As confidence goes up, social skills go down...

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Something unfortunate that I've noticed. The times when people are most likely to apparently accept me as normal are when I feel slightly shy, or just holding myself back out of caution or just being happy to listen and observe. I try to relax and come out of my shell, and often soon after I finally feel comfortable enough to do that I feel a bit sad because I sense that I don't fit in, and on goes the cycle.

Feeling extremely shy makes me much worse however, in fact I used to believe that my social difficulties were entirely due to social anxiety, which was a major problem for me as a teenager, and now I think it's always been the other way round, but they feed each other.

Reasoning and doubt are assets of the aspie.

Question/find your targets in life. If you don't set targets or goals, you will have a completely passive experience of life. One of the most powerful feature of our brains is the reward engine. If you decide something, if you achieve that something witch is important for you, you will be happy.

Your "shyness" might have passively set most of the focus onto your socialization alone, so when you finally succeed to socialize you get rewarded, then, that's it... you find yourself in a situation that is less motivating, and you simply loose the motivation, get bored and start to listen carefully to meaningless conversations.

You need to find another incentive (hobby? politics? that girl? whatever) that goes along with your desire of socializing.

The key is to meaningfully chain incentives in your life to go comfortably forward, without running (that's what NTs do) It will prevent you to pause too often and question the reason of life, the universe and everything.

Could some of it be due to luck and the random aspect of life? That when things are going particularly well, they're only going to go particularly well for a while?

And also, do you think you might get into the mode of all sending-no receiving. I know I can kind of do this when I'm on 'a roll.'

Really hard trying to make sense of that. I think the OP meant that he/she is more accepted when speaking less and being more shy, and when finally coming out of the shell and expressing themself, they are rejected in someway or get into a situation that that they can't comprehend and everything comes crashing down.

That is how I feel. When I try to express myself everything goes to s**t or people think I am someone that I am not. WHen I compress, it seems like people are more welcome.

it's the same way with me. When I was in school people took pity on me because I seemed lonely, and tried to talk to me. Once I stopped staying silent they hated me. I was too pedantic and everyone felt I was a snob who just "thought" he was smart.

The title of this thread mirrors my own experiences, in a way. The more freely I act around people, the more I get comments about being "eccentric" or "a weirdo" or whatever it might be. Unlike the content of the thread thus far, however, I usually find more social acceptance in being somewhat freer (but not entirely free) in how I act around people. Of course, when that acceptance is based on amusement at one's quirks, it is still alienating.

I kinda agree. I was REALLY popular for a day in middle school when I lost my voice. (which does almost the same thing as actually being shy)

Makes sense, but I don't see that as meaning social skills go down when confidence goes up. Rather, actively interacting requires more social skills than passively listening. When we cautiously hold back, or just listen and observe, we aren't doing anything that sets us apart from the ordinary. When we are more active, then people see our differences.

I think the trick is to find people who accept as us not normal but okay.

It is quite similar for me. I used to think that my problems in finding relationships or friendships would be lessened if I had better social skill and less shyness. Now, I can talk to people quite well and I feel much less hope in having real closeness. I have enough social awareness now that I realize that being myself (very quiet and in my own world or babbling happily about what I am interested in) is not what most people feel is genuine closeness.

In other words, I can do the social back and forth but , despite feeling emotions, I find it difficult and exhausting to do the emotional back and forth that underlies most peoples interactions of friendship or relationship.

So I don't know what is next. How possible is it for me to learn that level of closeness? Is it possible? Maybe, because I can with my family to some extent. But your post really put into words the rather hopeless feeling I am having right now.

When I don't severely edit my words and just let them be what they are, I get very formal and pedantic. People often think this is intellectual snobbery but it is actually the way my thoughts work. If someone says to me "be yourself" and then I go ahead and do it, they don't often like the result.

I have this happen to me, for a long time people told me I was shy and fearful of people I agreed to a certain extent only to realize that when I do open up to people things become akward, no one likes it when I correct them and I am told I being up weird subjects and I have problems controling the volume of my voice and numerous other things that people just don't seem to connect with.

That definitely happened in my teenage years, I forgot that socialising could feel enjoyable, and became effectively schizoid. Since then I've had enough positive social experiences that I no longer feel that way though. I'm rather more limited in the social things I'll feel comfortable with and try out than most people my age, but I do appreciate now that some amount of socialisation each week is good for my mental health.

Yes that's a possibility. However I think that your second point is about one thing that might be happening when I get the feeling that I'm not necessarily offending people, but marking myself apart somehow. Mainly though, I think my problems are not wanting to change the subject with the same frequency other people do, and not discussing each subject in the same (superficial? emotional?) way other people tend to. Someone tells me I interrupt too much, but she's not there most of the time so I don't know how often that's a problem. There are probably other things I haven't picked up on yet as well.

Also, there's just a natural process, as you talk and get to know a person, some people you're going to have things in common with, and other people, not so much.

The goal is not to be 'popular' with everyone. The goal is to use medium social steps to find the people you do have things in common with. For example, I find that I sometimes have things in common with political and artistic types.

For me, I find that I interrupt in a different way. And that is sometimes interpreted as interupting 'too much.'

I tend to talk in paragraphs. And maybe if I could keep it to two sentences . . .

And then 'normal' people, and even many supposed normal people say they don't like cocktail parties and small talk, but keeping it as a generalization, 'normal' people seem to have this pattern: low-grade social of just standing around and people saying random things just on the off-chance that they might be funny. And wow, I don't even hardly understand the point of that.

Yes, I also have to maintain a balance between being too relaxed and too cautious socially. I get a lot of that amusement too, which I don't really mind but it would be nice to be seen for more of the person I feel I am on the inside than for the aspects of myself that come across to most people.


LOL, that's just the sort of careful distinction I make for people when they're sloppy with their words. I like the way people think here.

That was what I meant, really, I just worded it the simplest way I could for the title. To some extent though, my social skills are, maybe not worsened, but they are USED less often by me when I'm making less effort to fit in. For example I am capable of not startling people by seeming to 'come to life' when the subject moves on to something I'm interested in, so moderating my non-verbal communication is something I can do, it's just that I don't always feel like doing that, and I don't think I should have to. I don't think other people do that, because their patterns of mental stimulation and expression thereof are normal anyway. So while some of it is due to me speaking less when I'm thinking about the other person's perception of me, some of it is that when I stop thinking about fitting in, my mind doesn't look out for things to avoid doing or saying, so I don't notice them until I've started doing them.