Home vs. Public behavior?

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On the one hand, I do things at home (like run around the house for no apparent reason) that I don't do in class or at work or anything, so in some ways, I use my time at home to let out my weirdness.

However, when I am stressed out in public, I can get pretty weird, and it's not a matter of control on my part. Too much information or stress can make me have difficulties that I would not have in a more safe or familiar environment.

Yes, my behavior in public can become quite different from my behavior at home. After spending a little time in a public place, I can shutdown much too easily, depending on the noise, sounds, lights, people, and other things that play on the senses. But home is sanctuary, which is to say home is a controlled place, more or less.

I put on my poker face in public...most people have no idea how crazy I am until they live with me or hang out

I try to act as "normal" as possible when I'm in public or at work, but at home (usually in the privacy of my bedroom) I can pretty much be myself.

Theres generally suppose to be differen behaviors between home and public. Home(be more freer to be yourself), public(put on better behavior which varies in the situation, more of a fasade). For me my behavior varies greatly between whom Im interacting with. Being in college, the line between home and public is very blurred. So my behavior is just based on who Im with/ or around. Like dont talk about certain things with other people around. But we can talk about those things if those people arent there whether its a dorm room, the library, a eating place or whereever on campus. Things confused me for a while, but I got used to things

I was fine at home but at school I acted different. I knew the difference between school behavior and home behavior.

But then in 4th grade I tried to be normal as possible and it was hard work but at home I was free. I could be myself and not worry about kids thinking I am weird or I am showing off, etc.
I just stayed away from those kids, everytime they got near, I would walk away because I didn't want to be near them and have to put on a show. But when I was forced to be near them one day after school because we had a meeting for the culture fair, I broke down.

No I don't act any different in public. I just be myself.

EDIT:


Here is something I remember from what my ex told me. I act different when I am around my family but when they aren't around, I act totally different.

Last edited by Spokane_Girl on 08 Sep 2008, 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Im not sure if I look strange in public or not. I think I feel more free to stimm at home and sometimes when Im out I catch myself and sometimes feel embarrased. I know that sometimes I can say things "wrong" or inappropriate and people look at me like Im nuts but I think I look pretty normal other than my constant fidgeting and twitching.

I try very hard to keep up the 'facade of normalacy' when out in public (with inconsistent success), and am much more relaxed about my quirks when at home. However, some experiences out in public provoke 'autistic traits' (such as noisy, bright, crowded shopping malls for those of us with sensory issues), so it's plausible that my most 'autistic moments' take place in public places.

I've lived with cats for years - they communicate much more clearly than do humans.

I used to be the opposite, weird at home, normal in public. Now I am pretty normal no matter where I am.

There's a difference?

There are only a few things I do at home that I would not do in public (e.g., walk around in my underwear). Otherwise, I embarrass my wife to no end, because she's horribly neurotic, and concerned about what people think, and I couldn't care less what people think of me.

at home weird
public normal (or as normal as i can be)

I've been told that I seem more normal at home than in public, mainly I think because meltdowns are more likely for me to happen in public due to stress of crowds, lights, noises, etc. I don't intentionally keep a facade at either place, but I do know that there's a lot of times at home when my difficulty understanding someone else's words gets interpreted as me arguing or having an attitude.

I think it's mainly because I still try to fake my way through conversation at home, so I say lots of things that I don't mean at all, because I am just talking whatever words are in my mind rather than saying "sorry, what did you mean?" I think part of this is because since I've been faking my way through conversations like this since I was about three, I think my parents might think I'm intentionally misunderstanding things to be difficult.

They've said this before, and particularly as my last IQ test came out to be 85 (whereas 8 years ago I tested 130-145), and my dad even asked me if I intentionally answered wrong (which I had to explain how some of the subtests measured skills I have very low skill in, and only a couple subtests that I have very high skill in) they might be inclined to go for this explanation than "I've had speech and language difficulties all my life that I've masked with scripts and echolalia and going along with people's assertions that I was being bad or manipulative instead of admitting that I had trouble understanding, since I grew up with the reputation of a genius and didn't want to let go of that especially since kids already called me a 'ret*d' a lot".

I grew up with my dog, who is now about 11, when she was a puppy. I actually feel more comfortable with dogs than cats (we had a cat for awhile, but he wasn't really representative of cats in general because he was REALLY skittish and prone to scratching and biting, so we had to take him to a no-kill shelter - I've taken care of neighbors cats as well as my aunt's cat, and they are far more mellow, though it's true that you have to actually listen to them).

I am really needy for physical affection like hugging and petting my dog and such, and she is much more up for that than most cats I've met. When she wants to be left alone, she has a particular sound she makes, and I say "sorry Rosie, I'll leave you alone" and no harm done. She understands a lot of English, though she seems more in tune to my body language, and that can be an easier way to communicate stuff.

She can differentiate, actually, between me rocking when I'm anxious and rocking when I'm happy, as well as hand flapping when feeling happy or nervous, even when my facial expression is minimal to nonexistent. She is not nearly as active as when she was a puppy, but she loves it when we imitate her because it's like a game. In the last year she's started using a wide range of sounds to communicate different things, so it's been pretty fun learning what she means by different sounds.

It's been summer for the last few months, so she gets hot and likes to lie down in the bathroom because it's tile and it's cooler there than the other rooms. Anyway, my parents noticed she was eating a lot less and wondering if she was sick or something, and she also seemed hot and thirsty a lot, so I figured that she just wasn't initiating, because of a lack of energy or something, as I usually have difficulty initiating things, especially when physically uncomfortable.

So what I would do is I would pull the dish a little closer to her, or sometimes just point at it, and she'd go get it. Sometimes when she's in another room of the house and isn't responding to me asking her if she's thirsty or hungry, I'll bring the dish to her, and she'll usually eat and drink. That's one thing too, is that since I was monitoring how much she ate and drink, I was remembering to fix food for myself as well!

We're really close, and she has a hard time getting used to new dogs or people, is not very social that way (but with family she's usually pretty happy to socialize with us!). We used to have more trouble communicating I think, when I was younger, and also I had difficulty gauging things like how hard I was petting her, or if I was too close to her face, things like that. Over the years though we've figured these things out about each other.