Published on 12, July, 2020
Gt granddaughter is 1 today. She's having a party tomorrow. I'm going but am dreading it. The whole socialising thing outside of immediate family/stepfamily is so damn hard . Initiating conversations a no no, body posture - am I looking gone out/like a freak? , sitting their in awkward silence while the conversation flows around me .
I do that lol
I hear all the conversations at once and on rare occasions can’t make sense of any of it, normally I just focus extra hard on the relevant convo
I actually hate socialising and I hate having To engage in awkward silence. But I do not see how awkward I am, I’m awkward in general but social situations make it worse.
I feel like everybody Is embarrassed when we go out or people come over because I can happily sit there in silence.
I even struggle with immediate family as they don’t appear to understand me whatsoever.
Well this sounds familiar. Socialising with people I don't know. Sometimes I can't work out whether I struggle with it, or whether I just can't be bothered? It's all very draining.
Went. Spoke very little. Almost all to my two granddaughters. The others there didn't try to engage me in conversation.
Ah, great! Bizarre how cats have a sixth sense like that. I once had someone over who'd 'recovered' from severe anorexia. She stayed for about three hours. In that time span our female cat brought in:
All of them straight through the catflap and in one line to the girl's feet. It was unreal. Really as if to tell her: Girl, you need to eat.
She never visited again by the way.
Very true.... bottom line.. socialising is hard because it involves other people who don’t necessarily know each other, like each other, or share similar outlooks or wiring.., it’s a very unnatural construct.... :)
It's even better when the pets return the love and attention.
I'm a cat person and female cats respond by rubbing noses with me.
Pets are great distraction material too. Oh and helping out in the kitchen!!!
Haha this made me laugh. Cats scare me though. If it was a dog however it would definitely come before the adults.
Haha this is the kind of thing I would do. I find social events much easier when there are children there. I just relate to them easier and feel much more comfortable entertaining them than I do trying to have a conversation with an adult.
Last time I had to go to a wedding I was told I looked like I wanted to kill myself. It was a very long and awkward evening.
Last time I attended a wedding, I ended up hanging on some kind of children's play castle with a 7 year old whose language I didn't speak. We also did the see-saw and the swing. It says it all really.
My parents would have gone: 'please, can't you behave?'
I was 38 at the time and wearing a summer dress that was knee-length...
I'll confess to being scared too. I'm going because I think it's expected of me. My granddaughter who is taking me has said I can ask to go home when I need to. The thing is balancing what would be an acceptable time to be there with avoiding becoming too stressed. I do think the advice to people not on the spectrum to tell others the person they know is on ,or probably on, the spectrum is good (Prepare your other NT friends for your aspie friend)
Most of the topics I'd want to talk about ,such as mental health and politics , are conversational non starters. Also how and when do you go up to someone and start engaging in conversation? Then there's the whole thing of processing your responses in real time which probably equates to being spontaneous .
I would end up ignoring all the people and playing with the cat.
An excellent checklist of do's and don't.
But knowing what to do and actually doing it. Are very different skills and abilities.
I still avoid social situations. I have learnt how to function ok in well structured encounters such as shopping, short meetings with people I recognise. But open ended parties terrify me.
A room full of people is difficult noise wise too. I always get distracted by the conversations near me, and can't focus on the conversation I was engaged in.
I find initiating conversation hard. Especially in a room of lots of people. I need someone to hook me in on something I'm interested in - then I feel more comfortable and can chat away. The thing I don't get is I know some basic rules like if someone asks you a question you should answer and ask them in return. But for some reason I find it really difficult to ask them back.
At a kids party, I would probably ignore the adults and play with the kids.
Aaaah, that's actually really helpful.
I used to think of topics to talk about before social gatherings, but I do find they only help for a few minutes.
I seriously have no idea what people spontaneously talk about.
Borrowed from aspergers100.com
Here are a few basics to help you in social situations: