Aspergers and hiding away, not wanting attention etc.

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In what way is Aspergers related to

- wanting to hide away

- not wanting attention from others

- not wanting to be center of attention (in a conversation for instance)

- thinking more of others than yourself


How come I can feel this way when I know it's wrong? Due to sensory overload or?

Being center of attention is exactly being very social - so I see that's where it comes from. But why don't I want to be center of attention?

I'm not a specialist, but my reasoning is this - as you said yourself, being the center of attention requires being social. And socializing is always stressful for us, because we either don't have skills for that, or we can *pretend* to have skills, but it still requires a lot of energy and constant thinking and analyzing.

So we hide from attention, because we just want to avoid unnecessary stress.

Added: As for thinking more of others than yourself... Well, probably it's just pressure. People tend to think that if you don't want to socialize, it means you're 'weird'. And it lasts from early childhood through the whole life, and can make you feel inferior. I know, it *is* wrong to feel that way, but I often feel that way myself.

I think, these are not symptoms of Asperger's... more like consequences of the symptoms.

Of course, this is only my opinion, and probably not true for others.

Last edited by Astera on 10 Aug 2013, 5:33 am, edited 2 times in total.

I usually don't try to hide away, unless something makes me uncomfortable.

I don't care about attention from others; I don't try to get it, but I neither try to hide when I've gotten it by chance.

If I am at the center of attention it's probably because of something negative, but people tend to ignore me most of the times.

I never think more of others than myself.

I totally identify with the things the OP says and would add one other possible explanation:

For me, understanding social situations is a "learned" skill whereas I see most people have more of an "instinctual" grasp of them. Because of this, I believe I've become hyper-sensitive to situations where I figure out I did something wrong. This motivates me to avoid them at all costs. I find myself reviewing everything that happened when I'm in a social situation and focusing on things I might have done wrong. I can remember times from 10, 20, 30 years ago where I know I screwed up and the memory is apparently seared into my brain.

^^^^^^ This is me. I thought I was alone in this.

This is also my experience. Sometimes the memory of a mistake from years ago is so intense that Ifeel I have to physically escape it and my body jerks or I sit up or jump up to get away.

This translates into wanting very badly to avoid being in that situation again, so of course the invitation to a party at my aunt's house seems like an invitation to get my teeth drilled for the sheer fun of it.

The main problem with this is that life mainly is about putting your own life (and hence yourself) in center, i.e. paying attention to that. Life seems to fundamentally being about being social, otherwise it doesn't make much sense.

I should start trying to force more attention on myself. It just does not come natural.

I do this. I think because i like to avoid situations where the outcome is unforeseen. Although the last one i do because i actively try to
avoid confrontation, and therefore try to be as considerate as i can (which often fails horribly, but people do seem to realize I'm trying)

Unfortunately sometimes the personality does not match the Aspergers....
Sometimes I can be a bit ambitious and trying to get a better position for myself. On the other hand I am raised to keep a modest opinion of myself. And also I know I am not good in social situations and do not like to get into the centre of attention.

This makes for interesting choices...

Life isn't about anything except the interplay of patterns of energy.

Life often doesn't make sense.

Thinking about life as if it has to make sense, have a purpose, or be about something is a mistake. Objectively, it has none of these qualities.

The question is: what do you want out of it? This might necessitate a higher or lower degree of social engagement than you have now. If so, then you might usefully expend energy changing yourself and your circumstances in order to bring them better into alignment with your goals.

That's it. There are no objectively correct external goals. You need not procreate. You need survive. You need not be happy. You need not suffer. Externally caused events will doubtless cause you pleasure and pain for the rest of your life, but this really has nothing to do with meaning, purpose or plan.

I would recommend maximizing your own pleasure while minimizing negative impacts you have on others. If you enjoy doing things that benefit your community and others,you may achieve something great.

I identify with all of this. Unfortunately, my profession is writing. I think you can see where that creates a problem. I want to be successful but I do not want fame or attention turned on me. If I could write a best seller that no one could ever trace back to me, I'd be in heaven.

Same^ here.

I'm an artist, and I wouldn't mind other people seeing my work,
but I don't want attention paid to me because of it.

I would shrivel up & implode (or so it feels)
if some media thing wanted to do a feature/story on me. Yikes !

I detest being object of scrutiny, it scans as "threatening" to my privacy.
I cringe on others' behalf when I read/see simplistic short media bites about them,
which are inherently grossly reductive and therefore not faithfully representative of sample.

I'd say you (intuitively) recommned this because it exactly is what optimizes the survival probability of the human species. The reason why you think something is great is because it improves people's survival probability. If there were no other people or animals, could things still be great?

I realize Aspergers Syndrome's role in the survival-system basically is to invent things that could be beneficial for the survival probability of the rest of the population - for instance inventing electricity, the light bulb, computers etc. NT's often think too mainstream (almost exclusively socially) to make those kinds of break-throughs.

But eventually, everything boils down to survival. We should not think humans are anything other than animals.

It really solidified for me when I won the science fair and three different news networks interviewed me. The very best of the resulting bits was a very short snippet of me from what was supposed to be warm-up chatter saying, "I like to ride my bicycle" and giggling nervously. None of them contained any of the parts wherein I or even the science fair judges they interviewed talked about my project. They apparently took me at my most "normal" to create snippets. The bike part was an answer to about the fifth or sixth "and what else do you like to do?" following those I answered with writing, reading science fiction, experimenting, and tinkering. One of them never used any part in which I spoke and used a shot I didn't know they'd taken of me brushing my hair. The very worst was a snippet wherein I answered the question of, "What's this cardboard backing made of?" in regard to the stand-up presentation display for which they didn't include the question. "It's a large cardboard box I got from the grocery store" makes very little sense out of context. I think maybe they couldn't understand the project but they all made me look stupid and flighty.

I despise being the center of attention. People project things onto you and expect something back. Any time anyone gives me attention, I wonder what that person wants from me and I don't know how to react.

It's an overload. Someone has invaded my world and I am put on the spot.

I like being un-noticed. I don't pay attention to other people and they don't pay attention to me. I like it that way.

It's like a limitation, numerically, that I have-both expressively & receptively, when it comes to social interaction.

I can handle one person at a time, not more. So I want to pay attention to one person, and I want one person to pay attention to me.
Any more (people at a time) feels dangerous & confusing, out of control & no longer trustworthy/mutually understood.

I don't want to be superficially "known" (inauthentically)
via mass media (which confers false sense of intimacy) by a bunch of strangers I don't know
(by which I mean, the asymmetry of "being a spotlit celebrity" would be unwanted by me).

Last edited by Belfast on 10 Aug 2013, 4:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.