Do you often tune people out?

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I sometimes wonder if my biggest problem in socializing is lack of interest more than lack of ability. Often when I’m in a small-talk situation I will unconsciously tune people out in favor of my own thoughts. Sometimes no matter how hard I try I just can’t stay focused.

I’m not trying to sound like I have a bad attitude but in general I find that people are incredibly boring. I don't know how to find the motivation to converse with people so I kind of give up on trying.

I tend to "zone out" and not know what is going on around me, when I am in awkward or boring situations. Doc thought it was seizures, at first, but now says it is emotional black outs.

all the time.

Huh? Did you say something?

Face to face interractions can sometimes raise my sensory hackles...so I can only deal with certain(most) people peripherially...
um...
I don't mean to down them out....I just have to often back up and keep my distance...and then there are times when people are talking....and i run away.....maybe that is why I don't have many close friends.....

Definately- this happens to me all the time. I only really get interested in something when it is something that I know, and one of my biggest flaws is that I tend to lose track of a conversation real quick.

heh, that's exactly the same with me. i also think it's more the lack of interest because i find most people boring, too. well, but it came with the age, before it was more about the ability.

as i grew older i realized i can converse better, but only because i discovered that since most people of my age around me already have children, asking questions about them makes them really happy. a little question on my side and then you just listen for five minutes, while smiling, about how he/she does at school. it's much simpler now than before when my peers used to be single.

before, we just didn't have much in common and there was never anything i knew about them well enough to make them talk about it, so i didn't have to talk. now i do it with everyone, when someone wants to socialize with me i always do the same, i have prepared several questions always ready to ask and people just love to talk about themselves. so far no one realized that i do that to avoid talking about myself, no one discovered that i don't realy care what they have to say, and they even love me for being a good listener.

fortunately i don't have to do that very often, that would be really tiring.

I zone out too. I am better in one on one situations, unless the subject is really boring for me. Some times it almost get into one ear and then straight out the other ear. It makes me nervous and embarrassed because I forgot what people were talking about. I find it hard to focus and keeping concentration when there is more than one person involved in the conversation.

nah i do it all the time becuse half the time they bore me to tears

Constantly.

I also become infuriated with people who interrupt their own speech for trivial details, or worse, trivial details that they can't even remember. They'll be talking about something that interests me, or something that doesn't but that I think I'd better follow, and then go on a thinly related tangent about, say, some guy they knew years ago with the same interest and what was his name...? or something like that. In my head I'm jumping up and down howling, "Aaagh! Why would I care what his name was, make your point! Don't you know how much work it is to pay attention to you?! Get ON with it!"

I try not to say anything. It's terribly hypocritical of me to feel this way, as I often lose peices of vocabulary and pause trying to get them back, and probably sound much the same. Though I never do it with names, as I never expect myself to remember a person's name very well.

haha, yes, that's so terrible. when they pause to think what his name was, i always say that it doesn't matter but even so only few stop thinking about the name. it is so out of any logic trying so hard to recall a name that has no meaning at the moment.

even worse case, i know a girl who, when talking, goes into such details that she ends up explaining so basic things that a two-year-old kid knows about. sometimes she only starts talking and i already know exactly what she wants to say, but i have to listen for another five minutes to her explanation of how people reproduce. sometimes i would like to react, but by the time she finished i already forgot what i wanted to say. i think there must be a diagnosis for her, too.

I have developed it better over the years, before i would get this but now i'm trying harder to talk to people around me without being bored. It helps if your in a class which genrally has the same interests as you, and there is even another aspie like me so I'm getting there. But if there is nothing going on i usually zone out and sometimes someone speaks to me then i don't hear them and that can cause a bit of trouble.

Lol, I am like this nearly all the time, i say something and then the word just goes out of my head and I'm stuck there trying to remember and Im feeling incredibly exposed when that happens. And yeah people get frustrated about it.

The most frustrating thing hapens to me is that if I speak about something they totally shut me off and don't care about my opinion even though it might help them and its at those times I really feel it.

More like social black-outs.

Cool term, all the same.

I remember a time when I ALWAYS listened to what I heard. I credit my MOTHER with making me have to struggle, since she always gave me LOTS of chatter to ignore.

Me too, but it's like they are trapped in the process of searching through mental files looking for this stupid, insignificant name (what do they think I'm going to do with that information, phone a guy they knew twenty years ago and ask him about something I already know about? Lunatics.) that they 'tune out' my request that they just skip over the missing bit of information, which is something that I, at least, can usually do with vocabulary and always with a person's name.



The receptionist at my old work is like that. I asked her where they keep the postage stamps, and she actually told me where to put them on the envelope and how to address it. Without telling me where they were, but while getting them for me. I was throughly choked with rage, but actually, she is just like that, and once spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes telling me, over and over, that her house was pink and they are repainting it yellow and the colour didn't turn out right. So bizzare. Actually, on occassions when I was in a jolly mood she was sort of relaxing, because there was no reason whatsoever not to zone out on her conversation. Very low content, very lengthy repetative speech, you could go away in your head for minutes at a time and not miss a thing.



I once knew a lady who'd had a head injury that rendered her unable to stop talking. You could say a sentance or two. Of course, she told everybody about her brain damage all the time, in her stream of constant talking, and apologized for it. At times when she had nothing to say (often, she wasn't all that bright) she'd fill in with silly basic stuff like that.

very frustrating, indeed. the other day i was chatting with two people, who as me didn't have English as their first language, all three of us were of different nationalities and although i was mostly only listening i was there right next to them and one of them asked about a word he couldn't recall, he explained what he wanted to say, it was 'autopsy', so i said loud out that it was autopsy. they just kept thinking, trying to remember how autopsy is called like i didn't just say it, so i repeated it even louder. and still nothing, i was wondering i was there actually physically or not. then one of them suddenly said, 'autopsy', very happy like he just found out all by himself. i stood up and left the room. i think they didn't even notice.