Strangers asking me if I'm OK

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Sorry if this is in the wrong board, but it might have to do with my aspergers.

So I seem to get asked by strangers (usually women) if I'm ok. Like as an example, I was waiting outside the doctors office for my mom, and this lady comes out of the office and waits near me. As she's about to leave, she comes up to me and asks if I'm doing ok. I told her yes, I'm just waiting for my mom.

This also happened at the store and I was sitting down with my sister (again waiting for my mom) and this lady walks by and touches my shoulder asking "are you ok?"

I don't understand the concern.

The only reason I can come up with, is that I'm not the type to be slouched over staring at my phone pretending to be busy. I'm just sitting usually fiddling with my fingers or just looking around my surroundings. Do they find it strange that I'm not on my phone like everyone else?

Or, do I just give off this lost/sad vibe?

I often get strangers telling me to "cheer up". I find that very intrusive and annoying, because why do I need to look happy if I'm on my own? How do they know what's going on in my head? It's not like they know me or are planning to hang out with me. I'm just a total stranger walking by, who they'll probably never see again. I smile if I'm interacting with people, even to cashiers in shops. But if I'm just walking along, lost in my own thoughts and trying to stay focused, I don't expect people to jump into my privacy and tell me how to feel. If they don't like it, then look the other way!

I get that fairly often because my nonverbal body language is atypical.

This happens a lot to me. Apparently I look serious/sad often, even when I’m not.

It's not that people "pretend to be busy"; it's that they make themselves busy, even if it's just reading. People usually don't like wasting their time. You have only so much in your life, and then you get to spend a whole eternity doing nothing when you're dead.

Random people have asked me if I was okay a few times, too, over the last few years. They can get pretty uncomfortable, or, as women usually say, creepy, like one of the several times I moved, when I was carrying the last load of my belongings, which was a bit too heavy and I was already tired and sore from previous trips, so I needed to make frequent and long stops to rest. In one of these stops, a respectable-looking, middle-aged couple approached me and asked me several times in a row if I was okay, changing their wording a bit each time. They probably took my growing irritation as a sign that I was funny in the head. Before they finally went away, the man said he still wasn't convinced I was okay.

Get used to it.
It's a thing.

Come up with some
go-to lines
to use.

"My cat died last night."
"I can't afford lunch."
"I smile where only Jesus can see."
"I think I'm allergic to your perfume."

Feel free to use these,
or create your own.

This is one of the evils in the world now. Women have found might in British lands, and so all the folk, whether beasts or foreigns, having been upheld by their wayward deeds, think themselves like all other men. If a man says the unwitty sound "O.K." to me and he is not my kin or a man thereto I should bow, I deem him too familiar and so insignificant or a common man, so far as I look to matters. The proper word is well. And I would tell the man this, and explain to him that his choice of words is improper for the state then. We cannot be too hard on the lowest row. Have in mind that their stock is meant to serve in bonds, and that they are forlorn without some kind of slavery to another. They will learn their place, when a mightier man speaks to them, or at least will not harm him, if that man be as wise as he bears himself. This is my experience at least. I have yet to be harmed by the folk, though I have not spoken beneath my estate among them, at least recently, and do not bear any shame that they try to do me lightly. Above all though we should not seek reason in their words. I have heard like words from many peasants. Like a wild squirrel they will then and then run into a road thick with cars, though it mean ill for them.

I've been told that with all my rocking and hand movements, like rubbing my hands together, I often look very distressed even though I'm peacefully daydreaming.

It might be that your body language or overall presence somehow falsely conveys that sense to other people. I've experienced that as well, albeit rarely and only with my mother. Apparently I'd look sad and she'd ask me what's wrong when nothing was wrong at all.

They ask me that a lot too

Some of them mean well

Some of them do not mean well

If someone suspects I am physically injured please ask are you ok?

If I am not "ok", they can't "help" me anyways

They make a big deal out of the "help" they give

The counselor asked me "is helping people important to you?"

Wtf?

"Helping people"?

She acted so morally innocent.

She was just sitting around talking

If she really wanted to be "helping people", she could open the door and get rid of all the homophobia in the solar system



She sits in a safe lil office ( as safe as it gets)

One client at a time

Preaching to the choir

And she knows where the client lives



She acted like I had a moral duty to treat her like she successfully dragged my worthless corpse out of a burning building



If it's just that they don't like my nonverbal communication, leave me alone?

Some panhandler had the nerve to ask me "who made you mad? Why you walk like that?"





He is not entitled to demand an explanation for my walking gait


Your facial expressions are your own and you don't have to justify them to someone's satisfaction


If you did, then that someone would not be a panhandler

"Mad" is not an emotion

You are the only one that can feel your emotions

Way too many precious lil "people" talk too much and too loudly


And then when I try to say something

even if it is just the answer to their questions, they half listen and grunt "huh" and "what"

"What?" is not the etiquette equivalent of "excuse me"

It's the attitude





In the past, I have dumped at least one "friend" because he had the nerve to refuse to say "excuse me?" Instead of "what"

He (they) expected me to change everything they did not like, to something they did like. While they were unwilling to change the slightest thing, for me



"What", to me, sounds Curt, abrupt, calloused, cold , not caring, not competent




But whatever, precious lil "people" have a moral right to be ass holes and idiots