Hi everyone,
I'm new here, this is my first post.
I'm just in the process of finding out things about myself and make sense of things. My therapist thinks I might be on the spectrum due to some of my experiences.
I've been constantly told I was " in my own head" since childhood, I was bullied a lot for it. People would say I was stupid and I was not paying attention. I was always in an imaginary world, either in my head thinking about things I saw/hear during the day or immerse in my favourite books, playing by myself.
I was interested in my book characters but not in my peers and I didn't seem to quite understand why people would want to share time with each other making up games and stories.
I've always felt people spoke a strange language to me and make fun of me because I could not understand it. Sometimes I would even laugh at their jokes about me, because I had learned when people say things and laugh that's a joke and you have to laugh as well. But I could sense somehow it was not a good thing and they were laughing because I did something "wrong".
I've been very lonely and isolated as a child but I've slowly learned you could do things to be accepted, and if you were "quiet" and did not show your self too much you wouldn't draw much attention to yourself.
As a teen I put on tight trousers to fit in despite hating the feeling on my legs, I tried to make myself more "interesting" learning jokes from TV shows and other people and waiting the right time to pop that into the conversation and make others laugh. I learned it was not ok to talk over people and that if someone said "I'm happy because I bought a new bag" it was not ok to take the bag as the main topic and talk for 30 mins about my bag as that made me look uninterested in others.
People complained I never asked how they are, so I learned how to be "empathic" by saying things like "I'm sorry to hear" when they were sad or learned phrases like "it must be tough" but I really just say because that's the right thing to do and sometimes I don't feel really sorry despite I care or more than that ,I don't know what to say as my mind goes blank, or I just take it as a plain information and I don't react.
Conversations are difficult if I don't have a topic to talk about, I feel lost when someone asks "how are you?" Or "what did you do this week? and my mind just goes blank like "what should I say?" I sat on the couch, I've eaten, like the usual..what do you want me to tell exactly? There are so many things, which one should I say? So I try to take example from conversations I've heard.
I feel like a copycat, a fake, like I'm an actor and I'm just saying my lines. Small talk exhausts me to no end as it feels pointless and I'm not good at talking about things I cannot relate to. I could talk hours about something I'm interested in but otherwise I'd rather stay home because the idea of going to a pub and meeting someone I don't know well freaks me out as I have no clue how to get to know them and which questions should I ask and how to establish that connection.
Can anyone relate? Sometimes I just feel so different from everyone like no one gets me like I have a wall between me and others and they can see me but they can never reach me.
My NT partner said she has learned social skills as well and they are not completely "natural" so I'm not sure if my struggles are an ASD thing (I'm not officially diagnosed but I can relate to some people on the spectrum). So I might have just poor social skills, I just feel everyone else can do certain things quite naturally and for me is a lot of effort. How is it for you?
Thanks for reading and sorry that is so long!!
I was just curious of hearing what's your experiences and how you feel about yourself