Why do social interactions wear you out?

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I commonly read that accommodating for social difficulties can be extremely exhausting people come home after an encounter and they’re burnt out. If you share this experience I am curious what your specific method of accommodation is which wears you out?

Thank you.

I let my dad know. Sometimes he gets mad and says how weird that is. But he is new to the idea that I am possibly autistic.

Just tell the person how you feel.

You never know unless you do it.

Another great option is to tell the person at home with you, that you are extremely tired(which is definitely true) and retreat to seclusion/solitude to cool off, in as calm of a manner as you can. That way, you won't likely frighten or alarm the other person.

Works for me!

Socializing, even when I enjoy it, is completely and utterly exhausting.
It's not unusual to see me lay down and take a nap when I get home from a social activity.

Talking and listening to people talk make me tired.

Its very exhausting!Yes!

Maybe because we think too much about what to say and other "social rules."

It's more due to Aspies using the cognitive part of their brains to process social interactions.
But flip side, we get to do many things instinctively, that our fellow NTs have to do cognitively.

I mean in most of my years of school I could do most subjects easily, with little thought.
My fellow classmates had to use full cognitive power in order to do same classes.

When you use the cognitive part of the brain, it uses a lot of energy gradually wearing you out..

For me its "boredom" that wears me of. There is something in social interaction that makes me constantly losing focus. I try my best to listen to people and talk but I am constantly getting distracted. Fighting distractions and doing my best to regain focus is the thing that is so tiring.

I am not so tired(I'm still tired but not so much) after I participate in a talk involving my current or past special interest so I can monologue or at least keep the discussion on one subject for long enough. But when it is all about random stuff that are not really interesting and change constantly... I get lost and following the conversation gets really tiring. Especially if there is too many people talking at once and I can't clearly hear what people say.

Today I participated in a talk where I couldn't even hear my own voice. I'm yawning despite there is still 4h left till my usual bed time.
But it was fun. Especially when I tried to say something serious but my own voice got lost in the noise of 30 people taking. I gave up then and yelled "What the hell?! Now I can't even hear my own voice!" instead. And then... everyone around me laughed. Believe me or not but I ended up laughing too. That was a ridiculous situation.

Last edited by Kiriae on 08 Jan 2015, 4:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.

For me it is trying to find something to say, quadruple checking that it's appropriate, realizing the conversation has moved on and having to start again.

All while analyzing the people around you, and attempting to decode what they mean.

I also tend to take friendly teasing teasing personally if I'm not paying enough attention to the social dynamic, so there's shock, betrayal and on figuring out that it's just teasing, I feel stupid for not realizing and so on.

It can be exhausting.

I think the two vectors that give me the most trouble are attention and auditory processing.

The way my auditory processing issues work, especially in crowds, is that I tend to miss more and more words and syllables as the background noise increases. I compensate by consciously thinking about the context of the conversation and inferring the missing pieces. For example, I might hear someone say "*ould you *ike me to get y** a ***nk". On it's own it's pretty opaque, but if it's said in the context of them walking towards a bar, I can infer that they just asked me if I'd like them to get me a drink. But this is pretty cognitively demanding, and I'm usually exhausted after about a half hour of it.

Attention is the other problem. It can be hard sometimes to focus on the random directions that people want to take the conversation. My mind tends to drift, or at the very least get stuck on whatever the previous topic was. It can take a lot of intentional, conscious effort to wrestle that attention from one topic to the next, which also wears me out. I've found that social activities, like board games, make this a lot easier. It gives me a focus point that the conversation always comes back to, and makes managing that attention component much easier.

Oh my gosh yes. You've put it into words that make sense. School was super, super easy. Socializing was hell.

You have to think about what they said, how they said it. Did they raise their voice? Are they angry? Sarcasm? Don't talk too much. Remember to look toward their face for a few seconds. Is this too long? Am I staring? Oh no, what was that last thing they said? Anndddd great, I've missed the entire paragraph :/ Too much to think about!

I have to cognitively process the whole situation. I can't intuitively process socials interactions. I also have a significant level of anxiety concerning the thought processes of those I am interacting with. I overanalyze both my own facial expressions and body language and those of other people. This is often far too much information for me to cognitively process. I'm okay with very small groups of people and I can appear relatively normal in such situations for short times but larger groups are impossible.

I also find most social interactions very boring and frustrating. Everything is so slow, communication is so clichéd and inauthentic.

