When people I don't know talk to me...

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I went to a birthday party for my cousin's little girl yesterday (I'm still not sure why I said I'd go). There were probably 20 complete strangers there, and I was extremely uncomfortable. I noticed though, that when people I don't know talk to me, I look at my children while talking to the person (if I talk to them). They are familiar-maybe it's some grounding thing so that I don't feel quite so uncomfortable.

When we left though, a few people said bye to me, and I looked at Libby and told her to say "bye" instead of saying it myself.

Does anybody else do things like this?

Edit: I also do this around people I know well, but not quite as much.

i do it all the time.

I don't have children so no but I do tend to find saying those simple things like "Bye, Hey welcome back, Hi, thanks, sorry" really hard to say and compliments SO hard to know how to deal with. Small talk and I do not get along well at all. I get anxious, I think way too much on what to say and inevitable can't pressure it out of myself anyways or I'm oblivious that I should say anything.

Same here, I've noticed even when I open the door for my bf to come in, I'll walk off and not say anything at all, not even that he can come in, lol. I just open it and walk off.

His mom mentioned that I never take initiative to leave their house either when we go visit. It's not that I want to be there longer, I'll whisper to him as soon as 8:00 rolls around that I need to get the kids home for bed, and I'll say it every 5 minutes or so, but I won't just get up and say "well, we have to go now, it's the kids' bedtime". I just kind of wait for their chit chat to end and whatnot then I go, because I assume if I'm at their house and they are talking that I should stay to be polite, lol. It wasn't until today that he told me she had mentioned this, and that I could explain I need someone to shove me out the door because I can't tell when it's time to go and never want to be there in the first place really, lol. They're nice and all, but I never know what to say or how long to listen to someone talk.

She always gets me stuff and I dunno what to say when she gives it to me. I say thanks, but it feels awkward to even say that.

That's so funny, I hadn't even thought of that as autistic until now...my mom doesn't have AS or autism but she definitely has a few autistic traits. She's been diagnosed with Social Anxiety and has done this with me since I was little...she's able to look at other people during conversations but even when I was young I remember her talking to other people but making constant eye contact with me every now and then, even when I was in no way involved in the conversation. I've always liked it because it made me feel like she was including me in the conversation but after a while of her looking at me when I was clearly not participating I would make faces at her (for a laugh), which I realize is probably not the nicest thing (but I still do it!) It's so funny to hear about other people doing this with their children, I thought it was just my mum.

Lol, me too with my roomate. When I hear her looking for her keys and the cats meowing at the door sometimes I'll get up if I'm near by and open it. The cat meows, she meows, I meow and walk away.



Yeah see I'm not that polite, I'm really big on finding the first variable for a possible exit.


This kind of reminds me of a button I have that says "the best thing about you is that you're over there."

lol, that button is awesome!

Yeah, I've gotten accustomed to needing direction to do anything. I don't do well cleaning my house because I'll half-ass everything if I don't have someone telling me what to do next. I'll sit there and say "I know! I know!!" if they tell me, but I still need someone to keep on top of me with things or it all becomes a huge blur-I get too wrapped up in thinking, or I wanted to look this up, or that needs to be done too.

I've been laughing about all of my qwerks (spelling?) lately, but my bf says he feels very sad for me-he says he can't imagine going through life constantly trying to make sense of things, and not understanding other things (not like I am at least, lol), and wouldn't be able to stand not knowing where to start a task unless it was easily laid out, but I find this stuff funny at times because I can only imagine what it must look like to other people.

I look away from people when they greet me.

I tend to look away when greeting people too. I don't even understand why they need you to look at them. I don't know whether it's just an attention seeking thing that they need or whether they assume that you can't be paying attention if you are not looking directly at them.

The best thing for me when I have to speak to people in person is if I have something else to do as well, like reading or being on the computer or cooking because then I have a legitimate excuse not to look!

I sometimes communicate via my cuddly toys too.

Also, when it gets too much, I can get mutism and then I have no choice but to use sign language alphabet until I can speak again!

Ooooh,I actually did that yesterday.
I was among a whooooooole lot of people in a room ,and I just looked at my baby's carseat and was thinking" oh come on,come on,give me a reason to get out of here*L* and the second he started moving his arms a little,I was like" Oh phew,I can leave now cause he's going to wake up anyway"
However,what is highly strange to me and I find that it doesnt make any sense is that someone was handing out a bunch of papers with information and it was supposed to be passed around.
By the time the papers reached me,silly me quickly got down on the floor and started to straighten the babyblanket so that I didnt have to be confronted with anyone turning my way.
I feel really dumb about that:-/

I don't have a problem with that at all and I am willing to accept it.

I think this is only a signal that we are not confortable at that situation, probably, aspie people will few much more like this than NTs, well...

I feel uncomfortable when complete strangers come up to me.

I find it almost impossible to make eye contact while I'm speaking, and it takes effort to make sustained eye contact while someone is speaking to me. I've been working on it, but it's just such a stressful thing to do. If I make eye contact, I can't formulate my thoughts or listen to what they are saying to me.