Loneliness and making friends: a missing link?

Amerantin (former member) said:

But people like us are completely excluded and we don’t even know why.

This. I've wondered this for years and am still no closer to discovering the answers.

Making friends, forming connections with others, it's all a big mystery to me. I thought I had a close bond and connection with my mum but she left me at a care home and hasn't been back since.

It's like life's greatest mystery and I'm still trying to figure it out.

I used to not have any facial expressions at all,  and no matter if I was happy, sad, or angry, my face would be a plain unexpressionless face . And my voice used to be monotoned and drone on and on and on that i'll put people to sleep in 20 minutes. I had no eye contact. And when people called my name I used to not respond. I used to have anxiety, depression, and panic attacks. I didn't know I had to explain any of this, but I guess I have to go through explaining how autistic I am to you. 

I brought up the facial expressions of smiling and laughing, because those two expressions that are easiest to form connections with others. I used to sketch a lot of faces, to the point that I can even draw and paint realistic faces. I studied characters a lot. But when I grew older, I took those drawing abilities and studied animation in college, and animation was surprisingly all about facial expressions, voices, and body language, things autistics usually struggle with... which now that I think about it,  explains why I struggled so hard in animation. I never thought about that until now. 

And yes, I've made mistakes when I was socializing with others. I had crippling amounts of anxiety. I went through humiliation. I got drained easily from others. It's not easy. Even the doctor's office can be too loud with bright lights that overstimulate all my senses. I'm not perfect at socializing. But I learned how to better socialize with others, despite how hard it was sometimes. 

But having social skills has benefitted my life. It's gotten me through college, it's gotten me jobs, and it's gotten me promotions. And I was the type of person who never thought that I would amount to anything in this world. So I just wanted to share what knowledge I have to help. I mean if it wasn't helpful to you, then that's fine, but I hope it'll be helpful up someone else. 

And I don't think it's out of the range of possibility for an autistic person to learn how to smile in a warm way, because I do it in order to connect better with people, and they do receive it in a positive way. But if I ever feel burned out, there is no way in hell I am going to be smiling at anyone though. I'd just go and sit in a quiet room to calm down. But also, every autistic person has a different level of needs. If they find smiling at someone too difficult, they don't have to do it. 

There is a much quoted theory that 93% of communication is via body language and tone of voice, with only 7% by what we actually say. That's probably somewhat exaggerated but it demonstrates the point that so much of communication happens via methods that autistic people so often have difficulties with.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/beyond-words/201109/is-nonverbal-communication-a-numbers-game

As explained in my post above, autists tend not to have much awareness of or control over facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, etc. Eye contact is a huge part too, something which so many of us find incredibly difficult or even painful.

We can try to observe others or learn the theory and mask. Much of what we do already will be some sort of subconscious masking. However non autistic people can probably pick up that there is something different that doesn't seem quite right or genuine. The effects of masking are bad for us and I don't think that is the answer.

Personally I have never managed to break down that invisible wall to form genuine connections. For years I believed that I just hadn't met my type of people yet and that they must be out there somewhere. However eventually I stopped trying and accepted that I'm just not a sociable person.

I have spent time observing others and how they seem to be able to connect so easily. At the start their communication seems somewhat stilted and awkward, not unlike my attempts at conversation. However that soon disappears and they progress to what I would describe as 'natural conversation' with much laughter. At that point I am lost and out of my depth. My scripts have been exhausted and I have nothing left to contribute. Their natural conversations move at a pace that I can't keep up with, due to my auditory processing difficulties.

The double empathy problem may play a part and communication between autistic people is possibly more likely to result in friendship. Perhaps the answer is to facilitate more places that autistic people can meet up with each other without any pressure or expectation to mask. Reading these forums suggests that in person groups for autistic adults are few and far between and most of us only connect with other autistic adults online.

Hullabaloo said:

If you want their faces to light up and for the conversation to have "the spark," you have to have warm facial expressions and open gestures and body language. In general, if you can freely laugh without feeling the need to hold it back, that's a good sign, because being able to freely laugh loosens the muscles that creates stiff body language, and if you're too ridged that can act as a barrier.

Hullabaloo said:

Varying your vocal pitch to be more lively helps as well.

That's all very good in theory but I'm struggling to see how the average autistic person can achieve that.

Autists are known for having a flat affect and often a monotone voice too. Having the wrong expression or tone of voice for the situation is something autists are often accused of. I believe there are questions about that in the diagnostic assessments.

It may be partly due to alexithymia or motor control issues due to dyspraxia. Appearing rigid is common too, possibly due to anxiety. However I don't think any of this is due to deliberately holding back.

