Have you ever experienced the following and would you attribute it to Autism?

[Clueless in Canada]

Yes, I have similar experiences to what you are describing. Generally I don't want to converse with people very often unless there is a topic I would like to discuss. I dislike social group conversations unless the group is people I know very well and it is five or fewer. I am not good at asking questions to keep a conversation flowing though I am very good at answering them with too much detail. Recently I had to stand in a line at the bank for half an hour and the elderly man who lined up behind me was a chatty extrovert. He struck up a conversation and I mainly nodded and grunted or made what I hope are appropriate sounds. In the course of half an hour I thought of one comment that included a question related to what he was talking about. I felt so proud of myself. The relief was huge when it was finally my turn with the bank teller.

 

[jorgealarcon]

I can relate to one of these of having to use a great deal of my time to pursue whatever I am engaged in. Al of my time gets taken up quite fast. So I definitely can relate with this one.

 

[paloftoon]

I think the first two bullet points have affected me, but not so much the last two.
I think I have a sixth sense to know once in awhile if the quietness is due to simply not knowing what to say or if a person is not into me.
Maybe such a potentially awkward silence could be a good time to make a slight flirt and see the response. If the response is not satisfactory, then that gives you space to ask if the person likes doing sexual things (in the long term) or if they aren't into you as a potential partner.

 

[tducey]

I relate to all 4.

 

[Aspychata]

I flunked the PTSD test. Being antisocial falls in that spectrum also. But l have enough nuances to feel l belong here.

 

[anxiety247]

I had the exact same experience. I lived in shared space flats for 10 years and hated every moment of it. I didn’t eat properly for a long time because my flat mates hung out in the kitchen a lot, so I just ate crackers which I stashed in my room. At some point the anxiety got so bad I started peeing in the sink in my room rather than brave the communal area to go to the bathroom. That’s when I decided I just really couldn’t handle communal living.
These days I live with my boyfriend, who is just as weird as I am, so I have no trouble being around him and talking to him.

That's awful you had to deal with it for 10 years!

I shared with someone for about 3 or 4 years and I would do that exact same thing avoiding the kitchen and then when I would go in there and try not to make any noise because if I do, the person would walk in to get something because they know I was in there. I don't know if they did that on purpose but it really irked me. Just wanted to make food without someone standing there watching me

 

[Baeraad]

The first two certainly sounds like par for the course for me.

As for the last two... I don't think I ever want to want to socialise, I just know that if I do, I'll feel better afterward because I've reconnected to humanity and maybe gotten some new perspectives and ideas that I can now mull over in peace. I want to have socialised, I guess. In the same way that I want to have exercised.

 

[SpecG]

I relate to the first three. But I also have a healthy dose of anxiety disorder and social anxiety, so who knows which is which.

Are ASC related anxiety and the ones mentioned different?

 

[Autistamatic]

Anxiety is anxiety. There is no special "ASC" anxiety. NT people experience anxiety the same way we do and often for similar reasons. Look at the news story all over the media today about the suicidal girl from "Little Mix" who was driven to nearly tragic consequences by anxiety over what people thought of her on social media for an example.

Autistic people are far more prone to being anxious though and specific Social Anxiety is commonplace amongst us. The jury is out as to whether it is an inherent tendency or is a result of the way we are treated in general. Autistic people do not generally fit well into NT social dynamics, yet we keep punishing ourselves by attempting to do so.

There is research that suggests that anxiety is less when autistic people mix and socialise with other autistic people or when we withdraw, but not enough to draw firm conclusions yet.

 

[righan]

I don't know about it being autism related ... but I do know I experience these. More the first two and last one than the third. However, my wife is prone to the third one.

With the feeling of needing keep conversations going ... this is huge for me when dealing with other people ... particularly individuals. If there is every this kind of silence ... where the talking stops ... I feel like I need to fill it ... but I don't always have something meaningful to say ... and I'm bad at small talk ... usually at this point I say something nonsensical or random like "bunnies" or "I love you" (when its my wife) ... it doesn't usually get the conversation going but its just a coping mechanism for dealing with the sense of emptiness from the gap in conversation ... of reaching this place in a conversation and not knowing what I'm supposed to do. I think it might be a form of stimming.

