Too. Many. Friends.

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I sometimes feel like I must be the only aspie in the world struggling with this problem.

The fact of the matter is, I have TOO MANY FRIENDS. I don't know how to deal with it. I just seem to make more and more friends, and my brain can't handle the social overload. I care deeply about all my friends and don't want to see them hurt, but it's really gotten beyond the point of no return and I have to resolve the problem in one way or another.

Has anyone here gone through this and come out the other end without losing their mind? Does anyone know what to do in this situation without hurting a whole lot of people?

The fact is, I'm an aspie and I can't manage this amount of constant social interaction. It's actually slowly screwing up my mind.

It's so ironic, I actually managed to fluke and replicate the right friend making signals and it backfired badly.

I read back over what I just wrote and I can hear the frustration and edginess in it. I am worried that I will snap one day soon and deeply hurt someone I care about. I need advice.

My advice would be, you seem to lack a proper understanding of what a "friend" actually is or you are unable to read other people's intentions and are mis-labeling them as friends. If my "friend" were to come over and "really" need money, i would happily sell my computer, give him all my actual cash and what-not, because he is a friend.

How many of your friends would you do this for? and how many of them would do it for you? Anyone with more than one or two real friends is an absolute rarity, even amount popular sucessful NT's. If i were you, i'd think through my friends, put them in order of how true a friend they are, and treat those towards the end of the list appropriately.

I think the issue is not the semantics of the word "friend" but the difficulty in handling all that social interaction. I'm glad to see someone bring this up because many here seem to desperately want a more active social life without considering their ability to manage it. Maybe if you just told them you are someone who has to have some time alone in order to function or tell them you have a previous commitment even if that commitment is to take care of yourself. I don't have a social life but I have told people before that I am just not a social person and my distance is not personal.

I'm not portraying the issue as semantics, but trying to please too many people. You should only aim to please the people at the top of your list

OK sorry, I really have a problem with hyperlexia. I should read things 3 times before I respond.

Thankyou both, this is useful advice. My biggest problem is implementing it, as I find it very hard to turn people away and I go out of my way to avoid hurting peoples feelings.

I think they are real "friends" for the most part - I don't see any of them asking to lend money or anything; the only way I could see them using me is by using me for social interaction (but to them this is supposedly a two way enjoyment, so it's not intentional "using"). Plus, a lot of the social communication between me and my friends does involve them asking me how I am, etc. I believe they are real friends, maybe not all of them are "best" friends persay, but they are friends. Also, believe me that I know the difference between fake and real friends, as I have had fake friends in the past. I know how to tell the difference.

As Aimless said, the difficulty is in handling the social interacting. Tonight I just had a floor mate in my room talking to me for several hours, until I told her I had to go to sleep (even though it was 9:30pm), and the increased anxiety and stress for the forced over-social contact at a time when I was vulnerable to that (had low energy reserves) caused me to be awake (and it's now 1:16am) and eat massive amounts of chocolate and chips, which is highly distressing for me because I can't stand being even the slightest bit overweight.

I'd say to be honest with them. I'm not sure how they'll react but I think they may understand. I would hope that they do.

Seven hours is a lot of time. Apart from that, have you tried bach's rescue remedy? It may help a tincy bit to help you relax after the over-stimulation. If that doesn't work so well, st. johns wort may help. Both are herbal remedies that I have used in the past.

Though just to make you aware, st. johns wort is fairly strong (usually used for depression but used irregularly is ok for stress) and just because it's herbal doesn't mean you can take lots of it (stick to the recomended dose). Bach's rescue remedy is to calm and reduce minor stress

Hope this helps somehow.

Well, good luck with this, because I have never found a really good way of being friends with most people while limiting time together. Almost all people I've been friends with want to spend lots of time together. I need huge amounts of alone time. Just about every way I have tried to cut down on the time itself while preserving the friendship has failed. The two exceptions I can think of were folks who had strong aspie traits themselves and we are friends still after many years. It is a very unsatisfying dance with most people for me. I think it (time spent together) is a major aspect of friendship that does not fit into my life.

Each part of the original post seems rational, but as a whole the post does not make sense. It sounds like you are under stress and you worry about other people, who you will make them feel. I've observed that you call of the "friends" and you do not distinguish between close friend and distant friend, friendship based on a hobby, friendship based on "history", friends you like more and friends you like less, friends who you have known for a long time and the ones you just met. You do sound overwhelmed, but maybe not by the social interaction, but because you struggle to understand what the actual relationship between you and these people is. Are you in college? If so, no wonder you feel overwhelmed. Maybe try to avoid analyzing your friendships, and just do what comes naturally. What will you do with all these friends? Well, they are not calling you or bothering you right now, so maybe you can cross that bridge when you get there.

I have never gotten so far as to have the problem you have nor even thought about it before now, but I could instantly feel/sense how it could be.

