if i let myself go i feel i've given too much of myself away

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say i have a few drinks and i unwind a bit ... well not by normal standards but as much as i can ... i have a giggle. i feel violated, like i've given too much of myself away and i dont want to see the people i was with again, anyone else have similar experiences

Yes!

I'm just trying to think why this might be.

Perhaps I don't perceive/register the social signals, in a group, or even with one other person sometimes, which would tell me that my opening up had been appreciated/received sympathetically, really "heard"/paid attention to, and/or I miss the signals ( physical or verbal ) in what the other(s) then go on to say or do which would indicate to me that my opening up had been reciprocated.

And when it happens after I've had a couple of drinks, ( though I rarely drink much at all anymore ), maybe it is because I actually did "expose"/share more than the dynamic called for; I opened up more than the other person/people in that situation/moment were doing, and it was not in fact reciprocated, because was more than the other(s) were sharing/ready for; ie. I misread the level of sharing going on. ?
.

yes, i think it might be something to do with not being able to read social signals too

Yes. I've had this.
Perhaps there are occasions when I let more of 'myself' show than ordinarily, and I think if someone responds positively to it, it seems good at the time, but afterwards I get really uncomfortable and want to avoid them. It subsides, and things carry on as they always have, and I don't know what this really is, but it has happened and I don't like it.

I wonder if it's because, with most people, we limit the role we play to keep things manageable, and sometimes that mask might slip to show a different side, and we are left with the awareness that we 'stepped out of character' and it was good, but it would be too much, or we don't know how, to try to do that ordinarily, because it would change the dynamic of the existing situation.
Does that make any sense?

Or perhaps it's just that on rare occasions we accidentally get caught in the 'vibe' of other people's usual social experience, and it's a bit like being given a hit of a strange designer drug, so, when the experience wears off, part of the 'down' is not wanting exposure to that drug again.

Does this have anything to do with what Donna Williams calls "exposure anxiety"?

I have tried to figure out what exposure anxiety is, but when I read her articles about it, I don't understand them. But the phrase has always made me think of how I feel after I interact with people, which is very much what people are describing in this thread (except that I don't need alcohol to get freaked out like that. It happens any time I have a conversation with someone that touches on personal matters. Which would be 99% of the conversations people drag me into.)

Yeah, but usually it's nowhere near as bad as I think it is. It's like an OCD person thinking their hands are dirty when in reality, they maybe only washed their hands 32 times today, and not the usual 33....

it happens when i'm not drinking too,, am going to look into exposure anxiety in case it there are similarities

I found a video of Donna Williams explaining exposure anxiety. It sounds like something more intense than what you and I are describing but it also sounds very related to what I feel when I feel too exposed to others, I just experience it and react to it in a milder form than Donna Williams is describing (but milder does not mean mild! It's still pretty intense to me.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJNkYFuiv7g

Which is why I hold myself in as much as I can, but even so I find myself going too far, saying too much, revealing too many Top Secrets.

I know! I'm the same way! I've wondered if it's related to low impulse control and executive dysfunction.
I'm also lousy at keeping other people's secrets. It's like I'm physically compelled to blurt them out.

When someone says, "can you keep a secret?" I immediately say, "no!" It makes people upset because they REALLY wanted to tell me their secret but I don't want to hear it because I know I'll tell and then people will hate me.

I think with AVPD I read something about not wanting to reveal information about you to other people in case it is used against you and there is definitely an element of that too.

When I was working I found it hard to be around people because it felt they were getting under my skin. It was a very intense and disturbing feeling.

I think sometimes there is a sense of throwing pearls before swine, it means exposing or giving away information that the receiver cannot receive in the correct way due to either not having being educated in a particular subject or not being mature enough, as in having enough life experience to either understand or cope with it, that could of course, be the giver too I think.

Basically, it might be because of a mismatch, something inappropriate for the group or situation. It means that we ourselves did not discern the right time or place usually.

If I feel I've revealed too much about myself to people, I don't want to talk to them anymore because I'm afraid that what I say might be used against me in the future. I also feel that sharing intricate details about my life to people makes me too emotionally intimate with them, which is something I don't want to happen. I've been told I put up a wall between myself and other people as a defense mechanism. Perhaps I should relax that wall a little, but I really don't want to. I've been hurt too many times in the past by letting my guard down.

I'm having this tennis match with a mate of mine at the moment.
Have been exploring issues of intimacy and touch. I don't even know why I want to have either of those things if they're "bad," to me - maybe just because I feel like I might be missing out and that if I "get over it" as everyone says, then I'll discover something I like which will enrich my life. But then, he is usually as reticent as I am, and when I'm in the unaccustomed position of pushing for intimacy and he doesn't respond, I feel like evening things out, so to speak, in my own head in pretty extreme ways. I just feel foolish and exposed, like it was much too much, too far, to give so much of myself when he's still closed up.
In typical aspie fashion I guess, I decided to be up front about it and ask if he wants this with me or not. I understand asking something like that outright when you're supposed to dance about and hint and feint sometimes scares people away, but we'll see.
Someone with more insight into me than I have once told me she had to be very careful with me, because I'd be aggressively pushing her to do things to me that were actually going to be extremely destructive to me, just because I face things in the teeth, and I don't mess about. If I'm scared of something, I'll force myself to do it in ways that may be detrimental. That's what I'm doing right now to this mate of mine. Forcing him to do things with me that may actually be bad for me.
The awkwardness of having aspies for friends, I guess.

When I face my difficulties, I don't see it as part of having Asperger's, I see it in myself as part of a choice I have made but not because of my condition.