When I was young and I hit those gaps I used to ask people what they were thinking or feeling or was going through their mind ... but I found people didn't like that. Or not that they didn't like it, but that they usually didn't know or didn't want to talk about it and so it was just frustrating for them ... which was less useful than saying something random.

Now, when I'm with people I know, I keep a list of things that they like to talk about and I learn about those things. So when I see them and conversation stalls, I have subjects ready to talk to them about. Or a list of things I can ask them questions about at least. With some people, I just jabber about my current special interest ... and I can go on for hours. However, a lot of that comes from a sense that I am responsible for the conversation ... because when I am in a group and they are talking ... I usually don't participate. I don't talk. I usually just watch. Its only when I feel responsible for making the conversation work that I'm a jabber box (or if I've got a particularly strong need to talk about what I'm working on/researching)

I'm not sure what happens if you are talking to someone and conversation hits a road bump and then you don't do anything ... I guess you stop talking. When talking is all you are doing though ... having that stop means now you just have a person in your house and you aren't doing anything with them ... its awkward and weird.

My wife and I have solved this largely by only talking while doing other things, like watching TV. We'll watch a show and something in the show will make us want to talk ... so stop the show and start talking ... and then when the conversation stalls ... we go back to watching our show. It also works well if you are playing cards or doing some other kind of thing. It really reduces the stress to keep the conversation going, because socialization doesn't end just because you stopped talking. So I recommend if you are hanging out with people to not just talk ... do something else too ... even if you don't really like what your doing (I hate card games ... I can't seem to understand them) ... but it fills in that gap and doesn't leave you with this awkward silence that you need to fill ...

Or just avoid people. I'm good with that too. It's my wife who likes people.

Which brings up the third item ... I said i don't have that issue, but my wife does ... she does that all the time. She makes plans with people and then when the day comes she whines to me that she doesn't want to do it ... she wishes she hadn't made plans with them ... etc. The big difference between me and her is I know that that I don't know how I'm going to feel in a few weeks ... so I don't like making plans very far in advance ... even if it seems like a good idea right now.

She has a hard time remembering that she's probably going to change her mind, so if someone says "lets get together in two weeks" ... which is totally out of her frame of reference ... she says 'sure!' ... because she's not even thinking about how she'll feel then.

I think this has a lot less to do with socialization and more to do with how one plans in general ... about the ability to look at the future ... versus what sounds good right now. My wife is very in the moment. Very instant gratification. Very much 'right now'. So she isn't thinking about how she's going to feel in two weeks or even two hours. She gets caught up in the moment and in this moment it sounds like a really good idea and thats all she's thinking about.

The reason it seems more obvious with socialization over other things is because when we make plans with ourselves and then change them we barely notice because no one cares ... we have no responsibility to follow through ... however, when other people are involved, we are expected to follow through even if we have changed our mind so it becomes more obvious.

However, unlike my wife, I think about the future and past a lot ... and I like plans ... and when I make a plan I like to keep it ... and my wife changing her plans all the time impacts my plans ... even if they are just plans with herself ... so I notice that she does it ... even if she doesn't. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you make a lot of plans with yourself and then change them. It just doesn't bother you.

If that is the case, that's not a socialization problem ... its a planning problem or a commitment problem.

The solution is the same ... don't make plans with people more than a few days in advance. If someone says 'lets plan to get together in a few weeks' ... say 'I don't know what I'll have going on then, why don't we talk when it gets a little closer to that time' ... you want to keep your plans soft, so you can bail when you ultimately change your mind ... or so you can follow through if you are still interested. Keeping plans soft might actually make you feel better about following through, since you might actually be reacting to the sense of 'having to do it' ... of the commitment ... I've observed that having to do something can often make people not want to do it, even if they don't mind or would be willing normally.

 

[Pats]

I just pretend to be Batman. He doesn't socialize much anyway.