I have a family and yet i still feel alone.

[SunnyDays345]

hi, i'm just finishing GCSEs and have been stressed and lacking the effort to revise. now im facing my older brother coming home after his first year at uni. he was diagnosed with AS before i can remember. his social awareness was improving during boarding at A level. however this past year he has completely ignored me except when talking about what hes doing at uni- most of which i don't understand- and he doesn't want to talk about anything else. this is difficult because my parents and i don't get on (my dad has AS) and i'm struggling to cope as my brother now seems to have gone backwards socially- he sent me a message the day after my birthday only because mum told him to. Sorry for the rant...i just needed to tell someone as i have no way to see my friends as i live a remote area and don't usually like talking about anything like this with them.

[WobblyX]

Well done for getting through GCSEs, it’s a hard time not knowing what the future holds & dealing with family members. I’ve no easy answers just lying awake trying to make sense of my own life just now. My dad used to say we can choose our friends but we can’t choose our relatives! He was one of 13 children! Have you any hobbies/interests? I try to loose myself in something like that or reorganising my room & it can help a bit with distracting from stress.

[PearCider]

Interesting post this one. What you don't seem to have said is that *you* have AS, so I'm guessing you don't. Bluntly AS is not easy on anyone, and I know from having seen it reflected off other people that it particularly isn't easy on those who are close to someone with AS.

You have to remember that whatever anyone says about AS being a different sort of normal, bluntly that's somewhat optimistic political correctness. Yes, people with AS can have talents and abilities that others around them don't have or don't have as much of, and yes they are probably under-utilised in society... but having said all that, AS isn't normal. Sorry. If you like you can look at it like this: AS people have traded a large part of their brain's ability to process people for abilities to do other things. That means particularly if you aren't used to it or don't understand they're going to be weird to be around. Not talking a lot or focussing on things that interest them, and ignoring things that interest other people, is (sorry) typical AS. It's absolutely archetypal. If someone with AS does that, they honestly aren't snubbing you or trying to hurt your feelings or neglect you. You have to keep reminding yourself that their brains work differently. For them, weird is normal.

There's a bit in the TV series Doc Martin where one of the characters tells him, "I know you're different, but this isn't about that" which does rather sum it up. I know it's maddening, believe me I do understand that, but you have to measure them against what is normal for *them*.

In your brother's case, he's changed following a change of setting. Or at least his behaviour has changed. I'm afraid I can understand that, as another absolutely archetypal feature of people with AS is that they don't do well with change. If his social sense such as it was has been set back going to university, that would be very understandable and (for someone with AS) not at all surprising. It would have been odd if there hadn't been some change.

I should also say that sibling relationships aren't necessarily close even if the sibling doesn't have AS. I know someone at work who theatrically sits down when his brother rings, as otherwise (he tells his brother) he might faint from the shock. When I was at my sister's one time, her two university age sons were bickering about who said they were going to come visit the other and didn't. I only very rarely see my sister (once a year as a rule) and she never rings except for something to do with my mother. She doesn't come across as at all interested in me, and at one point appeared to say (in the context of AS) that no she really wasn't. I can think of someone else now well into middle age who falls out with her brother every so often for quite long periods of time, and didn't speak to her sister at all for years.

Distance does have something to do with it - if you end up living close to your brother as an adult, after you've left home and pitched your tent somewhere, you're more likely to be close to him but even then don't count on it. I can think of an ex one of whose brothers lived almost literally just round the corner, and she really didn't get on with him at all and barely saw him. The reality however is pretty much inevitably that even had you and your brother been best buddies to a degree you were always going to drift apart when you weren't under the same roof any more, purely because you wouldn't then have the same environment and a lot of the same experiences in common.

I can almost hear you saying, "But how about having to be reminded about my birthday? Surely that isn't normal even for AS?" You can guess what I'm going to say here - sorry but for AS it absolutely is normal. The person might have to be reminded to do something most people would take for granted. It's sometimes called social cueing or social prompting.

I should probably mention your dad. Not getting on with parents after a time is absolutely normal even without AS, especially in your teens. My dad was probably AS, and I got on much better with him after I left home, because we didn't get on each other's nerves as much. It was only much later that I realised how much of what really wound me up about him was due to the AS. It looked at the time like unbelievable arrogance and a nasty temper with it, but looking back now I can see it must have often been his own frustration at struggling to deal with people (especially his own family). Hang in there, try not to burn any bridges and eventually it will get better.

I know it's bloody annoying, and as I've seen people get really, really annoyed I do have some understanding of just how hair-pullingly exasperating it is. But they are still your brother and your dad. Your brother might not be able to say how he feels about you or acknowledge how you feel about him. He might not even understand his own feelings and could struggle to process them. But just because you can't read how he feels (and again, yes this is normal for AS) it doesn't mean he doesn't feel anything. He does have feelings, even if you can't see them.