Published on 12, July, 2020
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.
Hi jellyrabbit. Yes, I understand this feeling. I hate people watching me do even inconsequential things, such as brushing my teeth. I suspect that it's to do with masking- I get the impression that if people observe me, they'll be able to start inferring what I'm 'really like'.
I suspect that the feeling would not be as severe if one has good quality relationships and is in good mental health, as in that situation, one would not need to mask as extensively.
This makes sense. Doing things around people means possibly 'exposing' that we do something menial the 'wrong way' and be ridiculed for it.
I also considered after another reply to this post that the fact it's often during tasks like cleaning is because these aren't usually things we're directly taught to do. We're kind of expected just to know (in the magical way that neurotypical people seem to), therefore we don't know the 'right way' to do it and it's harder to mask.
That's a really good point. I remember being ridiculed once for the way I cut cheese as a child (bizarre example, I know). Apparently, it wasn't the done thing for it to be cut into cubes. No one had ever mentioned this rule to me, and I like cubes.