I can't speak for everyone but I know personally both facial expressions and tone of voice are not something I have any conscious awareness of or much control over.

https://www.thearticulateautistic.com/we-dont-know-what-our-faces-are-doing/

If I were to consciously try and think about what my face or voice might be doing that would be masking, take a huge amount of energy and take the focus away from trying to speak or listen. Plus masking isn't going to achieve the sort or natural spark or free laugh that you describe. That is only going to happen if we genuinely connect with someone.

If you want their faces to light up and for the conversation to have "the spark," you have to have warm facial expressions and open gestures and body language. In general, if you can freely laugh without feeling the need to hold it back, that's a good sign, because being able to freely laugh loosens the muscles that creates stiff body language, and if you're too ridged that can act as a barrier. Also, genuine laughter is not easy to pull off, and more often than not, people have a nervous laughter instead, which indicates they are uncomfortable and nervous, and that can create a barrier and some awkwardness. When you genuinely laugh, your cheeks push up and make your eyes more squinted and crescent shaped, and if you want to smile and give off a warmer appearance, you smile while having these crescent shaped eyes, which is "smiling with your eyes," and even with a mask covering the mouth, you can still tell that a person is smiling or laughing with these kinds of eyes showing.  Varying your vocal pitch to be more lively helps as well.

Being nice and polite is good and all, but concentrating on not appearing arrogant, rude, or selfish, could be creating a barrier between you and other people, because you're restricting yourself from fully expressing yourself, and only trying to show what you want others to see. And also, people who appear too nice, too good, too polite, can paradoxically appear disingenuous to others, as if they are being fake, which raises the defense barriers some people have. Like when people in cults that smile but they do not actually seem happy. Some people might also feel like you're too nice and polite of a person to hang out with, considering that some people mock and tease each other in their friend groups for fun, but they don't mean anything mean by it. There are a lot of people who are selfish, considering the average score for healthy narcissism is about 15, a score of below 5 is low, and a score of above 21 would likely mean that person is a narcissist. And a majority of the population likely has a healthy amount of narcissism, so even if you become a bit more selfish to take care of your needs in life, I don't think you'll become be type of person who would suddenly become rude and arrogant. So I don't think you should be too worried about coming across like that.  I think you should integrate, or at least find a way to accept, that you are allowed to be rude in certain instances, that you are allowed to take pride in your accomplishments and share the joy with others, and that you're allowed to be selfish about certain things that mean a lot to you, or as a form of self care. 

I've never had a real friend. I don't understand how to make a connection with another person.

I sometimes don't even feel like the main character in my own life. I'm like an ancillary character in other people's lives. It doesn't really matter whether I'm there or not, because I can't contribute to a friendship. If there is a group of people having a conversation or a party, it would generally be no different whether I was there or not, because I don't know what to say or how to get involved. So I've always just watched everyone else live their lives from the outside and then wondered how I can be part of it.

I don't know how to describe it, but it's like I'm not a real person. Do I even exist? When I was about 6 or 7, I thought I was an alien and I convinced myself that I had been abandoned on earth and my "parents" were keeping it a secret from me because it was the only way I could explain why I was different and why I couldn't connect with anyone. I thought I had to appear as normal as possible so I don't get found out.

I’ve always felt like everyone else must be telepathic or using some communication mode I’m deaf and blind to.

Friendship and love are such basic parts of the human experience - needs and rights - that everyone else takes for granted. But people like us are completely excluded and we don’t even know why.

Is it that something is missing, or just that it is well hidden and other people find it hard to locate? I have difficulty trusting people and so am reticent about telling them anything about myself (except on this forum, where the relative anonymity frees me somewhat). It is essentially about trying to protect myself from adverse judgements (the less information that people have about me reduces the chances of them using it to hurt me!). This is exacerbated by people having difficultly reading my emotions, because I try not to give anything away. Consequently, others probably find it difficult to connect with me. I think I am acting normally, and like you always endeavour to be polite and kind, but other people perceive it as being standoffish and distant. Because I do not offer up as much of myself as people expect, they tend to reciprocate and the gap between us widens rather than narrows. People take their social cues from each other, meaning my closed nature leads to them putting up the barriers as well. So I am trying to be a bit braver, opening myself up a little more, but definitely a work in progress!

It has been a mixed bag for me too but I did, for a while, manage to make friends. They were mostly other autistic people.

Where I went wrong is that I was too mechanical and overthought it. I should have listened to myself and what feels right to me above everything else. I was too concerned with putting people into boxes. 

If there's any advice I can give you: don't do that. I thought being analytical like that was going to help me but it did the opposite.