You are only what you are when no one is looking?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm really myself when I'm alone. I hate people watching me. I must control all my behaviours, all my words, all my motions and all my emotions. It's very exhausting.

Thank you everyone so far.

For the more literal aspies here, it would be useful to try looking at this question in a more flexable way.......for example. "How many of you feel as comfortable being on your own as you do wihilst being in the company of others?"

I have 2 or 3 people in my life who I feel very at ease with. BUT, if I really dig deep inside myself, I only feel deeply deeply comfortable when alone in nature and by the sea.

Perhaps another question might be, "Where do you feel you come most alive?"

I am mostly me with very few people, most other people, I am shy and reserved, but when I am alone... I can get in my own world and love life again.

Even when I'm totally alone, I hand flap, rock back and forth, hum, whirl my hands and jump up and down.

I think there is a lot of truth in what you say. People always behave affectedly in groups. And I suppose it could be true for all people including NT's. I wonder if thats why they spend so much time with others. It prevents them from seeing their true selves.

Yes. I relate the original question.

It's the reason I suspect I have lived alone for years on end. And, do not particularly plan to do otherwise.

I have never had the opportunity and/or courage to truly be myself around anyone.. except me. I like me, so that's ok.

It's interesting that Tony Attwood is quoted as talking about removing the symptoms if you remove the person with AS from people. That gives prespective, although I also
relate to those who talk about things like funny hand movements that you only do when you're alone, because I have those too.

I only feel truely myself when I am alone, I still stim but I am not anxiouse. When I am forced into situations were I have to socialise I become an awkward robot, loosing all of my tiny reserve of self worth. I can dwell on bad social experiences for quite some time, and can take a long time to recover, so I avoid them.

now that i am an adult, yes, i do. but as a little girl i can remember thinking i shouldn't be myself even when i was alone. I lived to be "good"if that makes sense, so when i was not reading, and had to move about, i made sure i acted as if there was a camera above my head all the time, i actually had that thought long before big brother and the likes, that was probably in 1987 or 88..
i wanted to train myself all the time so i would be like the others. have girly gestures, move around corners without getting bruised all over, standing up straight, smiling at myself when i thought of something funny ( just to remember to smile when people SAID something funny), etc.
so when my mother came back from work she would find me reading in a corner with my thumb in my mouth because i was so tired of it
i just hoped in time i would get used to it. I really didn't, i found growing up that i really needed this free time to be myself and make no effort if i wanted to be socially functionnal when the time came.
i stopped living for other people now i am the one who will die at the end of my life.

I think of it as being "safe" (feeling free, comfortable, entirely unthreatened, unjudged, etc). Different people possess differing degrees of safety. I have never felt 100% safe in the presence of another person. It's not just people, though, but places as well; some places are safer than others.

aww quantom physics