Cold shoulder

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Do you find people giving you the silent treatment because you have AS - always happens to me

I notice people stop answering my PMs when we chat. Aspies do this too. Same goes for IM.

I find that I get this a lot, as well. Being the sensitive person that I am, it makes me feel sad and unloved.

i guess everyone gets it sometimes (or feel that they do). perhaps being an aspie means that you're more aware of such treatments because we know that we are not all that good with people in general.

I think it is more that the conversation peters off or the other person is bus. If you cant pinpoint anything specific you may have typed to make them uncomfortable then don't get yourself worried about it.

I think an Aspie/ASD individual would have more invested in IM and PM conversations because we are not as social in the physical world. NTs are likely to have something else to do or somewhere to go. Even I have to get off the computer to go to the store, appointments, feed and nurture my child and pets, etc, and I spend a LOT of time on the computer! So maybe it is just something like that.

Yes, many times, but since I never did function or fit in well in social settings, except maybe as a quiet observer of shoes or something, I imagine that the other people were thinking I was the one giving the "cold shoulder."

But, on the other hand, sometimes I would be get bold and join the conversation, only to have the group pretend they didn't hear me, which sometimes left me wondering whether I had spoken too quietly or maybe not even at all.

I get the cold shoulder quite frequently from people, especially via telephone, e-mail, social networking, etc. It happens less to me if I am in a face to face conversation.

I get tired of people ignoring my messages, or telling me that they are busy when I call them on the telephone. Strangely enough, I get this more from people that are close to my age, and from my past (I went to school with them). The older people are, the more likely they are willing to leave lines of communication open.

I keep my PM's going until the other person stops.
I think I may seem to give people the cold shoulder (offline) but that's just me getting overwhelmed because I need a break socially.

wow...never thought about this, and now that I am it's kind of depressing.

I find that if there is a conversation going on around me, I'm usually not part of it. When I was younger, I used to get quite upset about it because I thought people were deliberately ignoring me because they didn't like me, but these days it doesn't bother me like it used to. I know a lot of it is probably my own doing because, as my Mum says, I'm not "forward" enough when it comes to social interaction.

I can barely stand to be around my family because of this; from a young age they have always either ignored me when I try and speak or laughed at me.

This is why I prefer to sit around with non-family members so I can at least stare at girls' boobs or something even if I'm not talking.

I think that it is not true that people give you the cold shoulder, but very true that you feel it. There is an awkwardness in social interaction and that creates the feeling of rejection. The other person notices only detachment and is not aware at all of giving the cold shoulder, but the social interaction ends.

I said "I think" because I don't necessarily believe it. I feel I get the cold shoulder all the time, like this http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt120791.html

Different responses.
It is like when you do not wear a coat.
Or you have some kind of anti-matter shoulder pads although that would cause massive explosions, rather than the matter disappearing.
I get lots of times that the conversation peters off or they do not respond.
I have been incredibly socially awkward on one message board, it was full of only NTs, I think and they were artsy types.
Some of them were really nice, though.
At least they did not give me the giggler treatment.

Giggler treatment;
A team of some kind of blue gerbils goes out and with the help of a mutt, lay a big moist poop on the pavement, just before you step on it (either that or they synchronize it with your steps).

I never really attributed that to autism... but social awkwardness in general-probably because I've seen it happen a lot, and it's happened to me... meaning, either the other people have stopped talking to me, or have told me of a story of why they stopped talking to so and so, seen others question why someone quit talking to them, or because I've stopped talking to someone. Not everyone I've encountered has autism, so it can't solely be due to that unless the conversation halts as soon as I mention that I have it... in that case, it's a possibility.

I've done it to others, not because I'm trying to give the cold shoulder, but simply because I just don't know what else to say. If a response was expected, I usually figure somebody would just message me and say, "hey, did you get that last message?" Then I would know they wanted me to respond.

But if the message was just stating facts or something we previously discussed already, I have a lot of difficulty responding.

Or if someone says something like "anyway, I just wanted to say thanks", then I just figure they literally just wanted to say thanks, so I say "okay" "You're welcome" and move on.

It's rough... I do it a lot in real life too... just stop talking. I'm not trying to be rude, I just don't know what to say, or figure they are just stating facts. It's really bad if it shifts to something I just can't relate to at all, because then I'm at a total loss. Sometimes I'll just say "I'm lost", but then sometimes things are so over my head I don't want to invite more confusion with someone trying to explain something to me that I likely am not going to get... and sometimes I say nothing because I don't really want to admit just how incredibly clueless I am.

I have a hard time balancing that online though... sometimes I forget that I actually AM communicating with other people and I treat it as such at times.

I think what happened to me is that I unconsciously set up coping strategies for this long ago, and they were so effective that I don't even notice the cold-shouldering types any more, and the strategies are now so second-nature that I find it difficult to even notice myself operating them. Once bitten, twice shy.

But I once noticed what I was doing most acutely, when I'd arranged to meet a group of people who were late arriving. By the time I'd waited just 5 minutes past the appointed hour, I was already categorising those people as a waste of space. I was planning my return home and relishing the freedom to use the rest of the day free of the constraints of having to perform socially. I was only hanging around at all to give them the best possible chance of proving me wrong. They did actually turn up, and their excuse made sense, which made me wonder why I'd been so swift to assume them wrong.

I'll often do a lot to try to "reach" another individual, working quite hard to try and to provide what they seem to be having trouble getting from the rest of the world, but when I offer them the result, I'm already primed to duck so that "when" they throw it back in my face, they'll miss. I see the work I do for them as "throwaway" work, and I'll usually try very hard to detach from it emotionally. It wasn't always so - I would often be quite upset if I (for example) tried to lend somebody a book and they didn't bother to read it. My father (probably also an Aspie) always fell into that trap, right to the end of his life he would needlessly raise his hopes about that kind of thing.

For many years I could only use that kind of defense if I harboured a very low opinion of the people concerned - "he's probably a cold-hearted bastard anyway, so I won't raise my hopes" - but as time went by I mellowed, and was able to keep my hopes in perspective without defaming their characters in my mind. Cold-shouldering isn't always malicious or even uncaring - people have sometimes thought me rather heartless at times when I don't believe I was exactly that, so if they can be wrong about me, I can be worng about them.

So I don't raise my hopes, but in doing that I also have to be careful not to abandon hope completely - if that happened, I'd never bother reaching out to anybody. Frankly I suspect that I would do well to hope a little more, and to take a little more risk of getting stung....in a way I'm like Paul McCartney's "fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder." But if life's early experiences led me to be the way I am, they must have been quite nasty. Quite possibly I was too young to remember them.

I get the cold shoulder from people who are wanting something from me and not receiving it. I think they think they're providing enough detail whereas I assume we're just having a pleasant conversation and I notice they're looking at me like I'm the one who's dense. I'm not as automatically forthcoming with just a few social cues from the other person as a lot of people are. I need people to be direct, and I need them to realize it on their own that they really weren't offering enough detail and didn't get themselves across properly. I think the conversation's done and they're still wanting something from me and not saying so.

I had a neighbor start giving me the cold shoulder and I just let her go ahead and do it. At the time I had other options and didn't care if she didn't like me. The only problem with my solution was that she was taking advantage of me in a particular area and I just assumed that's how she treats people she's taking advantage of, sort of like its my problem that I'm letting her, or something, when in reality she deliberately misunderstood me to cover her bad behavior.

I wasn't letting her. I didn't care.

I guess I should have cared because she cut me off socially from people I did care about over nothing much at all. There's no accounting for so-called normal people.