Odd Question and ramble...

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I do not know if anyone else can identify with this or what the cause of it is (personality disorder, anxiety etc, other?) but:

Does anyone else find that often times you are quite happy in your own little world with your routines or interests doing your own thing in your own way even if the outside world thinks you are odd etc but then find that you become distressed and highly anxious because the outside world keeps trying to pull you out of that world so you are more like they think you should be?

Ie less focused on your interests, more flexible, more social and so on?

I have often been told that I live in my own little world somewhere but I understand that world and am happy in it in many ways. However the outside world keeps trying to pull me out of that world in order to live in some confusing world that they all live in which I don't really understand all that much. Either that or I find I am rejected by society in general because I don't seem to live in the same world that they do. This can make me feel very lonely and hurt at times. When I try to change and function in their world I simply end up becoming highly distressed and my anxiety levels hit the roof and go beyond which causes me to meltdown basically.

It's exhausting living their world and half of it doesn't make that much sense lol.

Your basically describing most of the forum

Oh lol

Your own world is comfortable and familiar to you. It's quite common to not want to give it up especially when pressured by other people. I am constantly battling my family about it too.

People just want you to be more like them. But I say to hell with them. If you're happy in your little world then stay there.
I don't know your situation but if you're not avoiding things like your health, work/looking for work and your interests don't keep you from doing really important things (and I don't mean socialising) then by all means, continue it.

I do have problems working at the moment as I am not able to cope well with the social aspects and change and am on disability. It's part social anxiety and part that when it comes to involvement with people they keep trying to change me and it sends my anxiety into overdrive. If they let me get on with things in my own little way in my own little world without keep trying to make me more as they think I should be I wouldn't keep melting down and could probably cope with actually doing the job. It isn't doing work that gets to me as I just find my own odd ways of going about things...its the people side of it I am not coping with.

I do have support at the moment but am finding that it is causing more stress in some ways. I am as far as I am aware an NT and am diagnosed with, and being treated for, Social Anxiety, Agoraphobia, Anxiety and Depression. I have had these problems since childhood, I am now 35 and despite having treatment for them on and off for most of my life that treatment continues to fail and seems in some ways to actually make me worse!

Part of that treatment is making me more social or having to socialise more and will probably include trying to make me more flexible as well. I am so unbelievably stressed over it because they don't really seem to understand. Reducing my anxiety in social situations will not make it easier for me to make friends because I still have underlying problems where that is concerned that have been with me for life. I am terrified of all the time I will have to spend socialising not because of the social anxiety symptoms but because excessive interaction in social settings completely wipes me out and exhausts me.

I will also have to spend god knows how much time trying to think of replies to things I have no interest in and in making small talk with people. In those situations my brain works very slowly and I don't have the speed I need to follow conversations when they keep changing topics quickly unless its an area of interest to myself and my brain has gone off on a tangent because it's made a connection between that and something that it see's as related in some way, in which case I ramble on endlessly and end up being told to shut up as no one is interested lol.

Making myself more flexible and removing my routines and quirks makes me more stressed than leaving them in place and eventually I meltdown and go into screaming fits because I just cant deal and am over loaded. Those screaming fits are taken to be anger (although I try not to do them around people and will try and remove myself from company before they occur) when actually I'm distressed and can't make people understand why. They don't really understand why I get so upset and why I need certain things to be a certain way. They see my distress as being petty because to them I am distressed by something that does not warrant that level of upset. Yet oddly I don't get distressed over some of the things that they would normally consider to be distressing or upsetting or stressful (ie its easier for me to cope with moving house than it is to change my flavour of ice cream on a Saturday lol..moving house is not so much of a problem as I can move my quirks with me and set everything back up in the new property as it should be anyway...even down to putting my furniture in the same kind of layout! When I go to therapy they keep saying that 'well moving house is very stressful'...ummmm actually...as long as its organised and I can set my routines back up not really lol).

In some ways however the practical support can be useful as they do help with certain things that I then don't have to stress over. But I am also highly resistant to change in certain ways and do not cope well with it at all!

So quit it.

ToM?

Ah Thank you!

Goes to google lol

I know you have heard plenty of us responding to this in agreeing to feeling the same way you do. I just want to add that I too get very absorbed into my special intense interests (my world) and feel stress/anxiety when others try to pull me out of it (usually unintentionally) or try to involve me in something else.