The fear of being perceived.

Autismman said:

we lack the ability to understand and imagine what others may think of us

I have no freakin' idea what anyone else thinks of me. Sometimes, I have to ask. Most of the time, I just live in ignorance. It gives me this permanent sense of insecurity. Am I doing things right? How did that comment land? Should I try something else? What if...?

I think NTs assume they can read minds. This is not as odd as it might seem. Most people are NTs, so most people have minds that work in a way that is broadly similar. If an NT thinks that some other NT is thinking X, then it should not be a big surprise that they are often right. Then they meet an ND and they get it completely wrong, but still insist that they are right. Is that understandable? Yes. Is it fair? No, not at all.

Yes being judged or criticised is something that I struggle with. I expect a lot of people do but it gets to my core, I feel like a paper doll who’s just been crumbled up and thrown to the wind, nothing grounding me down, lack of awareness of my core being. 

I can relate to the photos and being recorded, I get an odd notion much like I am looking at someone else. This can happen even when I look in the mirror, I see almost a glassy eye’d person staring back and it’s hard to go “hey that’s me”. I know it’s me of course but it doesn’t stop that feeling. And o agree with the idea that there are many ways to perhaps get a feeling for a person, it’s a sixth sense if you will, maybe that type of quick analysis is helpful for people on the spectrum.

I find this quite a lot on my quest for knowledge on autism, there will often be someone who can word things better than my brain is able to. I feel that autism is subjective in terms of how it is observed within oneself without any clear explanation other than what you can consciously try to learn about yourself and analysis it, compare it to others, even more so when you are late diagnosed like me. There are some amazingly smart people on these forums and I can see that in their articulation on really any subject they care to write about. It can be quite unnerving posting sometimes because of the uncertainly of feedback which perhaps relates to my original post that I am responding in now. 

Absolutely — this is a really rich and relatable reflection. I think you’ve hit on a few really powerful ideas that many people on the spectrum might resonate with, especially that deep discomfort with being "perceived."

The connection you’re making to mind blindness is particularly interesting — if you have a limited or inconsistent sense of how others might view you, it makes sense that being observed could feel threatening or even invasive. If your internal dialogue is already self-critical, then being seen might automatically feel like a confirmation of all the worst things you think about yourself. It’s like: “I can’t imagine someone thinking positively of me, so being watched must mean they’re judging me.”

The idea of others being in your "space" or "energy field" also really strikes a chord. There’s something intensely vulnerable about being witnessed, especially when you can’t intuit what’s being witnessed. Eye contact, for example — as you said — isn’t just about looking; it’s this moment of raw exposure, like someone is looking through you rather than at you. And without a clear sense of what they’re thinking, it’s easy for your mind to fill in the blanks with fear or negativity.

I’ll definitely check out Mikaela Ebbesson’s video — thank you for the recommendation. It's always reassuring to hear others articulate these nuanced internal experiences that are so hard to describe but feel so real.

Thanks for putting this into words — I imagine a lot of people will see themselves in what you’ve written.

I don't like photo's, video's or voice recordings of myself, not just because of the normal stuff like 'do I really sound like that?', but because there's something missing, I'm not a fan of photos full stop, I think I seem to have a sort of echo locator for want of a better term. But something inside me reaches out and if there's no returning echo it all wrong, it feels like theres not another person there or if I know the person, they're not there. I totally get how how non industrial people felt that someones soul had somehow been stolen. I think that for me there's much more to perception than the mearly visual, it the sense of the person, their aura, thier smell, the way air moves around them so many different things.

I'm not fond of being watched, unless I showing someone how to do something, but being observed in general, the amount of cameras I get caught by in everyday life, the feeling that my private life isn't really private, that I may be asked to explain myself and/or judged. The only time I was happy to be watched, was when I looked up from writing an essay and found loads of birds on the window feeders and window sills all looking in and watching me with as much fascination as I watch them with.

I do not have mind blindness, but I do have a deep fear of being overlooked while performing tasks or of public speaking (I had to do this as part of my job, but it was extremely nerve-wracking). Personally, I think it is really fear of being judged. As autistic people, we are constantly scanning what others are doing, how they are behaving and consciously trying our best to copy them in order to fit in. We are essentially playing the role of being neurotypical, we are actors. Therefore, being perceived or judged is a bit like an actor being reviewed, and many actors, like autists, are insecure. Some actors do not read reviews because they might be negative or hurtful. The day-to-day experiences of autistic people tend to reinforce that the judgments of others can be, and often are, negative and hurtful.