Hypersensitivity to social cues/emotions?

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This is my first post on WP, although I've been an avid reader for many weeks now. I am still considering the possibility of Asperger's, but feel relatively certain that I am on the spectrum.

There's just this one thing that's really bugging and confusing me. So I thought I'd ask ...

One of the defining traits seems to be a disability to pick up on social cues and emotions in others. Now, I do recall from when I was younger, I did indeed fail to acknowledge that I was boring people with my (generally too deep) thoughts and most of my attempts to fit into social groups (volleybal, LGBT organization) failed rather miserably, with me inadvertently offending people, getting picked on by a bully who wouldn't appreciate my honesty or individuality... or through rather quickly giving up because it was too exhausting.

For the last 10 years (I'm 32), however, I have made major efforts to understand the social game and I'm proud to say I've become reasonably skilled at it. Provided it comes in small doses and people are openminded in general. However, this seems to have come at a price as well... I am now so conscious of what I identified as the 'right' social discourse or way to engage in small talk that I find it difficult when NT's do not respect those rules. In other words, I have become hypersensitive to social cues, to the extent that I 'pick up' on things or adhere to rules that might not be there or that, in an NT's view, can be 'bended' (but when, how??). Also, in my relationships (I have never been able to be 'intimate' with more than one person at a time), I often get anxious because I believe my partner is feeling disgruntled, or unhappy, or... when this is not the case, or, as I've told myself for a long time, because they themselves do not yet identify their own emotional state (but I realize that's a rather arrogant viewpoint).

I should say that my Special Interest, apart from languages and linguistics (I loooove to think about the semantic and pragmatic aspects of language, from an 'outsider's' perspective), has always been psychology. Looking in on people's behavior and thought processes from the sideline. So it could be that I sort of 'overspecialized' in the social and emotional department, to the extent where I push it all too far, and I become as 'off' and disabled as Aspies who do not pick up on anything.

Can anyone relate to this? I apologize for this all-over-the-place post, and for my perhaps defective English - I'm not a native. Thanks!

Yes. Totally. I have also seen many others talk about the same.

Yes, you can take comfort in the fact that this thread is among a hundred or so (easily a few hundred) similar threads/questions that have been posted on this site as of yet about being hyper-sensitive to social cues or empathy. Not sure whether it's the exception or the norm, but there are articles (scientific ones) claiming certain hyper-social behavior to be the norm on the autism spectrum.

This sounds very similar to me, and I have the same special interest, also - studying people, social norms, psychology, neuroscience, etc. It drives me nuts, yet still I am fascinated. I have a degree in Cognitive Science (psych, neuro, comp sci) and I am now a Life Coach (which gives me a chance to work with people's thought processes!!).
People find me very intense, socially, with my questions - I want to know and understand how they think. I also pick up on other's emotions easily but am not good at identifying them (or, as you say, they are worse). I am hypersensitive to many things - sensory stimuli, emotions, weather, etc.
I also get mad when others don't stick to the correct "social rules" and I find it hard to talk myself down from this reaction I have. This is an area I really need to work on.

I can definitely relate to this. I think I try too hard to read these things and sometimes it causes me to have very strong emotional reactions to the misunderstandings I have from not being able to read these things correctly. I sit there and analyze minor facial movements over and over in my head for hours sometimes to see what they were supposed to tell me and figure out if I got it right. This doesn't happen every moment of every day, but usually only happens with critical interactions with someone I have a crush on or someone who is in authority over me at work, or if I fear I have hurt someone's feelings unintentionally.

I think the reality is not the the ques aren't always picked, but the problem is simply that one doesn't know how to respond. So both empathy and sympathy are present, it's just expressed wrong.

Thank you for your replies. I realize now my question is less than 'unique', but if you read the 'common' descriptions of Asperger's, it is always suggested that we are in-sensitive rather than hyper-sensitive. I know that is faulty, and I have read about Intense World Theory - which I can relate to very well, but still, there is a lot of discussion still going on about alleged absence of Theory of Mind. I have always thought of myself as having an excellent Theory of Mind; it's only the last few years, I've started considering the idea that I may 'over-theorize' the minds of others. The issue is important to me, because I've always 'used' my hypersensitive responses to emotions and cues to distinguish myself from ex-partnes I 'suspected' of having autism or Asperger's. The irony of it all...

And for many years also, I've considered myself to be 'Highly Sensitive' in the Elaine Arron fashion... I'm still working on seeing what differenciates supposedly HS people from ASD people.

While I absolutely relate to this, I thought that autism was first and foremost an information processing 'disorder'. Of course, if you don't process correctly, it's likely that your responses will be inadequate or inappropriate as well. So if the input is not processed correctly, the output will be faulty as well. But do you suggest, then, that the input IS being processed and handled with empathy and sympathy, but that we respond incorrectly? Does autism then also, or first and foremost, entail a difficulty in responding, expressing?

- I am sorry if I'm rambling, but I like to get to the core of things. My question, ultimately then, is whether in (higher functioning) autism there is either a processing or an expressive problem, or both.

For awhile, I was ruling out AS as being my problem because I can notice non-verbal cue's and I *thought* that I was reading them correctly. I mean, I knew that I was reading them, so I just assumed I knew what they meant. Than it dawned on me one day that I am actually not reading them correctly at all. I constantly feel like people are trying to brush me aside and send me "non-verbals" that suggest that they do not want to be my friend, or that they don't want to be around me, or hear what I have to say...but I now know that the truth is that they do not mean this at all. In fact, people have probably assumed for my entire life that I am the one who does not want to be there friends, because of my reactions to these perceived non-verbals.

Here's a good example. I met a girl that lives near me, has children that are my child's age, and we have a couple of things in common. She was suggesting that we get together over the summer, and she went on to emphasize that she "really means it" and "isn't just saying it to be nice" (she said these things) - but I misread her body language. For some reason I got the "vibe" that she was full of it, and I was confused because she went out of her way to try to convince me that she liked me. I couldn't make sense of it, so I didn't bother calling her, in order to avoid the "inevitable" pain of rejection. In retrospect, I now see that she was probably just feeling awkward about the whole thing, and her body language was likely reflecting that..and she probably figured she would wait for me to call her since she really put the ball in my court. I'm sure at this point, being that I didn't call, she assumes that I wasn't interested, and SHE probably feels rejected, when I had wrongly perceived that I was the one being rejected. Live and learn I guess...

The hardest part for me wasn't noticing the cues and the structure (reading body language and non verbal communication was an early and ongoing 'interest') I found the hardest part adapting was to know when to break the rules/patterns I (possibly we) tend to learn in a structured manner and obsess that these are the rules whilst to NT's under certain circumstances there more guidelines, adherence to them 100% can appear more formal, distant and strained. It's just knowing what rules to break when (break the wrong one and it looks odd or can be offensive) I can only do it in situations I've already been in before (always known I lack the ability to adapt others had, just took a while to work out why)

I believe I can read social cues but I don't know if I read them right. I kind of assume I am right since there are usually no opportunities for correction. I also tend towards paranoia and thinking negatively, so I have a tendency to read negatively into body language and words. I'm always thinking that this person and that person hates me or thinks I'm weird and doesn't like being around me. But I have no way of knowing whether I read right or wrong.