I'm overly self-concious, have trouble being myself

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Is it normal for an aspie to be so worried about what others think of you that you have a hard time "being yourself"? I know a lot of people on here don't. but I feel quite repressed by society and the people around me. I want to let it all out, and let my "freak flag" fly, but it's like I have a mental block preventing me from doing so. I even feel somewhat repressed online, where I often feel I have more freedom to express myself and what I like.

Whenever I'm doing something I enjoy, like playing one of my favorite video games, or listening to some of my favorite music, I really really really don't like it when most people watch, even if it's my friends sometimes. I have weird tastes, and I don't want people to have a bad impression of me because I'm gleefully mowing guys down in an FPS while listening to Depeche Mode (I will add, this may not sound like a good combination, but it's surprisingly enjoyable ).

Am I alone? Am I the only person here with this issue?

I definitely have trouble with that. I too feel like I have a mental block. A large part of that is because I feel defenseless. If I state or show my opinion on something, I don't have the verbal skills or processing speed to defend my opinion very well. If someone disagrees with my opinion, I feel dumb. I do have a much easier time online because I have excellent writing skills, and can always defend myself that way.

Yes, me too. It's not so bad now, as the older I get the less I care what people think. But when I was young it was almost crippling.

I sometimes have trouble with that, but its more a fear of what people will do to me if I be myself..I got bullied a lot in childhood so I tend to worry people will judge me negatively and then take it further and go out of their way to put me down or worse. But I like to try and share intrests to try to find like minded people, it is hard for me though. But yeah I have a facebook page...but compared to most people I don't post much at all but I have sort of convinced myself I should just put music I like on my page and express myself and some people might find me intresting.....the ones that don't well they don't have to have anything to do with me if they don't want.

I don't think you're alone.
I'm not sure about other people with aspergers, but I am extremely self concious, all the time, to the point of where I won't mouth breathe at all unless I have to.

I don't think this is unocommon for people in general, even NT's. You probably, like many others here have high anxiety. I am on clomipramine for anxiety. Have you considered addressing the anxiety?

I constantly self edit and gauge reactions. It's not about not being myself, but about not being blindsided from others or emotionally overwhelmed.

I definitely have problems with anxiety, there's no doubt about that. I just wonder if what I'm experiencing at all is common for other aspies, and what I could do about it.

It's quite common.

Not just for aspies.. anyone who tends to be more introverted.

It's an introvert trait then, gotcha.

I can relate very strongly to what you've said. I don't like to tell people if I've been playing a video game which I do often because I feel embarassed and guilty for playing it because it's not what "normal" people should be doing.

I'm not sure if this related, but when I was a kid I was so horrified by any attention at all, good or bad, that I often wished I was invisible and tried my best to go unnoticed by anyone for any reason.

A lot of my friends are into gaming as well, and they often talk about the games they play, but for the most part they're into "normal" games like Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Minecraft, etc. My tastes in games tend to veer towards older and more obscure titles, and for some reason I feel kind of embarrassed preferring these games over the popular, modern stuff people around me rave about.

Ahh, yeah, you're not the only one that does that particular thing.

Every now and then.... and it's rare, really.... I'll find some "major" game that I actually do end up liking (currently, just Titanfall), but 99% of the time.... people go on about Halo or CoD or Resident Evil or whatever, and it's just.... ugh. I just dont care.

I tend to play more obscure stuff as you do (not on consoles though, I stick to PCs), including LOTS of indie titles, both "major" ones like Minecraft, or not-at-all-well-known ones, of which there are about a bazillion. And I love retro games, got an ancient 7800 console with a permanent spot to the left of my keyboard here, it gets alot of use and there's 2600 & 7800 cartridges just strewn everywhere. And I've got so many of them. I do alot of iOS gaming as well, never for a second having believed that it was "only casual games on there". Heck, even the genres I'm into tend to be more obscure; Fighting games are my best genre.... but I dont do Street Fighter, preferring Guilty Gear and Arc's other games like Blazblue and P4A, and my other favorite genres are shmups, particularly danmaku types, and roguelikes. The more difficult, the better.

....but it's rare that I ever mention these much. Even if someone asks what I've been playing lately, I might just say something like "oh, you know, random stuff" just to avoid having to actually name anything. Most people I know probably (ok, definitely) think I'm strange enough as it is... I dont really want to add to that even more. But I also cant really pretend that I have even the slightest interest in the sorts of games everyone I know is into.

It's very.... frustrating.

I think it is a preoccupation of people between the ages of 16-24. Who am I?

I'm the same way. I wish I could be myself but when I am around others I mostly just think about how they view me.

Titanfall actually looks kinda fun from what I've seen of it, though I'm kind of uneasy about the idea of ponying up $60 for a copy. My 360 is in rough shape, I refuse to get an XBOne due to the spy camera, and I don't quite have a PC good enough to run it. I'm planning on possibly building myself a new small formfactor PC for this LAN party I want to go to, so it may give me an excuse to build a rig for it. I could just buy another 360, but at this stage, the idea of having a new gaming PC just seems much more appealing. Actually, thinking about it now, Carmageddon: Reincarnation is in open beta, and I f*****g LOVE the Carmageddon series (the PC games anyway, can't really comment on the supposedly terrible console ports ), but there's no way my current PC could handle it, so I would be willing to build a new machine just for that game alone.

There was a time when Atari/Intellivision-era games were an obsession of mine, though unfortunately I never got my hands on any real Atari hardware. However, I played Atari Anthology on the PS2 religiously, along with Intellivision Lives on the Xbox, and my dad eventually let me have this old Intellivision that was sitting in storage, alongside a huge pile of carts for it. I lost them all during a move though, and to this day I'm still kicking myself for not keeping better track of them.

Once I get into my own place, and have the space for it, I want to create a retro gaming shrine where I have a nice CRT TV and a decent sound system with about half a dozen old systems hooked up to it, and I also want to have a few old computers set up like an Apple II, an Amiga, a few older PCs, and a couple of older Macs. I would probably also keep a turntable and a collection of vinyl records in the same room.

Going back a bit to my original topic, since I mentioned that I love Carmageddon, well that's a game I kind of consider to be a guilty pleasure. I mean, it's a "racing" game all about running down pedestrians and smashing up the other cars in these open environments with a crazy physics system and all sorts of cartoonish powerups. Now while people often do similiar things whilst playing GTA, the way these things are portrayed on GTA is rather tame compared to Carmageddon. On GTA, you run someone over, and they might bleed but that's it. On Carmageddon, internal organs burst out, limbs go flying... it's just nuts. GTA usually tries to keep some semblance of realism, while Carmageddon dispenses with it completely. It's a bit hard to explain, but you can sort of see why I'd be embarrassed to enjoy this outlandish, cartoonish, hideously violent game.