How to tell someone socialising hurts

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Give me your best examples of why you don't want to socialise.

I've developed terrible anxiety for trying to socialise like everyone else. I almost developed agoraphobia.
Now if I must sociliase it's on my own terms, which usually involves talking about my interests.
But lately my mental functioning has decreased and my sensory issues increased which makes it hard to socialise.
Still I get yelled at to socialise more.

So please if you struggle too tell me why because I can't articulate the fact that socialising is the hardest thing in the world for me.

I don't understand it.

I feel bad; people I know will ask me How are you? and I manage to mumble hello before getting away from the crowd of people without thinking. It doesn't occur to me that I'm supposed to socialize until after the fact. I must be very rude. But it's not my fault I'm practically brain dead around all the commotion, is it?

That's just the beginning. If there is only one person, that brings many more things to the table. People are too unpredictable; I can't anticipate what they are going to say and am delayed responding and just can't think of what to say anyway until after the fact. Everything always occurs to me afterward.

I think for some of us - pretty sure of my wife - if we could tell someone without feeling doubted and judged and exposed and stressed out, tthe socializing would not be a problem.

For me, socialization is a strain and I pretty much avoid it, unless there is pressing cause, like my wife needs support. And explaining why I don't socialize is a strain, so generally I don't. Outcome is, they figure I am weird, but they don;t really understand HOW I am weird.

Because the presence of other people causes pain. Actually interacting causes more pain. Looking appropriate is difficult. After a couple of hours of socializing, even if I enjoy it, I find that I have no more energy to curb my stimming or to do anything even mildly difficult. It's painful, it's tiring and it doesn't always yield positive results. Plus, I have little innate desire for it. I just don't need "socializing" to function. (To be happy, I benefit from it in small doses.) So I have to really, really care about a person's friendship to keep setting things up with them. So if I've set up anything with you, it's because I value your friendship like you value the friends you see every day or every other day. Whenever I socialize with anyone it hurts; note (if you're a friend) that I do it with you anyway sometimes, and understand that I can't be called on to do it anyway. It's like you come with a built-in blaringly loud speaker that broadcasts screaming. I like you, really, but it's hard to get to the good parts.

That's a good reason. I too can't anticipate what people are going to say nor do I ever know what to say. I'm like a blank sheet of paper. Unless of course I think of a fact that intrigues me and wish to share it with others who may or may not care.
But I get the reaction from people that every time I talk that they just pretend to listen then they say I was jabbering on and they didn't hear a word. That really hurts.
It makes me wonder why I even bother with speaking to them at all. Some people don't deserve all the effort I give.
I mean I have to decide to take meds, not take meds, to prepare for conversations and to drink or not drink. I still haven't worked out which one makes me more sociable.


Yes and it's the type of pain that's difficult to explain. It's confusing and sensory overwhelming pain. And a bit of just not feeling connected to those people.


Yep. I try not to bother anymore. But I still find myself trying to choose an appropriate outfit. Then there's all that unnecessary grooming that if you don't do people will judge you for. But it's so time consuming and difficult.


Me too. But lately I go to turning off and stimming straight away, unless someone bothers to talk to me.

I much happier without having to. But I have a few friends that I will go out and see.


I completely agree. It's even hard for me to not get offended by what my friends say. Almost every person says something insulting to me. I'm probably just oversensitive and because of my autism I think that not one single person is capable of getting along with. I can be that way sometimes.

Last edited by pensieve on 10 Dec 2010, 4:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

the best way i've seen it described, and i don't remember where i read it so if it's from here and it's your line, i apologise for stealing it: it's like an allergy. that would be a good way for your mother to get it, i think. tell her that you would indeed like to have friends, just like someone who's alllergic to dairy sometimes craves a vanilla yogurt, but your body reacts to it in a bad way that you cannot control. you get tired , irritated, withdrawn, and want to get away from it. let her know that you are indeed making efforts to desensitise yourself, but that it has to be a slow process and that sometimes you also need to recover from too much socialising....
edit: just thought it was a good way of explaining things to an NT that doesn't imply "you all are too stupid to deserve being talked to, or as my sister puts it : " if you have no logic, go talk to someone like you and don't waste my time"
it's less likely to stir up a fight and could actually make her understand that you're not choosing to be like this.

I will scare off the person because my themes are crossing their "lines", being e.g. too complicated/personal/honest/specific, which leaves them estimate me as e.g. offensive/testing/naive/humiliating/boring or;

because Im bored in small talk conversations I emit this inadvertently and the person thinks I dont like him/her, or;

I manage to fit in a superficial society and am released when I get out of there.

I can't even explain it to myself so how can I explain it to other people? It just is.

