What if I like not 'fitting in'?

[Dias]

Well, how to put it in to words? I never fitted in and never will. When I am in a social environment I feel completely zombie...that is how I can describe it. I must be so completely out of this reality or shut down that I am not even aware of what others think of me. Never tried to copy anyone but was also never able to be spontaneous in my ways. A zombie all my life...But I was never bullied, mocked sometimes yes, but I always thought that this happens with everyone. In fact I think people are afraid and intimidated by me
Instinctively I have always known that it was better for me to shut up and be alone, anyway I do not like the conversations and behaviours of most people so in that sense I never tried to fit in because I just did not want to become like them.
My issue is not and never was fitting in society, I also don't want a biological cure, what I want is to know myself, accept myself, and learn to cope with my difficulties in a way that I stop hurting myself and those around me. I also wish I could tell a joke sometimes or talk in a more humorous way to make people smile and relax around me , but I think I get to serious and scare people out sometimes I laugh when I am alone thinking about the reactions I provoke in people but most of the times I get angry with myself...the pressure they put on us women to be kind and always nice and feminine is really unrealistic...
It takes me 40 minutes to write a post like this. Is it the same for you?

 

[BlueSky Aozora]

I have experienced what you speak of. It is very irritating. I feel like, I am very easy to talk/spend time with. Why does this person look frustrated? It has to do with us not getting small talk or not understanding how to climb the social ladder.

Yes, i agree. Small talk.. Sometimes i wonder, is it just because they're talking about something that only they know & never mentioned to me before... And i wonder how do NT responds when they're in the same situation as me... I then find myself shut up & just listening because i dont know what they're talking about. I wish i could respond better.

Climbing social ladder.. Tricky! So many unspoken rules. Thank you for the reply

 

[BlueSky Aozora]

Hey Blue Yes I have felt what you feel. I still don't know if it's me just overthinking or if my friends at times DO have more 'fun' talking or spending time with other friends than with me. I have pondered about that for a while. After a long period of overthinking and getting all depressed about it, I got sick and tired of this endless cycle and decided that no matter what pleases people, I will not compromise my very self just to please others. If my friends have more fun talking with others, that's fine by me now. I no longer care. Same applies to the not fitting at work part as you mentioned. I had been in your place for years trust me, I know the feeling. At some point you will reach your limits and decide that fitting in, being 'pleasing' or just getting along with everyone is simply NOT worth you compromising yourself. As for the coping part, when I used to care so much about that stuff, I'd cope by doing stuff I liked (drawing, listening to music, taking walks,etc..), or going online and talking with like minded people who would understand me. I hope I could help you. If you need anything else, feel free to pm me

Thank you for the reply, very helpful
So, it's ok if our friends are happier with others than with us.. Yeah, who cares Maybe they actually didnt feel bad about us, and maybe i'm just overthinking

So, just let it be, just accept it, stop overthinking, stop trying to please others, just be polite, and do things that we like.. Thanks

 

[paloftoon]

I know what you mean in this thread. It's really more about "surviving" and "tolerating" rather than "fitting in." Like, you don't want to be subjected to unnecessary negativity, but in the back of your mind, you also want to balance your life properly because you can't necessarily like everything you do 100%. It's all about balance. Always a difficult beast.

 

[Gift2humanity]

I think most people on the spectrum would agree that fitting in has been one of our major stress factors in life. For me it was, for a long time. I didn't really know why I 'had' to fit in, but I felt that I did and I always strived for it...sometimes I was successful and able to mask my difficulties...but that usually meant that I had to act in a ridiculously...'foreign' to me way, far away from who I really was when I felt comfortable or when being in my safe zone. But during the past few years, even before my discovery of my autism, I've realized that I'm just..tired. Tired of trying, of pretending, of being constantly on the edge..tired of not being me. Whatever that is. I've also come to terms with the fact that I never really wanted to fit in, nor do I want to now.

I don't want to change what I'm made of (spectrum and 'asexuality' wise), or to immitate the norm anymore. I'm fine with having Aspergers. I'm happy with it. I'm also happy being sex repulsed. Despite society's general belief that people who are like that must either be mentally sick or previously abused or anything, I don't care. Regardless of any possible mental/emotional challenge or the existence or not of some abuse, I don't mind being asexual and I certainly don't mind having Aspergers. For the first time in my life, I'm comfortable with who I am. 'Fitting in', is not part of my goals. Improving myself and my confidence in who I am, is. Fitting into some societal box that most people of the norm or even most therapists might want, is not.


P.S. Sorry if my English is confusing sometimes, it's not my native language.

I strove to fit in at school and at work which cost me dearly.
I am now in my 50's and 'lost' my personality because I was so ashamed of it at such a young age that I forgot who I was.
I am high IQ and a great artist and perfect pitch singer.
I started smoking at 28yrs old, and started drinking at about 16 (the little voice inside me at 12 saying 'don't drink' being too subtle for me to hear at the time)
I even let so called friends make a fool of me and abuse me rather than be alone.
Really, if I stuck to who I was I would have been a bookworm, but a happy and much wiser bookwork with no smoking and health problems.
Drugs and not knowing who i was in my 2015 ASD assessment caused me to get a false NT diagnosis because I told the assessors who I though I was/wanted to be at the time, because I did not know until the last couple of years who i really was.
Stilll, there is breath in my body and my pulse is still going so there is time to do my duty and share my talents with the world.
Fitting in comes at a great cost.