It seems that you've found good friends who like and care about you. But they don't know how much is too much. There's no way they could know it, so it falls to you to let them know. Now you could just out and say "I'm sorry, but I have trouble handling a lot of social interaction. I really like you but I can't spend this much time with you," but I don't think that would work much better than "I have problems interacting with other people. Will you be my patient and understanding friend?" ever did. If it comes down to it this might work, but I would leave it for last resort. I think that most people have subtle signs they give off that tell other people when they are getting close to the limit. One big problem Aspies have is that they can't read these signs very well and drive right past them without noticing.

So, long term, I would say figure out what those signs are and then come up with a deliberate strategy to use them. You've done great getting to where you are now, I would sugest going back to the source of your success up to this point and see if there's any more help there. As for the short term, above all else you must keep your sanity. I know how hard it might be, I have a terrible time saying no to people. It's gotten me into trouble more than once. But you have to protect yourself first.

I hope this helps and that everything works out for you. You've gotten so far, but I think that there will probably always be farther to go for most of us. Good luck.

Years ago, there was this guy who for some inexplicable reason decided he wanted to be my friend. I didn't find him particularly interesting, in fact a bit annoying, but it's not my nature to be ugly to people, so I tolerated him. After awhile, he was dropping by my house unannounced at all hours and driving me crazy. No amount of hinting seemed to get through.

Finally, I found one of those plastic signs that small stores hang in their plate-glass doors that says OPEN on one side and SORRY, WE"RE CLOSED on the other, and hung the CLOSED sing on my front door. Next time he showed up, I simply refused to answer the door. He knocked and banged on it for at least a half hour. Of course my car was in the drive, so he knew I was probably home, but I never answered. Believe it or not, I had to do this several times before he got the message that he was coming over too much.

Sometimes you just have to insist on your solitude. A real friend would understand.

I may be young but I hope this helps even if it's just a little.
this used to be my issue as well and I did snap, extreme depression, thoughts of suicide, you get the point.
what I should have done is simplify the # of friends I had, I didn't and everything went down hill for me. so here would be my suggestion, look at every friend you have (might take some time depending on what works for you) hang out with a small group of friends on a regular basis instead of trying to be fair to everyone. that's what I tried to do and eventually I did hurt people I cared about by trying to spend time with everyone. This created stress much of like you are feeling right now, and people in general sense this and they don't want to be around that. I had 30-40 friends to start out with... now I have 3-4. I'm more happy with this small # than the 30-40, especially since they cared about me. I lost those friends by them leaving or by being extremely rude to me NOT by me leaving them. and don't forget that you can still be in contact with the people you don't always hang around. I think I understand your situation, but I've been wrong before so correct me if I'm wrong and sorry for jumping to conclusion if I am wrong.

can't say that I have this problem, but I have a few very close friends who happen to be very social and each of them has their circle of "satellites". so I often get invited by those satellites to parties and social outings to "make a crowd", but I almost always decline.

my advice- keep certain people at a distance, so they wouldn't be disappointed when you don't hang out.

Im not sure what to advise. It sounds like a tough situation. Is there any way you can punctuate time with friends with alone time? Such as constantly saying "Excuse me" and going outside, watching the world go by a bit. Come back, a few minutes with friends, then off again to read a bit of a book or photograph something, then back again. It sounds like you have conditioned yourself to be an NT-style friend but that can be unrealistic for an aspie.

No, I think you've hit the nail on the head. It's very comforting to hear from someone who's gone through the same thing. I actually did have that depression breakdown very recently (had a massive meltdown and had to go home for like 8 weeks, plus got diagnosed with depression, the lot). I too have 30-40 friends (probably plus even a few more on the internet). The problem is, I've only just recovered and tried to resume my life, but it seems like I haven't been able to change/fix the problem yet, which scares me because I don't want another breakdown. What you said sounds right, I need to cut down my number of friends. I think because I am living at college (and also because of my need to treat everyone equally, irrelevant of how close our friendship is - I believe it's aspie logic behind this) this will be very difficult but for the sake of my own health, and my life, I have to manage it somehow.

Btw, don't worry about your age, I'm no ageist. In fact, I'm impressed you've come this far and you're only 15; when I was 15 at school I was still a social reject for the most part although I had managed to make 2 or 3 friends by that stage.

anna-banana, I like your description of "satellites" and "make a crowd" it's a good way of describing social phenomenon. I think the problem is I keep accepting all the time, because I have been drilled from a young age by my parents to make friends in any way I can, and accept any/all invitations to social events I get (when I was in Primary School all I wanted to do at lunch was read by myself in the library, but my parents ordered me to go out in the playground and make friends, and ask people over to play), but it wasn't a problem before now because 99% of the time I got rejected (don't think I had the social cues I have now figured out very well ). Now I have to unlearn a lifetime of repetitive drilling, which is hard.

Can you get these as herbal teas?