Being observed

For essentially my whole life I've hated doing things where people can see me doing them. I noticed it a lot during school, because I would hate doing work around my peers. The hating doing work where people can see me thing particularly came to light in sixth form, where during "study periods" I would never study because I felt like I was being watched, and it made me super uncomfortable. If I ever needed to get any work done I had to go to the isolated study booths in the library where people couldn't see me, but there was only a few so they often weren't available. I think this is part of why I underperformed in my a-levels. 

Now that I'm out of school, I notice more that it manifests in literally everything else I do. I hate cleaning when people are at home, I can't cook when people are in the kitchen, it took me months to be able to shower when people are home because I can hear the shower from anywhere in the house and therefore people will know I'm showering, which my brain doesn't like. I also do everything super quietly all the time, even stuff like opening the fridge. I just don't like that people can see or know what I'm doing ever, and I feel as though maybe it comes from being told I'm doing things "the wrong way" so much growing up. Or maybe it's just an autistic thing. Hence this post. Does anyone else feel similarly? I feel like this isn't something I see being talked about a lot, and so I'm curious as to whether it's the autism or just me being "weird" in some other way.

Parents
  • I think that it is autism-related. I have it too, I get very nervous when being watched when doing anything intricately difficult, or that has the possibility of going very visibly wrong - like carrying a tray full of drinks in a crowded cafeteria. It made my job quite challenging, as I often had to teach PhD students by example how to carry out very complex and demanding experimental methods, involving expensive and delicate equipment or hazardous material.

    I suspect that it is rooted in autistic difficulties in communication. We often do not know when we are doing things in the 'correct way', and are often corrected by neurotypicals when they have not fully explained things to us - they expect us to know things subconsciously, like they do. This creates an expectation in ourselves that we might be incorrect even when we are entirely correct. This then causes a loop of reinforcement that makes us apprehensive of  anything we do that is overlooked by others.

  • This theory makes sense actually. I do find that often small things I'm worried about doing around people are things I haven't been taught do to, but I'd never considered that it's the sort of thing neurotypical people just sort of... figure out? I have always had to follow steps to carry out tasks as closely as I can, so in a way not being given those steps makes me feel as though I'm doing something the 'wrong way'. I think until now part of me just assumed that other people have been taught to do these things and I somehow missed out on the lesson. Thank you for the insight!

Reply
  • This theory makes sense actually. I do find that often small things I'm worried about doing around people are things I haven't been taught do to, but I'd never considered that it's the sort of thing neurotypical people just sort of... figure out? I have always had to follow steps to carry out tasks as closely as I can, so in a way not being given those steps makes me feel as though I'm doing something the 'wrong way'. I think until now part of me just assumed that other people have been taught to do these things and I somehow missed out on the lesson. Thank you for the insight!

Children
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