do you perceive everything as an emotional conflict?

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Usually, if someone is merely looking at me, or is talking to me in a way that I perceive as condescending, I take it as an external emotional conflict, and like many of us here, I try to resolve that conflict by withdrawing into my imagination (autistic fantasy ego defense); it's like an automatic thing, I can't really help it, and I've done this my whole life. It's tricky because being stared at can trigger this, which triggers more staring, and then the cycle repeats. It probably explains why the waiters at restaurant, for instance, would starte at me when I walked through the door. Like many individuals with PDD-NOS I cannot express myself so outward self-assertion isn't really possible, leaving only this ego defense to help me out.

What bothers me about this is two things:
- It's kind of embarrassing and abnormal when this happens in public, and I feel really self-conscious when it happen as I'm sure you can imagine (no pun intended). I mean, according to my friends I just look a bit lost and "out of it" when it's happening, so I guess it's not a big deal. I've seen others do this in public and looks a bit weird, but nothing more...

- Why do you think I perceive all of these things as an emotional conflict? I know I'm quite hypersensitive. so people have to treat me in a very specific way or I'll take it as an insult, an insult that is another name for an emotional conflict, hence the withdrawal into imagination.

Anyone relate or know better ways of dealing with conflict?

People can be unintentionally condescending when they just don't know where to start at filling in what you need to know. In general, I think I avoid your situation by spending my time looking for signage, and never looking at eyes. Sometimes, I may be doing something odd like art photography in a public space, and I just ignore the possibility that I may be attracting attention. The more I focus on my job, the less remarkable I seem. Self-consciousness, OTOH, leads to weird body language.

This is somehow similar to how my uncle reacts... he senses conflict in almost every glance other people make at him but he doesn't withdraw, he becomes agressive. He is comfortable only with small children.
I am anxious when confronting other people. I fight myself to survive a visit to a doctor or giving orders to a waiter. I'm currently working on it with my therapist. We'll see what she can do.

For me there's a threshold of intensity above which everything is kind of conflict provoking or confrontational. I used to mostly react to it by freezing and being non-verbal for ages, but maybe 3-4 years ago something changed and now I react aggressively too. If the conflict actually escalates, I shut down, cry and find it hard to speak.

I'm a lot more irritable when I'm short on sleep, which is sometimes chronic. That sets up a positive feedback loop that needs a special program to break.