Does anyone else have a problem with feeling alienated?

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I have always had a problem with feeling alienated, even when I was in grade school. It got worse as I grew up. Even today I'll be around people and there's this sense of not being able to relate to them and that I'm not 'part of the group'. For 10 or so years I've been jokingly calling myself a 'perpetual foreignor'.

No one seems to have much to do with me either, especially females. I can be kind, friendly with people, and humorous but it never seems to help. I get this impression that people can't relate to me either.

When I talk to people sometimes it's like there's a plate glass between us.

At other times, I get this sense around people as if I'm this little kid and they're all adults. They all look down on me as 'not matured' or something. That's certainly how I'll often be treated. That really gripes me.

I also don't feel like I belong to anything. Belonging is a sense I never really felt. For years I've looked for something to belong to. I never found anything . . .

I also find I need so much to have someone to look up to. There seems nothing. A big part of my adult life is finding a 'someone', like a mentor, to give me some sort of direction and that. I've pretty much failed . . .

I feel like some alien or foreign person. More than once have I said that, in many ways, I'm going through 'culture shock' in MY OWN COUNTRY!

Over the years it has created in me a great suspicion of people. In fact, I must admit that a resentment has appeared. I heard a statement from a movie that seems to strike me particularly well. It goes something like: "Why should I fight for a world where I have no stake in it?"

I've felt that way off and on through most of my life, and I think most of us have felt that way.

I did make a video about the experience. I hope no one minds if I place a link to it again. The other link quit working. This looks clumsy, but if you click on the blue square, it takes you to the page:

Hey, great video whitetiger I really enjoyed waching, thanks!

I've felt alienated since pretty-much as far back as I remember, I think it's part and parcel of having AS because my brain is wired differently from NTs.....

I've tried to change the focus of this, and by that I mean rather than see myself as alien (and as an extension of that, out-of-place, unusual, or 'wrong') but to instead accept that while I'm different to them, I'm still part of the experience of life on this planet and that it's more like we're a different species, within the human condition.

Yes.

I think it's easier to bear once you realize it's nobody's "fault" but because of different timing and clue issues, we're incomprehensible to each other and therefore make each other uneasy.

Yes, very much. I've never felt I belonged anywhere, except maybe to a group of non-belongers (an oxymoron, hehe) I feel an affinity with other outsiders, people living on the streets, oddballs walking around talking to themselves...I feel OK about it now though, like that's the way it's supposed to be. I've always been suspicious of groups anyway.

Welcome to WP, grenzer. This is one group that I don't feel too 'non-belonging' with. I hope you feel welcome here too.

I don't fit into educational, recreational, or workplace settings; just about every setting there is. It's as though I don't really exist. Before I'd even leave some places, others behaved as though I already had; e.g., giving my workplace computer monitor to someone else ... me then turning up at the office to find a flickering cathode ray one in its place and losing a day's worth of work due to the meltdown it produced. b*stards.

There's always been a wall.

I read your post. It's depressing to feel this way, not being able to connect, ect. I wish I could offer advice. I have a "distant" feeling too when around others and never feel like I fit into anything and definitely do not fit in where I live. I totally get your post. It seems like no matter how hard you try, sometimes nothing you try works. Well, I hope things go better in the future. Good luck to you!

I relate to all of that.

In addition whenever I'm part of a group it feels like I have to put on a front and only say what's appropriate for the group. It's like the real me doesn't exist externally. To me I am my thoughts. To others I am nobody. I feel like nobody can truly know me. It's a weird feeling that's hard for me to articulate.

Other times while growing up it seemed like the people around me were social robots. People were rarely serious or reflective. It was like they were just playing a part to fit in with their friends.

i think many of us feel like that.. when i read your post the thing that came across my mind the most was "thats me".... i think many of the members here are like that.
Im lucky enough to have a family that has supported me through my life, but somehow the adults that has been responsible (teachers, psykologist and so on) for me have FAILED! its just been one thing after the other... i see my talents slipping away one at a time, and as i watch my life stalling, i realice more and more how different i am from my classmates, and how isolated i feel from them. People who understands are far between, and people who accepts are unique... unfortunately... people, who dont care, are not.

this is the first post i read here, and im truly happy to see that its not just me who feels like that...

Holy crap. I could have written most of this. It's really bad for me because I am drawn to older people (do not get along that well with people my own age) so I am the kid, even though we hang out with people who are 2 or 3 years older than me as well.

I've been dealing a lot lately with the idea that I will never actually be a part of the group I hang out in. I may spend time with them but I don't feel like I belong. I feel so uncomfortable. I feel like my one friend is the only one that actually likes me and the rest of them tolerate me out of respect for him.

That one friend is my father figure that I found a few years ago. He is my mentor. However, I continually look for figures like that, and have my entire life. I can never get enough attention like that and I don't know why. (Well, I don't get along with my parents.) I love my mentor and I feel like he is one of the only people that genuinely likes me and cares about me and I cannot figure out why, because so very few others like me or care about me.

I train in Taekwon-Do and it's my life but I still feel like an alien in the group. I feel weird in my class and in the smaller groups in my organization. I sometimes say that these people are my family but I still feel incredibly disconnected from them and feel as though I'll never get closer.

The worst, I guess, is that these groups and people I'm talking about all overlap so they are all pretty much the same people, with some added to the Taekwon-Do group, etc.

But really, I feel like a weirdo in every group I've ever tried to be a part of. In high school I convinced myself that it meant I was popular in some capacity, and it was better to be a drifter. I should have known better when I planned a birthday party and couldn't think of anyone to invite because I didn't think anyone would actually want to come because we weren't that close.

See, this makes me want to go activist...

No. I might feel like this from a lifetime filled with lessons, but honestly I only ever tried to fit in with others because I was told to. I prefer my own company. I get small amounts of time with true neuro friends and frankly that is enough.

Yes, I do...unfortunately, it has been much worse because I am not from he US...so I feel like I don't belong with others in the US...but I am white, blonde hair, blue eyes, so where I come from that is no so common and I feel like others also don't see me like I belong there either...I thought it was only related to this, but maybe it's more with the AS...I don't know...I just know that I never feel like I belong anywhere...I can fake it for a while, but not for long...

My mom seems to be the same, so does my uncle...On the other hand my dad and sister seem to adapt to anything and don't feel like strangers living in the US...very weird to me...

It practically happens all the time, people in my classes will be loud and noisy, I'm just quiet sitting on a desk next to nobody (often) which makes me feel alienated, especially since I'm the only Aspie in any of my school classes (apart from some social skills lessons I do with the Learning Support.)

Given my parents' circumstances I was born to be alienated even if I were an NT. The fact that I'm autistic finishes it off - most of the time I question if I'm even human.

ah...yes. i know my sense of alienation is an inherent part of my AS.

square peg.
round hole.