Amebix wrote:
Today I had an emotionally painful experience that actually prompted me to join this forum.
I'm starting grad school and today there was a social/networking event for current students. We each went around and talked to each other about our interests, backgrounds, etc. Repeatedly the person I was talking to would excuse themselves and walk away, maybe go somewhere else or leave. In most cases it gave me a clear sense of social rejection, which at this point I'm getting pretty familiar with.
This is painful because I thought I was getting pretty good and experienced at being socially savvy. I've worked hard at training myself in social skills. After a lonely couple years in undergrad I studied abroad and became friends with a bunch of foreign students, which prompted me to join a bunch of extracurricular student groups at my university back home. I did so, and even though I was painfully awkward at some of the gatherings and meetings, I had fun and started making friends and going to parties, plus I could feel myself improving socially. Then I joined the Peace Corps where I had to work with people constantly. I went to every volunteer party less out of enjoyment than out of social training. I got truly bullied for the first time in my life by an older volunteer in her late 20s (I'd also been treated very badly by a couple close friends in high school and middle school, but back then I was too naive to identify the situation and stand up for myself, probably because of a low sense of self-worth), and this prompted me to obsessively read every social skills book I could get my hands on, from How to Win Friends and Influence People to more recent popular works like The Charisma Myth. By the end of my Peace Corps service I was even pretty well-known and well-liked. After that I worked at a bookstore and had was generally well-liked by my co-workers despite being a bit of a screw up because of ADHD/spectrum problems that people often have in retail. But after today I feel like I'm back at square one. I could feel the awkwardness in my conversations, and I became paranoid at the thought of coming off as strange, which I knew I was.
I never tell anyone what I've been diagnosed with aside from ADHD. When I was a child I was diagnosed with ADHD and PDD-NOS, which at that time psychologists were just using to label kids who were "sub-threshold autism" - in other words, I showed the symptoms of Asperger's, but not strongly enough for them to want to label me AS... but they still wanted to label me as something. Throughout my childhood no one expected anything of me; one teacher in the first or second grade told my mother I would need assistance for the rest of my life, and that she could "forget about college". Despite decent grades and good standing with teachers, my high school advisor urged me to consider not going to college, as it's "not for everyone", and she even urged me to choose a community college. I ignored her and went to the best public university in my state, and never alerted anyone at my university of my diagnoses because I didn't want the label any more. Since starting college I've never told anyone about the PDD-NOS/AS diagnosis because I never wanted it to hold me back ever again. But after today I still feel like a freak. I've been drinking all afternoon.
Any feedback is appreciated.
You had an off day. It happens to everyone. And universities are magnets for people on the spectrum. I would say a good number of my professors struggled with social awkwardness. You should see what resources your school has for those on the spectrum and those who struggle socially. They might have social skills workshops and similar resources.
02 Sep 2016, 7:48 pm
