This is a good topic because it's something that happens to us and we may not even realize it.
It is necessary for us to maintain our own thoughts. NTs may call it disassociation, but it's not.
When I am around others, I tend to become the unpaid therapist. This is because I was in my own comfy world as a child. When I went into "therapy" they cajoled me into thinking I was bad and broken. So I mimicked. I watched how others acted and eye contact and all that.
I never really got it, but got the basics. Eye contact, seering eye contact. People would say, "FreeCat really can focus on what i am saying!" (A teacher said that). No, it was because i found if I stare at you, you think I am listening but I can zone out.
So people thought I was their therapist. I don't mind an occasional person sharing with me. I like that and respect that and it is what friends do. but I mean the person who DUMPS on you always. Never stops. Dominates.
Then it progresses. Then they act like they are in their living room around you. They will play their own music loud on their phone, never thinking you might hate it because you are just the sounding board. They start with NT things I don't understand. Jokes and unsaid gestures and quips and saying one thing but meaning another or saying something I just cannot figure out and before long, to try to stay on top of it all, they are all I can think about---not because I am attaching, but because I now have to stay on my toes all the time to try to understand, to respond in the right way, not to meltdown when they push too far........
GOOD GRACIOUS, Go away!!! make it stop!!
People absorb me,
Rope me in,
Steal my mind, right
behind me back!
Pour their thoughts into my head,
their senses dead
while mine explode in rage
to engage......
madness!