If you are walking down a road on your own....

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....and you notice, two, or more, people who are either coming towards you or sitting on a bench that you are about to walk past, do you suddenly become all stiff & mechanical, and very aware of your movement?

This nearly always happens to me. It's like, there is nobody else in the area apart from them & me, and as I'm the only other person around; they must be looking at, and analysing me.

It makes me feel as though I could stumble, at any moment, right in front of them.

I would think they were going to insult me or make some kind of comment...I definitely feel awkward and self-aware in situations like that.

Yes,this happens to me all the time.I try intensely to avoid seeming weird as I walk past them which inevitably makes me look weird.

Strangers don't tend to insult 39 yr old women, for no reason, so I don't tend to get worried these days. But, if I'm looking particularly young that day, which does happen, I might be concerned. My comeback would be, 'How would you like someone to speak to your mother like that?' I don't expect it would go down too well, but the shock of realising I'm not the age they thought I was, may have some impact. However, when I was younger, I used to get really nervous, knowing that there are people who want to make negative comments and cause embarrassment.

yes I become very self aware of myself and get very guarded and very careful.

This happened to me last night actually, there were about three teenage lads coming towards me. However, they made sure they were well behind me before one of them shouted an abusive comment! Cowardly underwear stains.

I used to feel that very strongly, and first noticed it a long time ago, and was quite shocked to realise how knee-jerk I was about the slightest chance of conflict. To some extent it's a valid apprehension. Even inside my cloistered workplace, you'll get people who won't get out of the way. But it's hard not to be in shouting distance of colleagues, so any problem is unlikely to escalate, and I think it's mostly just down to tunnel vision and sloppy manners. Out on the street, it's still unlikely to get worse than that, but if it does, the consequenses could be dire. People do get attacked. One guy threw a punch at me as he passed. Another time a small group of guys seemed to be trying to scare me by showing me a knife.....luckily it often takes me a few minutes to get anxious, so they probably gave up on me.

I suppose Aspies often fear approaching people generally, whether it's to ask for help, to partner with them, or just to get past them.

These days I tend to avoid walking past anybody who looks dodgy, if it's a desolate place and there's an easy alternative path. I often stick to the main roads for safety. But I'm not paranoid about it. I watch for signs that they're not dangerous. I'm not going to grossly inconvenience myself just to avoid tiny risks. And sometimes passers-by will do more good than harm.

I hate being in that situation. I feel obliged to make eye contact, if I don't I look nervous or unfriendly (and they'll probably look at me even more), if I do I might intimidate them if they happen to be socially anxious people like me (too much empathy kicking in), or they might glare at me and then I get even more upset. I also hate it when I've got to walk past people sitting on a bench, because they've got nothing better to look at so they're obviously going to stare at me and then that suddenly makes me feel like my walking has gone out of rhythm and I'm using up all my muscles in my body to hold myself up straight. This is due to social phobia and fear of being watched. Wouldn't it be awesome if people understood more about social phobia/anxiety and could tell a shy/nervous-looking person could be suffering with social anxiety and so know not to stare? But, again, NTs suffer with LOE (lack of empathy) so I've just got to remember that, instead of believing all this bullshit on WP about us being the ones that lack empathy and NTs not.....ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh f***s me right off when I keep hearing that annoying stupid word ''empathy''.

You know, don't you ever think you think such a smidgen too much about things, Joe90? A tiny weeny trace of a smidgen?

I know where Joe90 is coming from too.

I used to be like that but not anymore. Although I had someone in a group of three berate me for no reason last night, that is now a very rare occurrence and the person likely was mentally ill (only one of the three said anything, the other just motioned for me to go away). I don't really worry about that anymore because I'm big, tall, look strong, have a nasty temper and don't care if anyone likes me or not.

In the past (Junior/High School), groups of three or more saw me like a prize. It wasn't so much that they would attack, insult, humiliate, etc but the fact they are so darn random about it. Sometimes they would ignore, sometimes they would be friendly and other times they would just attack out of the blue with no provocation. In one case, one 'nerd' decided he wanted to rise on the pecking order and without provocation pushed me down the stairs from behind to impress his 'friends'. It's easy to say "stand tall and confident" and "just pretend they don't exist" but that just makes the mob all the more eager to 'win' because they see that as being challenged.

I generally don't have to worry about that now because I know many hockey players and they all follow the sport's code of honor in everyday life, the biggest examples being to never gang up on anyone and never hit someone who is defenseless or vulnerable. Many of them may be complete a$#@#@ but I don't have to worry about watching my back around them.