Once in a while I enjoyed a social event, but only with a small group of people I knew (I say "knew" because I am referring to my ex-husband's co-workers and friends, 3 couples - we had known them for years, and they were great people) but generally I don't like social events (including Christmas with family members, even then I feel like an outsider) because:

- I get bored
- I feel out of place
- I don't know what to say, I am very bad at small talk
- I worry about saying the wrong thing or acting in a wrong/awkward way (got yelled at, slapped, or hair pulled, pretty often by my mother because of that after family social events)
- If there is games where you have to stand in front of the others it is stressing because I am pretty shy
- Usually a lot of noise and people (adults and kids) are pretty excited (eventho when I am at home sometimes I listen to music pretty loud, depending on my mood, but its not the same)
- Its energy draining and I get tired long before everybody else and I just want to go home

i can not tell if someone who is socializing hurts. when i see people socializing, they seem quite happy to me.

Can't find a definition of "socialising" for this context, so I guess you mean going to parties, pubs, etc.

I guess I'd just try to explain what happens when I try to "socialise."

One-on-one, I'm OK as long as I'm feeling relaxed and in the mood for company, and the other person is reasonably benign (calm, sensitive, fairly predictable, respectful, non-judgemental, warm, peaceful, inclusive, personable). Even then I might get a strong urge to get away from them ASAP, in case I do anything to blow it, though once I get to know them well, that problem tends to go away. If the other person doesn't have those benign traits, I quickly become anxious.

In groups, it's much the same but the chances of everybody being benign are going to be much lower. Typically there'll be unruly, noisy, unpredictable people, too many people I don't know, and they'll often huddle together in a little clique, excluding anybody who isn't already part of it. I'll just hang about awkwardly, feeling unable to engage, and very self-conscious, thinking that everybody's noticing that I'm looking lost and excluded and showing no social skills. It will bring back memories of older failures and feeling really stupid, it highlights the fact that I'm just not cut out for socialising on an industrial scale. The best possible outcome is if I find another individual there who feels similarly out of it (there's usually one or two), and we agree that we're too good for the party, and we'll go off into a bubble together and give each other better company than we'd ever have got by trying to join in with something we can't cope with.

The other problem is that if I'm at a big social event, it's almost certainly because somebody has coerced me into it, or because I've coerced myself as a result of knowing how people can feel about "antisocial" people such as myself. And when it's somebody else's event, forecasts of how long it'll go on for tend to be pretty inaccurate. So the whole venture is begun under duress, because in my heart of hearts I don't want anything to do with the party or the degree ceremony or the wedding. Even my own weddings were like that. Best way to get me to engage is to reassure me that it's completely my decision whether I go or not, and that I can leave if it gets too much for me. Trouble is, a lot of people won't do that, they'll nag me about duty and they'll do nothing to allay my anxieties about what people will think of me if I go home early. Even after attending their gathering, even if those who coerced me into it are proud of my performance, I'll just feel like I've been walked over.

I have few friends for a good reason. It's not so much that I can't make more friends, it's just that I couldn't handle large numbers, I'd tire myself out running about "servicing" them all, and I'd get badly stressed out if I tried. I'd let them down because I don't have the skills to keep them all sweet.

The other thing is that I'm just not all that interested in most "normal" people. I have little in common with them, they seem to have a long list of stereotyped behaviours that they think "everybody" should do, they usually embrace capitalism and the rat race, they seem to have no depth, no interest in the profound. I don't wish them any great harm, but let them do their thing somewhere else, and let them respect me for being different. Like the song says, these are not my people. In their company I'm as happy and relaxed as a cat in a dog pound.

And that's why socialising hurts me.

I developed social anxiety and agorpahobia because of it. After stopping socializing, agoraphobia faded away. (but social phobia is still present)

I have severe cases of agoraphobia. All of this stems from my history of constantly being rejected by others.

I find most people to be emotionally and cognitively suffocating/draining. But I also can't live without a few of them. And I'm pretty sure I don't meet DSM-V ASD criteria. The internet was a saviour for me because it allows communication with people's ideas that you share without all the emotional/social turmoil/confusion.

Socialising hurts and drains me by overexposure, too much feelings and signals from people for me to digest properly - plus negative feelings and atmospheres (the majority of feelings I pick up in my enviroments) cost more energy to digest then it delivers.

Mentally and/or emotionally unstable people don't make it easier with this, in my experience the majority of people I meet and know are like this.

The people who cause the opposit of hurting are most of the time people with a stable mind and/or emotional state. I meet to few people who are so or even rarer, both.

Those negative feeling just get to me

I don't care enough. My family and the internet satisfies enough of my social needs; no point in wasting any effort trying to make friends and setting myself up for disappointment and/or rejection.