Creating narratives in your head

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Not sure if I should post this here, or in the dating subforum, but this makes more sense to me right now.

So, for nearly two years I've had a crush on a colleague. At one point I had the feeling she was aware of it and felt uncomfortable with it. I figured it made sense to sit down with her and talk it out, but it turned out she didn't have a clue, so it was a bit of a surprise for her.

I guess I've created a story in my head that had no bearing on what was really happening, which I feel has happened more often. I understand that not always having a great grip on social interactions is not unique for someone who's autistic , but I'm wondering if more people have created narratives in their head that turned out to be wrong. I should work on this, probably try not to live in my head too much, but I'm not sure how to develop this skill. I'm not even really sure what skill I should work on. It kind of feels like I don't have a great handle on reality, I guess.

(By the way, I'm not quite new here, although this is a new account, but happy to meet you all!)

Yes.

And this is why I don't identify with my thoughts and feelings well.
Because the human and *I am* are different, yet had to experience as if being one.

That said thoughts and feelings needed double checks, needed discernment...
Needed processing to go past through, to transition or shift into something more grounded into reality or at least ideally practical.

If not, it's just another crap to regulate -- dysregulation implies crappy mental health.
Or an annoying pest born from ego, internal habits or subconscious beliefs that are or will hold you back.


I myself am not very focused at improving socializing nor make it a priority for me.

My work around would just be more data, more explicit explanations, more critical thoughts and patterns drawn from experience, to deduce or infer from all of it.



There's me and my library of human fundamentals, applied and that sees through the social masks of everyday human under social contract.

And then there's the human self who assumes and guesses, who reacts and judge, whose beliefs and sentiments are their basis of what is happening.


Then there's the autistic processing that is also not limited to socialization aspects like contextualization, body language and tone, emotional and cultural; there's sensory, there's cognitive, there's the rewards systems...


Then in-between, overlapping; your upbringing and circumstances, your situations past and present, your relationships towards anything and everything.
Your so called personality and how much it is aligned with your authentic self.



In any case, I don't have an appropriate example of any scenario because;

One; socialization is culturally relative.
Unless I can draw specific examples that are more or less universal than contextual with minimum translations needed...

Two; my own dataset fluctuates and how it executes is not very consistent. So are my memory, so are the things I choose to recall.

Three; again, I have a very different prioritization of things. The same can be said with sentiments, which I do not recommend.

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Hi Edna, thanks for your reply!

One word that stands out to me is 'ego'. I guess I maybe do tend to think too much about my own role in a situation. Maybe I look for meaning behind the wrong things because I want to feel involved, or feel like I’m important somehow. For example, someone looking uneasy (if I’m even reading that right) can have any number of reasons, so it doesn’t necessarily make sense to assume it has anything to do with me. I guess I start looking for breadcrumbs a bit too quickly and start seeing patterns when there are none. Seems like something I can work on though.

In regards to improving socializing, most of the time I don’t worry about that too much either, but there’s a practical side (mostly at work) and I sometimes feel like I’m a bit of an annoyance maybe. Or kinda needy…? But then again, that might be me focussing too much on myself again.

As for collecting more data and critical thinking, the former seems like the best solution. To some extend I guess I have to accept I’m bad at this, and might be better off just asking rather than trying to figure things out. Critical thinking Is where I get lost in my own head though. In some ways I’m pretty capable, but in other cases, that’s where I end up in situations like the one I described in the OP.