Feeling disconnected and like a lone entity

Post Reply New Topic

I am wondering if anyone else has ever felt this way. I do have friends that I care about very much and have been dating a wonderful man for a year now. I am a thirty eight year old woman and lately I have had this strange feeling of not being connected to anything. I don't mean this post to be a pity party or a complaint. It is just strange to be feeling like this. I just have this empty feeling of not being a part of anything. Sometimes I wonder if I had a family of my own then I wonder if the feelings of being disconnected would not be quite so strong.

Despite being more self-aware and improving my social skills somewhat there is still an invisible wall up between me and other people. It is difficult to make connections with other people in a way that most people cannot comprehend. So I think I will try to find a way to fill a void in my life that doesn't depend of making a connection with another person. Has anyone found a way to feel fulfilled and somehow connected to something?

Well, im not an adault, im 15 years of age, but i do feel like that. To be honest i felt like that for almost all of my life, never thought it was different, until about 2 yrs ago, dont know why i have it, but i do. I do what i can to fufill my needs.

you need to connect with someone. how? maybe you can cook something once in a while for the man you are dating? maybe he can cook for you or you could cook together? maybe you could find a 30 year old female to be friends with and to talk about work and dating like women do? do you have family like parents or cousins? can you take some role in their lives? can you mentor a teenage nephew or something?

detachment from reality, ive been there. what an awkward feeling

I totally get this - more and more with each passing year. I find it helps to do volunteer work - even though I don't really feel a strong connection to the people I'm working with, I do have plenty of skills to share (it makes me feel good to share.)

Still, I keep hoping that someday my various interactions & skill-sharing will start to develop into a feeling of connection.

Being married and having children had some effect on my feelings of disconnection, but not that much. With my husband dead and my children grown, I'm growing to appreciate and prefer that disconnection. Whether feeling disconnected is a good or bad thing probably depends on whether you're an extrovert or an introvert.

These days I feel disconnected from quite a few people, including people in my own family.

Sounds to me like depersonalization/derealization. I often experience both.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derealization

After a half-dozen failed 'serious' relationships, including multiple marriages, I have come to feel this way, as well. I'm much happier alone, than trying to keep some 'connection' alive with another person. They don't ever truly get me, nor I them, anyway. The struggle to keep another person emotionally fulfilled is just more than I have energy for.

Truth be told, as I've come to understand AS as a brain dysfunction, I realize more and more the incredible extent to which our thoughts, attitudes and behaviors are shaped not by our conscious decision-making - but by the basic wiring configurations in our brains. Our personalities don't determine our choices - the patterns in our synapses lead us toward those choices, making our independence of thought mostly an illusion.

Meaning that Aspies don't connect like NTs because we don't have the connectors built-in to our circuit boards. But if NTs do have those 'connectors', perhaps the 'connections' they feel are just a brain-chemical illusion to begin with.

Yes.

I've often felt disconnected because many people have a very different style of socialising and relating to my way.

I feel weird saying this, but, I think that I receive a far weaker socialising signal from others than most people, but the signal isn't absent altogether. I still pick up certain signals, even if sometimes these signals go get garbled.

But even when I've felt really rough and not all that responsive, I've always tried to help people. I try to hold on to this thought because I have helped and been appreciated.

This is a good idea.
It doesn't have to be anything spectacular.
It could even be interest related.
If you do a good job, they don't mind inviting you back.
It's good to feel useful, even if it's only temporary.

Playing friendly matches of rule based games such as cards or chess can help too.

I often feel disconnected. Because there are a lot of hierachys and social ladders at school and I don't see myself as part of that, I'm just my own person, yes I do have friends but I don't feel a part of the popularity scales I'm just me on my own my own group get what I mean?

Yes I feel like this a lot. An invisible wall is a very good way of describing it. I often feel as though I'm not part of anything or anyone, even when I'm talking to a close friend. It's that sense of being in my own universe and everyone on the outside isn't actually real or part of it, even though sometimes I want them to be.

Cetainly Yes, AutisticStar. That is quite familiar, and oft have wondered about it.

I have come to think that those with this spectrum phenomenon, precisely because we are so often excluded from the mainstream of human interaction (and are therefore not distracted into it) become keenly aware of the realities of the Human Condition. It is as though we from the coldish night outside, look into a warm radiant window at the goings-on of a home party. Not being inside, we see there is an outside; and we see that the that the home has dimensions, an end. And that there is the night.

Who within can see that what we see?

The disconnection then is that it is rare to find one who can see what it is that we see. The cost of seeing too keenly is a kind of detached loneliness. Where is the other?

Something that has helped is, if I try and be helpful or useful to others, it keeps me from thinking too much. It is only a distraction, but it helps.

Something that has helped me really, is to have the good fortune to find this site, and all of you who here write. It is truly comforting to know that, - though I have never met you, - it helps to know that you are, that you exist. I feel much less this detachment of loneliness.

To quote Annie Lennox:



"Something so Right" that's a good song, for the music and this whole "invisible wall" analogy.

Willard, our different neurology means we're getting different input to work with. What we do with the input we receive is our decision, though. I wouldn't say that neurology is determining of our choices but it certainly is determining of the input that filters into our thinking. My social mistakes have always been the product of receiving only verbal input and having the nonverbal input totally blocked from me. This is how I'm autistic - there's a whole (under)world I don't grasp and therefore I partially live within my own bubble.

I feel connected enough. I know the people at work, I have a family, I have two friends. However, I rarely have conversations with the people at work - I say hello to them and I can't seem to go any further than that; I only see my friends every month or two (or three); the only person in my family who I can really talk to is my mother - my relationship with every other person on the planet is either professional, casual, distant, awkward, or non-existent.

I think most people would consider this to be quite disconnected. But I often find there is too much connection for me in this mix. If I didn't have so many coworkers, maybe I would be more content, and I would be able to cherish and develop the other connections I have to people. But I don't seem to have the energy for deep connection. And I don't ant it either, because I get so tired I just want to be by myself in my own (solipsistic) world.