Christmas has made me feel so alone and different

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Christmas has made me feel how acutely different I am to everyone else. Spending time around people who seem to just know how to behave, but most obvious for me is how people are able to handle so much at this time of the year.

One day spent with my family and I am now in a shutdown that will likely continue for days. I went Christmas shopping a few days ago (after several failed attempts to cope with it) and spent all day just trying to keep it together. Meanwhile everyone else is rushing around to so many different events and get togethers. If I do just one thing I have to expect to pay for it in the following days. And those around me don't understand the toll. I have been swinging between survival mood and meltdown for weeks already.

When with my family they say I'm shy or anxious. They don't get it. I am spending every second trying to cope with staying in an overwhelming environment, an experience that is only my own.

I feel more alone than ever

Xmas is all about information/emotional overload.

A couple of yrs ago I spent it in a holiday cottage for a week with mum and daughter and got totally wiped out. I was on "survival mode" from the outset and even had to miss the midnight mass I'd been looking forward to.

Maybe my best adult xmas was spent in morocco nearly 40 yrs ago. As an xmas treat I bought myself a banana fritter. Now there's a thought: maybe aspies should decamp en masse for muslim countries for xmas...

I was alone, as usual, for Christmas. No conversation with anyone, just utterly alone. I did manage to go to a Chinatown restaurant and eat there, again, by myself. I'm not complaining. At least I was able to go out and enjoy myself.

I think holiday stress is somewhat universal, but you're right that it all centers on the context your family viewed you in for the previous year. I've had many an alienated Christmas right where I am now, but I'm studying religiously and working now, so I'm significantly more at ease than when I was behind in high school and the very same things I work on now looked like my Achilles' heel to my shortsighted parents. These days my advice carries weight and I don't feel much dissent towards my isolation; it's all because I worked my ass off, but then so did the rest of my family. I'm the one in 8 people who hasn't been to college, but I can let my abilities supercede my merits as it's up to me to articulate it all.

Food & wine is catalytic for my family so your mileage my differ, but the message is the same no matter who you are; distinguish oneself in everyone's interests.

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I had a pretty quiet, yet enjoyable Christmas Day. I hung out with one of my cousins and played some 360, then when he went home I hopped on my laptop and bought some new games on Steam using my holiday money. I also ate some goose, had a bit of wine, and talked online with some of my friends.

Christmas Eve, on the other hand had a few enjoyable moments, like the gift exchange, and the lunch which featured a TON of awesome homemade Ukrainian food, but it was also crazy exciting, in a bad way. I don't know why, but it seemed like my cousins and uncle were all pissed off at one another, and they just kept fighting the entire time. Now a bit of it seemed like they were joking around, but a lot of it seemed genuinely vicious. My grandparents tried reassuring me that it wasn't anything serious, because that particular part of my extended family is known for joking around, but I didn't get that vibe from it. I'm just not used to people being all hyper and talking s**t to one another like it's nothing. Of course, I'm also known for not taking jokes well, and for misunderstanding when other people "joke around", but I would rather have it so that people just didn't joke around, period, unless they made it blatantly obvious.

TL;DR Christmas day was nice and quiet, Christmas Eve put me around a bunch of chaotic NTs.

So, alone, I ate a Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It was shrimp with lobster sauce. Unfortunately, it was a miss. They had onions which overwhelmed the lobster and eggs which darkened the broth. Surprisingly, it seemed devoid of sodium so I had to put in a little soy sauce. Seems like good shrimp with lobster sauce is hard to find. One place had mushrooms in it which, again, overwhelmed the taste of the lobster sauce. Another place had good lobster sauce but the shrimp tasted old and rubbery.

I would have gladly eaten that meal. anyways, xmas was good to me today.

I wish I could just stay home and go about my normal routine.
Every Christmas I have to travel to a city I hate (Los Angeles) and be bored out of my mind for a week.

I can't wait to get back home and have everything back to normal.

Alexi the malls, the shopping are crazy right now, and family may reflect the holiday craziness. Protect yourself where you can from it. Try not to be hard on yourself when it takes a big toll. Maybe you are terribly different, I don't know. I'm just very, very tired of the different-is-bad attitude some people have, lately coming to hate it. And the way you write, you don't much approve or like or want to be part of that attitude either.

My Christmas went ok this year. But that was only because I have spent years learning how to deal with it. In the past I too have experienced being overwhelmed by it all.

Now I ignore it, and avoid doing any shopping at all simply because of the crowds of crazed people. Fortunately, at my age there is virtually no family gift exchange. All attention is focused on the great-grandchildren, so I can make my 2 hour appearance at the Christmas day family gathering and be blissfully ignored. I had a 10 minute conversation with my sister, and that was about it other than eating and watching the kids open their gifts.

I have come to embrace, enjoy, and nurture my status as "the strange uncle" - it means that my family's expectations of me are near zero.

I just used to turn up for dinner in my tinsel, xmas tree earrings and santa hat, then slink off by myself when things got too noisy in the afternoon.

Xmas was always mostly about the food for me anyway.

I had beef this year though as by the time I got to the supermarket all the small turkeys were sold out. Now that is a nightmare. Shopping for xmas day just a few days before it (couldn't shop before that as my freezer broke down recently and I don't have a new one yet). It was horrible (the shopping, not the beef).

You can do your shopping, and perhaps other things in advance and space it out. Otherwise try to stay to your routines up to and including Christmas as much as you can. Try to just have the people interaction to deal with and minimalize th strain. As far as being alone in your difference, it isn't true. There are tons on the spectrum, going thru similiar things.

I think you are very lucky to have a family that wants to be with you for Christmas. I would have done anything not to be alone on Christmas Day but no body could have cared less.