I don't want to socialise.

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I too get meltdowns from too much socialising. My threshold is very low. More than an hour or less and I shut down. I spend most of my life doing things in solitude.

When I was on the psych ward, they kept trying to make me socialise, which led to a massive meltdown including self harm. They thought it was psychosis doing that and I ended up with a forced injection of haloperidol. The next day they wanted me to go to a group! I called my keyworker in absolute desperation and she told the nurses to leave me be. Then I calmed down. They finally let me spend the day in my bedroom.

you don't want to? Then don't! Live life as you want to, not how others want you to.

I can relate, SteelMaiden. I was reminded last week that people find it weird that I'm not all that interested in socializing. Or I should say I am somewhat interested in socialisation, but usually with people who I find interesting, and not people who can only talk about shallow things.

I also find that people take actual offence at my being quiet and distant. Even when I specifically go to an event where there are other people, and they see that I'm kind of standing in a corner or I'm being a bit more quiet -EVEN if, for my own standards, I feel that I'm making the effort to talk to them at least a little bit- they will be terribly offended by my lack of social skills, and I don't even bear them any ill will.

And that just makes me want to socialize even less, because once I put an effort into connecting to other people, it inevitably comes out 'wrong', and they scold/shun me for it. And no, my efforts are not half-hearted. I have honestly tried over the past 6 years or so to connect to people, and to go into social situations with an open mind. It always ends like this.

I have one question for you though, SteelMaiden: why did you change your font colour and size? Is it to make your posts more visible (for yourself)?

They say an introvert is someone who gets rest from being alone and an extrovert is someone who gets rest from being in a group. But for some it's still possible to enjoy something that's tiring. I mean, think of runners, skiers, skateboarders, football players, rock climbers, etc. They probably enjoy doing their thing but they wouldn't want to do it for every waking moment because it's tiring.

So if I use myself as an example, I enjoy socializing but it requires energy. I don't like to do it more than about six hours in a day, every second day, and afterwards it takes me about four hours to wind down before I can sleep. That's why I go to bed at 4:00AM, because most other people go to bed at about midnight.

Then again their could be some who never want to socialize which is fine. I really hated those ASD social groups as a kid. Not that I disliked other people in general (except I hated teachers on principle) but those groups... I didn't like the kids there because I resented being grouped with some who were more autistic then I was (all were verbal but some not too bright). I didn't do too well with the smart ones either because they became my rivals. All the kids interacts more with the staff than with each other. The staff were way too patronizing. They spoke to us as though we had connotative limitations. After a few years I just refused to go anymore.

Sometimes the staff didn't seem to understand ASD anyway. When I started they wanted me to describe my mood. Since I was six I didn't have the words to say "neutral but annoyed you asked" so they figure, aspies aren't good at describing their emotions so instead they can point it off a chart. Really? They don't get that aspies can have trouble with expressions? I mean sure, the very basic ones are easy to understand but I still don't get the subtle ones. So they get their chart with about fifty subtle expressions when i could recognize about three of them. As I said I don't think the staff understood ASD.