How do you think about other people?

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So I've had this problem för the past few years (I'm 25). I have trouble relating to other people, or rather I find it more and more difficult to think that they are like me, to imagine that they are aware, think, feel etc. Sometimes it's difficult to imagine that anyone can see me, or that people can know things I've told them. Sometimes when they tell me about their thoughts or feelings, it's just words to me:(

Most of the time I just don't think about it at all (I think I just never thought about it when I was growing up) , but it's getting worse and worse and it's really painful, since this is what I think about my familj and friends. I really miss connecting with people...

So, has anyone here had this kind of problem? Do you just not think about it? Do you generally think that you see people in a different way than they see you? And has this changed over the years?

My story is that this has changed gradually for me over the years. When I was a child, a teenager, and in my early to mid 20s, I felt very much like you describe of your own feeling. I felt like other people were beings I struggled to relate to. I wanted to, I just couldn't. I didn't "get" other humans. I felt like there was this invisible wall between me and them.

It's not like I had bad feelings or didn't care about other people or saw them as inferior or that I was better -- if anything I believed I must be "worse" for feeling so disconnected from them! It sounds like I'm saying I had a bad attitude or didn't like people, but it wasn't like that at all -- I didn't wish anyone ill, or dislike people, it's just that I couldn't relate to anyone. They all felt like another species and I felt alone, puzzled and isolated. It didn't help that people themselves isolated me also, by not connecting much with me either, and leaving me to it, basically.

Even though I felt so oddly "separate" from other people, and like I was different, paradoxically I seemed to think that everyone must surely have the same thoughts, feelings, opinions, and responses as me. I can't explain how I thought that worked! On the one hand I felt isolated from a sense of common experience with them, yet I also didn't know that someone can think differently to me. That sounds like I was contradicting myself. But I truly didn't know, for example, that when I started liking someone and thinking we were friends, that they might actually have a different assessment of me and of the friendship. For another example socially - it took me years to figure out that a guy might NOT be in love with me just because we're dating and I think I'm in love with him. That was quite a harmful one in my life. And all kind of other life situations. It took me years to figure out stuff that I now know was to do with theory of mind.

About other people..?

Hmm, I think I haven't learned enough about. Overall, it's too diversed: both too harsh and too soft. So much beauty and ugliness into it in which I cannot describe by words alone.
So called realists likes empathizing the ugly parts, and the beautiful parts are deemed too good to be true and for the delusional and the naive. I 'thank' the nature's illusionists for that.

When it's something to do with me? About connecting and bonding? Let's just say I prefer to be a witness than a participant -- even if I have the means to influence and participate -- or SYNC. I had my (positive) fulfillments, so I had more than a right to say that I prefer to be asocial than to break that invisible wall of detachment.
And of course, views changes with age. As a child, I was rather apathetic and clueless about people. I wanna include in this and that. As a teenager, I became aversive assuming the ugly parts of all people.
Then here I'm as a adult, watching people laugh, cry, struggle, triumph. Being honest and open to each other, or being closed off and manipulative towards each other... And I like it.

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A sense of struggling to relate to other people, while it can be part of a psychosis disorder, it doesn't always indicate that. It also is a common experience within autism, and is hardly a surprising thing to arise from having differing neurology.

The "psychosis" speculation hits a nerve with me because when I was 15 (an undiagnosed person who would long yet fail to discover I have autism until middle age!) I finally got up the nerve to call a helpline about what I felt to be my brokenness. I literally said to the person, "I feel like I can't relate to other people."

He told me I should see a psychiatrist. He made me feel like I was probably suffering from something even more stigmatizable -- he was suggesting I was psychotic, schizophrenic, etc etc. Because it was the 1970s he never even thought of autism. Instead I walked away from that phone call feeling even more like I must be a broken, insane person with something seriously wrong with me.

It turns out (many years later) I don't have psychosis or any other disorder that guy suggested I needed looked at for. I was autistic all along.

Who knows about the OP -- true he could be experiencing what he's experiencing due to other things. But I needed to point out that not all lack of ability to relate to others is a possible psychosis. It can just be another plain old autism fall-out.

Agreed, you did say only "could be." It just touched a nerve with me because I've never forgotten the sting of someone telling me that -- because it seemed frightening to me -- at a very young age when I was already feeling stigmatized and confused and ashamed about myself.

Yes, I know you were addressing the OP and not me. I fully am aware of that. I only mentioned my OWN "nerve" feeling hit not because I thought you were talking to me but because your telling HIM that REMINDED me of when someone told ME that.

I wasn't trying to make it all about me - I was just reminded of something and wanted to point out that if that same suggestion hit a nerve with me it's not beyond possibility that it's a tough thing for someone else to hear too.

JESUS FCK. THiS PLACE SOMETIMES. Nobody freaking understand where ANYONE else is actually coming from here.

Anything I say seems to get taken the wrong way around here. FCK.

I see a few people have mentioned psychosis, I've thought about this too. However after reading about it I don't really recognize most of the symptoms. Whatever it is it seriously scares me, sometimes I get the feeling that I don't really believe anyone is real and that I'm just pretending to live the way I used to before...

The question I really meant to as was: are you able to look at someone and imagine that the see you or are thinking something at that moment? Or that you are surrounded by people with love and thoughts abd feeling of their own? And by imagine I mean are you really convinced of it?

Any clinician who would think "psychosis" simply because you have difficulties relating to other people and understanding how the world works is a moron. I'm NT and a mental health professional and still wonder on a regular basis what the heck is wrong with this world. There is so much that does not make sense to me. Although I suspect my "out of worldness" comes from seeing how much pain people experience due to social and cultural processes and faculties on a daily basis at work.

I feel completely invisible.

The thing you are going through is called Depersonalization; it can be sever and frequent enough to be labeled as a disorder. Deperesonalization symptoms can be caused by PTSD/trauma, an underlying psychotic disorder (though if this is your only psychotic symptom that is ruled out). Stress/anxiety and depression can also cause it.
They have done MRI and other imaging tests on people with this disorder and found that for whatever reason those with it process memories and emotions differently.
I've felt this way before. I've been unsure if what I perceive as real is actually real and have also believed that it wasn't.
It is hard to maintain friendships and be social when thinking about someone doesn't bring any feelings of emotional connection. And that is on top of the anxiety and other struggles with being around people.
You're not doing anything bad or immoral or choosing to "play" with people so on a cogitative level there is no reason to feel terrible.
One thing I can think of that might help you feel connected would be to remember and focus on you and someone sharing a smile.