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Keeping social commitments

Bolletje

Overly complicated potato
V.I.P Member
So, I've been here for a while and I've noticed that I'm (obviously) not the only one that often dreads social interaction while at the same time craving it.
What I'm interested in is how you maintain the balance between having enough alone time and making sure your social needs are met and your friends are happy. And how to deal with the dread of one-on-one interaction.

For me this is quite tricky. I get energy and positive feelings from some forms of social interaction, specifically when I can set the location and can leave whenever I want. For this reason most of my social interaction happens at my favorite local bar, where I'll just bump into my friends who show up regularly. Because I haven't made official plans with them I don't feel anxious about the interactions. The problem is mostly social interaction outside a bar.

I cherish my time alone, but when I spend too much time around the house I tend to slowly slide into depression. I don't feel like doing anything and I don't bother dressing up, cleaning up around the house or going outside at all (unless I need to buy groceries). I want to talk to friends, but choose to do so over WhatsApp instead of meeting them in person. When one of them wants to meet up I'll usually say yes, but the closer the appointment gets, the more I freak out and think of reasons to cancel. When I do cancel, I know I won't feel relieved but instead feel like a ****** friend and spend my night at home alone feeling like a failure. When I go ahead with the plans I will have fun but I'll have built up so much anxiety towards it that I'm emotionally exhausted and pretty much waiting for it to be over.

I'll feel like a ****** friend when I'm at someone else's house and glancing at the clock every five minutes to see whether I can leave yet. I'll also feel like a ****** friend when someone's at my place and I haven't cleaned it as much as I'd wanted to and I'm secretly hoping they'll leave early.

For instance, I have a friend coming over tonight whom I absolutely adore. While I'm looking forward to seeing her I feel like my house is way too messy to have someone over. I've known she's coming for two weeks now. I could've done something about the mess in the last few days, but instead I chose to watch Netflix in bed, hiding from the rising dread and thinking of excuses to cancel our plans. She wanted to have dinner together as well but I've made up some lame excuse so she'll come over later because I'm secretly scared we'll run out of things to talk about before the end of dinner.

What's the most annoying thing about all of this is that I know my friends love me and want to hang out with me without ulterior motives, and I know we get on pretty well, but I still dread every meeting that's not at my safe place (which is my bar). My boyfriend tries to be supportive by telling me to just go through with the plans because I'll have a good time. I know he's right, I just wish he could feel the absolute dread that fills me beforehand. I've been emotionally unstable all day because I've made plans to hang out with one of my best friends. How messed up is that?
 
I do have trouble but mostly because of food. I have to eat before and cannot eat there and if I have had two days of not eating by the thrid day I am in a bind because I am losing weight. I recently lost 7 pounds so I had to take around food with me and it has to be food I can eat which is mostly now only thinkgs like Ensure.

So the food chaos ruins it all. If I am losing weight and everyone is eating and complaining on how fat they are and I am starving and cannot eat and they think it is so great.........It would be easy for me not to eat and starve to death which I almost did. So this impedes it all. I don't want to starve to death.

Other things are that I know I will feelworse. I get closed in around people and that is stressful. It never goes well.

I like to be around people, though. I used to try to make social commitments but no more. It never works out so I had to a accept it.
 
I can relate to most, if not all, of this. I get really strong urges to cancel, but never do unless there's a legitimate reason. I'm always hoping for a legitimate reason because I don't feel guilty and I get this flood of relief that my social obligation has been canceled. I don't find made up reasons because I know how hurtful it is to have friends constantly cancel and I could never do that purposely. My former friend I sometimes talk about on here used to cancel on well over half the plans we made and it made me feel rejected and awful, so that's why I can't do that to others.

What I do is make sure I don't make too many social commitments. I'll make one a week or one every couple of weeks. I go online a lot those days I don't go anywhere because it fulfills a social need that's not exhausting.

Sometimes when I'm invited places by people, I'll force myself to go to get that social interaction. My husband has to practically kick me out of the house though. Usually, I find that I have a good time. Other times I get nothing out of it and it's discouraging. Depends on the people I guess.
 
It might be in your best interest to let them know that your place might be messy beforehand. That way, if someone doesn't like a messy place, they should have let you know beforehand.

For any events, if you can go with a friend you know this may help you. Reading this is giving me some ideas of how to warm up to people I'm connecting with well, but are still afraid to meet up anyway ironically.
 
In the end I texted my friend in the afternoon to let her know my house was a bit messy because I was having pretty bad anxiety attacks all day, but I still wanted to see her. So she came over, turns out she was PMSing so we had a good laugh about our rampaging emotions. Glad I didn't cancel, just wish I hadn't felt like I was dying all afternoon.
 
I'm glad you had a good time! I get the same way about stressing over visitors.. I don't feel too much anxiety about making plans outside my home, but yeah.. the messy house thing. I hate cleaning and I have a huge dog.

As far as not getting burnt out, I find I can only handle about one social thing a week. Less, if I'm dating someone. It doesn't give me a lot of chances to make commitments, but I know if I make more than that, I'll start to cancel. I also tend not to schedule things during pms week unless it's very close friends and something low key.
 

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