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Fitting in with big groups

Autistic_girl

Hi guys,

I joined a new friendship group and it's such a big group, there is 11 sometimes 12 people in the group and my old friendship group mainly had like 4 people. Today, it was such a struggle to be part of the group and get involved and communicate. I kind of just sat by myself in the corner and I had no idea how to join in.

Big groups are really loud and overwhelming for me, especially when I am in a bad mood. But I also don't want to isolate myself and I am friends with some people in the group and I do like them but sometimes it just isn't nice and I feel sad and uncomfortable. And I feel left out a lot.

Does anyone have any advice?

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  • Autistic_girl said:
    Today, it was such a struggle to be part of the group and get involved and communicate. I kind of just sat by myself in the corner and I had no idea how to join in.

    My approach is to usually approach someone I know in the group and start a conversation with them, then see if we can break off to somewhere less noisy.

    This gets me interacting with at least some of them (often others will join in as they are not big into the noisy group thing)  and we can lower the overall volume by spacing the smaller groups.

    I did use to study group dynamics many years ago and there is quite an interesting change in how people behave as the group size grows - it slowly becomes its own identity rather than just a bunch of individuals.

    There is some background to understanding group dynamics here:

    https://psychology.town/social/group-dynamics-impact-individual-behavior/

    Group behaviours are quite predictable and it is this trait that is often exploited by the police at rallies / protests to control the groups. The trick there is to know what they expect and have a smaller group do things contrary to this which then changes the dynamic and confuses the heck out of them.

    Ah, the fun I had at student protests back at uni LOL

    Back to the point - understanding what is going on and how to break it into a managable sized group is often the key - small groups are much more pleasant and accommodating so it is beneficial for us typically. The techniques of teasing the group apart will depend on the people you want to separate so a little headology helps a lot.

Reply
  • Autistic_girl said:
    Today, it was such a struggle to be part of the group and get involved and communicate. I kind of just sat by myself in the corner and I had no idea how to join in.

    My approach is to usually approach someone I know in the group and start a conversation with them, then see if we can break off to somewhere less noisy.

    This gets me interacting with at least some of them (often others will join in as they are not big into the noisy group thing)  and we can lower the overall volume by spacing the smaller groups.

    I did use to study group dynamics many years ago and there is quite an interesting change in how people behave as the group size grows - it slowly becomes its own identity rather than just a bunch of individuals.

    There is some background to understanding group dynamics here:

    https://psychology.town/social/group-dynamics-impact-individual-behavior/

    Group behaviours are quite predictable and it is this trait that is often exploited by the police at rallies / protests to control the groups. The trick there is to know what they expect and have a smaller group do things contrary to this which then changes the dynamic and confuses the heck out of them.

    Ah, the fun I had at student protests back at uni LOL

    Back to the point - understanding what is going on and how to break it into a managable sized group is often the key - small groups are much more pleasant and accommodating so it is beneficial for us typically. The techniques of teasing the group apart will depend on the people you want to separate so a little headology helps a lot.

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