Social interaction exhausting??

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To me, social interaction where I am supposed to appear "normal", it feels like juggling while riding a bicycle. I have to keep talking normal, not sounding like a Vulcan, decyphering people's hidden meaning in what should be simple, straightforward words, and not looking around every few seconds like a stalker victim or staring at one spot and phasing out all up in the air at once, while at the same time maintaining all the physical stuff like not tripping, not knocking over a drink or having my clothes messed up like my skirt tucked into my underwear or my bra strap showing. Trying to focus on all of this at once and dealing with things like background noise, lighting, and sometimes unfamiliar surroundings or a specific goal (like getting lunch meat at a grocery store just before a snowstorm), is physically exhausting. Especially when you add the dizziness the OP posted when too many people are talking.

Beyond exhausting unless I get to talk about my special interests. Even then if im talking to someone who is preeminently "normal" - I really burnout quite quickly. Quite often i'll leave such a conversation and im screaming inside which manifests on my face with contortions etc

Perhaps you have more liberty in how long you spend socializing/ in what setting you socialize? Or maybe it's just not something experience, very understandable.

For me I often went home after parties and cried, never understanding why. I assumed it was because I felt lonely, but something never sounded quite right about that before reading about ASD. Even at parties where I felt happy and enjoyed myself, the same thing would happen. Similarly, there are high expectations that I spend a lot of time bonding with peers (within my small major), and often overloaded after hours spent with them. Also, I spend all of my free time alone, as I have several classes from morning to evening, and find myself mentally exhausted after school.

I suppose it might be better if you have the option to say "no more" and leave social situations before they tire you.

Marky9 has posted my answer for me (bold lettering is mine for emphasis) :

RikkiK makes a really good point, because I think the extent of choice (and no choice) here is key:

I didn't used to feel quite so exhausted when I was very young and had few pressures on me to conform to social norms. Now that I'm an adult, even though I've tried to shape my life so that it has as little pressure to conform as possible, certain "forced social" situations are unavoidable, and that's where the mental exhaustion sets in. I too, like another poster, am expected to be "normal" as I was not diagnosed as a child.

I think the OP may find that perhaps it's the late-in-life diagnosed who experience the exhaustion because they've spent a whole lifetime struggling to conform instead of having friends and family who have always known what they are and so they can just relax into being however they want to be socially? Just a thought.

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I am one of those posters who stated that social interaction exhausts me.

Unfortunately I just make generally broad statements when saying the above and don't bother to go into detail.
What I should say is MOST social interaction exhausts me.

What makes social interacting exhausting is the following:

1. Socializing out of the home (places that exclude my house, a friends house, parents house etc)
2. Socializing while driving
3. Socializing with a larger group of people (More than 4 people)
4. Socializing with a group that includes women
5. Socializing in places with loud noises and/or bright/flashing lights
6. Meeting new people
7. I am less likely to hang out with friends if I have to drive more than 5 minutes to visit them
8. I am less likely to hang out with friends if they always want to go somewhere to hang out/need to do something stimulating (walking around the mall etc)


That's about it. Anything like hanging out at home, having them come by my house to watch a movie or play games or just talk, anything like that isn't exhausting. It's just when all these other elements are added, and these elements come with the territory 95% of the time because my friends are young 20 somethings that always need to be running around somewhere so 1, 2, 4, and 5 happen most of the time, then none of them have a car so number 2 happens all the time for me, and they're constantly trying to get laid so number 6 happens fairly often too.

So what I wind up with is number 8 because most of my friends always want to do the above aforementioned, I just avoid hanging out with them on a regular basis. The only time I ever hung out with them at least once every day or every other day was when I actually lived with them because that negated number 7 and number 1, and because I was around them they would usually coax me into doing 1,2,4 and 5 I mentioned earlier.

For me as an aspie. Social situations demand a lot of mental power from me. Unlike NT's, I have to keep myself in check and think about every detail in a social situations and that can really be overwhelming. So yes social situations can be very exhausting.

Sometimes. It depends whether people are being straightforward or being indirect. I get exhausted trying to figure things out when the interactions are confusing me.

Social interactions can be very exhausting for me but not always. It really depends on shat kind of people I am with. If they are loud and animated it can be a lot for me. If they are quiet and calm it is not exhausting. I also do better with smaller amounts of people or one on one if the person is a calm and quiet person. People with dominantly overbearing personalities are hard for me because they really exhaust me.

Same thing. Too much input means you can't process it as fast as someone who's only having to process 65% of the same data. Too much substance being crammed into the funnel is always going to slow down the flow.

Similarly, it's exhausting for me because I have to think about what I'm doing and maintain a public face. If I don't, I wind up getting comments about how my silliness is borderline crazy or I talk about the strangest things (and I know I look anxious or riled up, too). It's a lot to be doing at once.

I don't wind up exhausted in more relaxed social settings. Eventually I just want to do something else because I've run out of good things to talk about or have something fun waiting for me elsewhere.

I think the confusion is what exhausts me.

I find social interaction very exhausting.
It's not something I derive pleasure from and I don't understand why it is so important to many people. I still suck at it and I wonder if I will ever learn how to interact with people properly.
I usually feel a great sense of relief when I am on my own again. Like many aspies I am not exactly a people's person and I never will be. At the same time I am very aware of the fact that I am not the most warm hearted and spontaneous person in the world and I can live with that. As long as I still have a well developed conscience and sense of morality there is no reason for concern.

Come to think of it I find a lot of social interactions very odd, especially if they take place between people who don't know each other that well. It's like watching a bunch of bad actors in a boring and menaningless play.

This makes sense to me as one who was diagnosed at 35 and comes from a family of active extroverts. I do my best to seem normal, but I am utterly exhausted when I have to work several days in a row. On my days off I usually do not answer the phone or leave the house. I spend large chunks of these days in silence. Sometimes I don't even want to get pizza delivered because I don't want to have to talk at all.

If i spend an evening with someone talking, the next morning i get up even after sleeping 10 or 12 hours ill feel like ive been out drinking, like literally hangover, with headache and stuff. Not like.

So definitely taxing.

Tiredness sets in after a few hours or after I have gone home. I then need time to relax and recharge.