Connecting is natural, and bad social skills are a barrier
daydreamer84
Veteran
Joined: 8 Jul 2009
Age: 40
Gender: Female
Posts: 5,001
Location: My own little world
I'm the same way lately. People recommend books to read and movies to watch but I'm never in the mood.
The same thing, with books, music, etc. Been thinking a lot about why I can't control my interests. I just suddenly get into something, sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for years, and then my brain is automatically closed for anything else. And, when the interest is gone, I can't keep it up deliberately... I ruined my academic career for the only reason that I suddenly had enough of linguistics.
I relate to this. When I'm with my friend and her friends I have no idea what they're talking about 90% of the time. This could be easily remedied as I have lots of time on my hands but I just don't care enough to make myself keep up with current events, celebrity gossip or sports ect or watch a popular movie just to have something to talk about. I can;t even reading a different series of fantasy novels than the one I want to read, one more current and popular that my friend is also reading.
I'm not like that. Usually, the friendship fizzles in the fairly early stages because there's not much to talk about. I am not hard to contact. You're an NT woman. In my experience, my exhaustion comes because I feel like I'm always entertaining you, not the opposite.
My new pdoc thinks it's depression more than NLD/ASD and claims it will disappear with meds. We'll see.
Apologies, I was ranting there a little bit. However it seems through a lot of these threads that AS people get "bored" of NTs quite easily, I've had several aspies just stop writing to me completely out of the blue and I have a terrible fear that I said something or they became bored with my conversation. It's very frustrating, when I enjoy their company so much and the way that i'm used to friendships progressing actually starts going backwards. I have many NT friends but being with Aspies I really enjoy.
I'm not sure if my problem is more social, or one of connectivity. I can acquire a boatload of acquaintances, and some seek me out to say hello. The problem is making the bridge into "friend". There are people I can talk to and recognize the potential is there but it remains very situational. I also get very overwhelmed in new social situations and with hanging out in groups, so I'm probably just grasping at straws anyway. That lack is one of the defining criteria for autism, and if I haven't jumped that hurdle by now I don't think I will in the future.
I need to have a common activity to do together but most people are always too "busy" for that.
At this point, I usually jump to one of my favorite subjects which is the critique of modern civilization that seems to exterminate everything "meaningful". People get hooked on shopping, silly TV shows, superficial political ideas, etc., how can they be expected to produce, or even think of anything meaningful?
"Busyness" is a strange thing, by the way: I know people who push paper in the office 8 hours a day and consider themselves "busy". Unfortunately, my work includes some meaningless activities, too, but the feeling is quite the opposite: by the end of a busy workday I mostly feel that I've done nothing. Considering this, wasting the rest of the day on watching TV would be pure self destruction. But as far as I can see, the "normal" majority is ok with that.
(Disclaimer: I might be biased here because of limited experience. I haven't travelled much, so I'm not sure what's going on in other cities/countries, but all I see round here is that people do nothing but work for money and buy things... And all these things, like "I want new kitchen furniture" or "Buy yourself a new phone, yours looks awful".... I hear this even from clever people. This is definitely not what I would like to talk about.)
I've realized modern civilization is messed up for a while. I can't really rant about it without a receptive audience and after a while it gets me down anyways. My parents are the type who are generally "busy" with "stuff" and that's part of the reason I get depressed living with them. I have nothing against them enjoying decoration and home improvement but I just can't make myself care about any of that. I really have no interest in helping them with their projects and feel guilty about it. I just can't deal with it anymore. Maybe it would be different if I ever owned my own home but the ideal "American Dream" really just seems like a horrendous dull hassle. I figure with the internet there's ways around the problem. It seems like there has to be alternatives. If I could find like minded people to hang out with I'd be happy. I just don't really know where to start.
I'm not like that. Usually, the friendship fizzles in the fairly early stages because there's not much to talk about. I am not hard to contact. You're an NT woman. In my experience, my exhaustion comes because I feel like I'm always entertaining you, not the opposite.
My new pdoc thinks it's depression more than NLD/ASD and claims it will disappear with meds. We'll see.
Maybe it's just paranoia but to me it seems like there's an uncanny valley effect if you're on the high functioning end. People think you're normal but just slightly unusual. Someone who is obviously has the aspie/autistic traits and doesn't hide it is easier for an NT to interact with. They appear more innocent and aren't always trying to hide traits to fit in. They might even have a certain charm that attracts people. Sometimes I wish I could go back to when I was much younger and just talked about whatever happened to be on my mind without constantly second-guessing myself and/or trying to say only what I think the other person cares about. I think this reticence puts people off. They can see that the spark just isn't there.
Yeah the one thing that I would wish from my AS friends is to be more communicative and tell me their feelings. My friend was very high functioning and I did treat him just like any other of my friends, maybe that was a mistake of mine and I didn't understand him completely because of my limited knowledge of what he was going through. I expected from him the same social cues as any of my other NT friends.
It's a complicated thing about feelings. To report your feelings, you should be aware of them which is not always the case with the people on the spectrum. I'm very often confused about what I'm feeling; actually, the more extreme the situation, the more I'm overwhelmed and the less I can tell. For this reason, I can be very open when talking about facts, but when I'm asked about feelings, I'm most likely to say that I'm feeling nothing, or that I don't know. Well, I can talk about emotions and people's hidden motives, but it's reasoning rather than feeling, and actually it's boring.
Then, there's another thing: very often, when I'm expected to show some feelings, it feels like I have to fake them. It does not mean that I don't have the feelings; I'm just too unnatural in social situations, never really relaxed. I know that sometimes it looks like my emotional reactions are inappropriate.
You wrote in this thread that some people here on the forum stopped writing to you for no apparent reason. They might be just going through some hard times in their lives. When I'm stressed, writing letters or making phone calls becomes a very hard task. High functioning people can be almost normal under normal conditions; but when the situation is challenging, you can see the impairment.
So, you know, they can just write again some day when you already think it's all over.
I think it would be a reasonable approach (at least with people on the AS) to deal with this is in a direct manner - simply ask why they stopped writing (or even more direct: whether you said something wrong or boring). There's no point in feeling bad about something you don't really know.
_________________
What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant. - D.F.W.
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