Sometimes people ask me how I am and I'm often tempted to answer honestly (but incorrectly). They usually don't want to hear all about your current mental or emotional status. Even if you are feeling awful, you should pretend to be at least "okay". Obviously if a psychiatrist or psychologist asks you this question, you can answer more truthfully. I find the lying quite stressful and annoying too.

It's very exhausting. I'm not incredibly social by nature, and I'm also not very good at it. I constantly feel like I'm fighting an uphill battle to win people over by being witty, personable, accepting, I feel pressured to have a response to whatever it is they're saying. It's incredibly exhausting to try to conform to what's expected of me on top of that. The entire experience is an incredible burden on me that I will never expect others to understand or show empathy for, and it's VERY frustrating.

It highly depends on who I socialize with. I'm reasonably social and need regular dose of interactions, with the right people. I tell most people I'm not social, as to not hurt their feelings. Being with people you don't get along with is like doing exams, always searching your brain for the right answers. If you got the wrong answers there's likely to be misunderstanding and hurt feelings. Then you have to work triple hard to fix the damage. See how that can wear you out after a couple hours?

However if you're with people who are much more like you, you can relax and be more like yourself. You know, telling the truth is most comfortable because you don't have to remember to fabricate anything. I've found many occasions when I happen across a total stranger, and we can just hit off and talk for the entire duration of a flight. Unfortunately these people all happen to be nerds or weirdos who also happen to be very talkative. There aren't too many people like that. So my chance of making useful friends or being see as social is very limited (most nerds and weirdos aren't talkative). Especially compared to people like my mom, who can make friends with just about any people, including those whose languages she doesn't understand. She still thinks I'm not social. She doesn't know I can talk for hours with some people.

I have a great ability to shut out all that, while being in the middle of it. Then sometimes people wave their hands in my eyeside, I don't know why, I know I'm not actually participating but still hearing and noticing what's going on.
Or I make rows, towers or other forms, with what's available (or you can do other things with your hands, knitting is a good example) while still 'participating', focussing on something else helps following the line of conversation without getting lost in detail, or interpretation of distracting social clues(?)
Actually I have three friends with whom I am quite confortable, because silences are allowed in the conversation,
not so surprisingly, we're colleges too, so there's a lot of common interests.

It was my husband wearing me out, chaotic, always needs to be the centre of attention, yelling at me for everytime I say something he doesn't approve, changing plans, and withdrawing from engagements, leaving it up to me to do the job, yelling at me when something breaks, etc
I know he recons I'm not appraising enough, but on the other hand when I do, it just seems unsatisfactory/ he does not esteem me enough for that it actually is valuable in his eyes (imho)
eventually it's more tiring, to say the least, then socializing for limited duration

Social interactions wear me out because I don't enjoy them. I find them quite painful, physically and emotionally draining. I feel so worn out afterwards. I don't know what to do or say. I just sit there bored, wishing I could go home and be all by myself. When I was younger, I used to sit there and wonder what the others were thinking about my silence but for the life of me, I just couldn't think of a thing to say (usually because they were talking about something I knew nothing about and had no interest in). I used to get very embarrassed.

It's not as painful in large groups, because your lack of participation has a much better chance of going unnoticed but when you're at a table with 2-4 others, then my lack of participation becomes blatantly obvious to everyone. It's even worse when they notice you're quiet and try to drag you into the conversation (to be nice), especially if they change the conversation to something they know you like (like computers) and you know they don't really have an interest in it. They're just trying to make me feel included. VERY UNCOMFORTABLE!

I don't know how to act in social situations. On the odd occasion where I have tried to join into a conversation, it's always the same. I'll say my bit and someone might give a one or two word answer and then the conversation continues on without me. I end up just wandering around on my own.

So I figured long ago, I'm no good at it, I find it embarrassing and draining, I'm not interested in it and they don't want me anyway.

That's why I avoid them whenever possible (which is pretty much all the time). I'll make up excuses for why I can't attend things.

If I can't avoid attending, what I'll do (if I can) is find a quiet room or the backyard to escape to and if I find a cat to pat, that's an added bonus (I find alcohol helps cope in such situations as well, although I'm not recommending it to anyone!)

It's not just that it's awkward and painful. I simply don't enjoy or need social interaction so I avoid it whenever possible.

social interactions wear me out because i can not devote all my attention to what i want to think.