. They may not be at the forefront of your reasoning to have your actions, but they do have a large influence on your mental health and all of those kind of things. The video has more or less been a bit of a ramble from me. I've just come back from Thailand obviously and I wanted to do a bit of a different kind of video where I would just talk away about subjects without providing all the regular information that I usually have. I thought it would be a better one-to-one thing. I want to connect with members of the autistic community to make sure I'm in the centre. A lot more often and I want to really talk to you guys face to face because I do think if any kids are watching this, anybody who's younger, even adults, you really need to get this stuff sorted. If it's a problem for you and you're sad and you're lonely and you're depressed and you're turning to social media so that you can message people and turn these groups so that you can get attention and all those kind of things, it's not healthy for you. Work on your social skills really, really go at it and I promise you work on it for three, four, five years implement it. It's not going to be a sudden change and switch that you'll go past and you become social. It'll be gradual so you will make friends along the journey. It's not going to be you reach three years and you'll be social and you'll be able to do stuff. It's going to be gradual and it's going to take time. If you're taking all of the things that I said in this video, all the things about the making sure that you critique yourself and make sure not to have any illusions that you're some grandest creature that you're somehow better than neurotypicals. We are in many, many ways especially in academia but it's not an illusion of being better at life or socialising that they do have a good way of socialising we need to accept that and the other things that I said about the social situations and stuff, get off your ass or ass if you're American, stop messing about like if there's something that's a problem for you, you need to get working at it. You need to do the work in order to do it make it your special interest to learn about psychology, body language all those things, there's tons and tons of information out there for you to look around absolutely everywhere on the internet. Get yourself doing that so that you're not lonely you're not depressed and you're going to have a good life because that's what we want from you and if you don't want any of that stuff and you're happy on your own that's all good as well and that's me ranting over thank you very much for watching this video let me know down in the comments if you like the video give me your critiques on it if you will give me a like if you like the video or dislike if you didn't or you can just don't dislike it and write a very angry comment I'm not sure how people work on this website and if you want to see some more content from me, whether it's because of my ravishing good looks can you see that neck beard it's ridiculous I don't know and here, it just doesn't grow here it grows here and on the neck and there's a shave yeah so whether it's my ravishing good looks or it's my amazing personality or my informative way of speaking or my smooth chocolate voice make sure to hit the subscribe button and click the little notification bell in the corner so that you get notifications when my new videos comes out because somehow YouTube just decided that if you don't click a bell or for some reason that you don't want to be notified about videos from people that you subscribe to which is I don't know what they're doing, some neurotypicals sorry yeah thank you guys for supporting me and I will see you in the next video see you later