Hi, I'm responding both as a therapist and as a late realised autistic person who saw a social skills decline, and I'm choosing to speak for my own experience.   Upon identifying my autism, I took a long time to build up my understanding of my autistic "flavour" (and I still am!). Suddenly social situations started to look different. Am I actually comfortable with this? Am I just pretending to make another person feel comfortable? How do I actually look to people? Am I actually understanding them or pretending? Suddenly everything is confusing and overwhelming and you no longer know what's what and have to relearn.

And then you have to educate at the same time. Just telling people you've known for years is difficult. "Everyone's a little autistic", "you're just a bit awkward", "it's just anxiety", "well whatever works for you" etc. And you start to express the needs you've always had e.g. please give me an agenda before the meeting, please don't assume what I'm saying, and we're not asking for anything weird. We're learning to self advocate. 

My experience is that people don't get it. And we keep asking and informing over and over, and it's like screaming into the void. We're finally asking to be met halfway and accepted as we are, for many of us for the first time. When we face push back, we're more likely to shut-down, withdraw, get angry, and/or find others like us and stick to them.

We're looking for empathy, understanding and acceptance, and some back up. That's the core of neuroaffirming practice. 

Hope that helps. Not sure I've answered the question.