 

[Sherlock77]

I strove to fit in at school and at work which cost me dearly.
I am now in my 50's and 'lost' my personality because I was so ashamed of it at such a young age that I forgot who I was.
I am high IQ and a great artist and perfect pitch singer.
I started smoking at 28yrs old, and started drinking at about 16 (the little voice inside me at 12 saying 'don't drink' being too subtle for me to hear at the time)
I even let so called friends make a fool of me and abuse me rather than be alone.
Really, if I stuck to who I was I would have been a bookworm, but a happy and much wiser bookwork with no smoking and health problems.
Drugs and not knowing who i was in my 2015 ASD assessment caused me to get a false NT diagnosis because I told the assessors who I though I was/wanted to be at the time, because I did not know until the last couple of years who i really was.
Stilll, there is breath in my body and my pulse is still going so there is time to do my duty and share my talents with the world.
Fitting in comes at a great cost.

What you just said best defines why I've never tried to fit in, even long before I had a clue about Asperger's...

 

[SageRose]

I strove to fit in at school and at work which cost me dearly.
I am now in my 50's and 'lost' my personality because I was so ashamed of it at such a young age that I forgot who I was.
I am high IQ and a great artist and perfect pitch singer.
I started smoking at 28yrs old, and started drinking at about 16 (the little voice inside me at 12 saying 'don't drink' being too subtle for me to hear at the time)
I even let so called friends make a fool of me and abuse me rather than be alone.
Really, if I stuck to who I was I would have been a bookworm, but a happy and much wiser bookwork with no smoking and health problems.
Drugs and not knowing who i was in my 2015 ASD assessment caused me to get a false NT diagnosis because I told the assessors who I though I was/wanted to be at the time, because I did not know until the last couple of years who i really was.
Stilll, there is breath in my body and my pulse is still going so there is time to do my duty and share my talents with the world.
Fitting in comes at a great cost.

Despite not having your experience, I can feel the struggle you describe because for the limited years I had been trying to fit in, I literally sacrificed anything that defined me as an individual. Even until a few years ago, I didn't know who I am. In fact, there are many things I still struggle to figure out about myself right now as we speak, like what sort of 'talent' do I have, IF I even have a talent because I think the whole 'talent' thing is a bit of an exagerrated myth just to cause more stress to people. I'm sure there are lots of talented people out there like you, my sister,etc..but I don't think all people are like that. I also struggle to figure out what sort of job I'd like to do on a permanent basis, if I can and many other things I still wonder about. But for most of it, I have found my identity, which is as far away from what I had been trying to be in the past, as it can.

And not to even mention the health issues I've been having, mainly psychologically, due to all that pressure. Social anxiety, melancholy, etc..

I'm glad that you have found the meaning in your life and are determined to improve it with no longer trying to be someone else, I'm really happy for you and for anyone else who does that

 

[SageRose]

What you just said best defines why I've never tried to fit in, even long before I had a clue about Asperger's...

Lucky xD I wish I had been like that too. But I know..we shouldn't regret stuff, it's pointless. I guess our mistakes teach us valuable lessons in life.

 

[interim]

I believe this society made me suffer from autism... Biologically, there was nothing that wrong with me. And IMO, this is something that will get more and more widespread. People are too stupid and too corrupted to understand what is really causing that problem. And this is the unnatural and unhealthy way of modern living in huge cities and mass culture.

I was overall pretty well until I got into the school system. And actually just now, I fully realize, why exactly this happened to me. Up until school, you can chose your friends, and how to interact with them. Everything was natural. But when they put you in the school system, the game changes drastically - it's now about "fitting in", interacting with everybody. You are obligated to be with these random people - your schoolmates, your teachers and somehow adapt, conform, and just "deal with it". This is preparation of course for working a real job, again, with random bunch of people, conform, socialize, at least to the extend to create "working relationships". It was all fake to me, superficial, I din't understand at the time why I should just "fit in", and just do what everybody else. So I refused to do it, growing more and more emotionally and intellectually distant from everybody else. Actually I saw ex-friends of mine, going through this grinder, changing, "growing up", and asking myself - who is really worse? What is really the disease here? Since if I compare what they were before and after this change, my internal moral system didn't allow me to say that they become really better, on the contrary... They become more aggressive, they copied bad behavior, they act like herd animals.

The truth is that some people are just more sensitive. It may be to unhealthy extend, to the point they can't relate and socialize with anybody else. Or they can just have more specific expectations about the people they want to relate with. For the so called psychology, if you can't be that gear in the current socio-economic system, fit into any random group of people, execute your roles - work, marry, kids, socialize - you are "defective". It will never admit, that autism syndromes are also barometer for getting to far from living a natural healthy life, so more and more people are thrown out of the train.

I don't complain. All these things made me think about a lot of things, life here, what it really is, how deep the lies go really.

 

[blue_bird]

I always been a loner because being around people made me feel uncomfortable. Just watching how others interacted with one another made me feel inferior, since their behaviour seemed unattainable. Their 'normal' was not my 'normal'.

As a result, I like 'not fitting in', since fitting in requires me to be in situations where I feel uncomfortable around people who seem to find social interactions undaunting.