Intrinsic alienation

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I wonder if this feeling is familiar, that no matter what is happening around you and what you are partaking in, it feels like you are not really partaking in it or is a part of the "togetherness"? Like if people just are moving around you like ants and you are existing apart from them, in a dimension out of reach and in the same space as the rest of them?

To illustrate this, this music video could perhaps shed a light on how I felt during my upbringing and most of my life.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyrFko0C5Pk&feature=related[/youtube]

Does this seem familiar?

I haven't watched your video but it's a feeling I get very strongly whenever I'm around large groups of people chattering to one another. This sort of behaviour is so unusual and alien to me that I can't help but feel "alienated". It happens to a lesser extent with smaller groups of people but in general the more people there are, the more stressed I become and the more alienated I feel. In smaller groups I can function much better socially but in large groups I'm practically mute because of sensory overload.

I wouldn't worry too much about it if you are not alienated from everyone, all the time.

I think this is probably the most difficult aspect of Asperger's Syndrome/autism to deal with and can lead to a rather intense and grim loneliness if you think about it too much. The best way I have found in dealing with this is just to accept that I'm different and that it's okay to be different. This paradoxically makes me feel less alienated because there is less pressure to live up to a standard which is simply impossible for me to achieve.

I get this very strongly. I thought I was the only one for a long time. For me it's a little similar to watching a movie. You feel like you're watching, but you can't really participate. It doesn't happen all the time, but when I get a little overwhelmed or when I'm tired, the symptoms are worse. I always thought it was related to my ADHD.

I watched the video. I relate to the feeling you expressed, and as i watched the video, some very specific occurences came back to me, the people are workers. Everytime a plumber or electrician or something comes into my house, i freeze this way. I don't know how to move anymore or what to do, i sometimes try to do small talk, but even then, i am sitted on a countertop like a teenager, not able to get up and make coffee, or anything, like i'm not allowed to move anymore in my own house. It may come from asperger or my violent upbringing that taught me to walk on eggshells around grown ups, i don't know, but i just freeze.
The rest of the time, i do feel like you said, separate, a bit on another space unit, and i send my messages to the plane where people are situated, but it doesn't mean i can join them there.

What everyone else says.

The only time i was ever truthfull in my life was when i was talking to all the doctors that one time, I told them how i hated being in a family and just always wanted to run away and live where nobody knew who I was. i cant deal with people, dont like them and really dont want anything to do with them at all see, but everyone just doesnt get it, exept for me of course.

I feel it, but it doesn't usually matter very much to me. I just join in when I can, and revert to being my own thing when I can't.

Someone emailed me this site today: http://www.panic-anxiety.com/depersonal ... alization/

I have experienced this sense of alienation from a very early age, not just from other people but from reality. Eventually I learned to accept it and even to make it work for me. It was "the splinter in the brain" that let me know that I was on the wrong planet and that the NT way was not the only way.

I do feel disconnected in larger groups, unless I am somehow the center of attention (which can and does happen, usually because I used to run roleplaying games). Otherwise, the socializing tends to go around me and with more people I have a harder time interacting or even responding. This only bothers me when a conversation between me and one or two people expands and suddenly I'm frozen out entirely. Otherwise I tend to zone out, which can be relaxing.

It's not the same as depersonalization or derealization (both of which I have experienced), at least not for me. Dissociation is never pleasant or at least I don't feel like my lack of ability to engage comes from outside myself, which is what happens in these circumstances.

There's something about the video that I'm not sure you intended to reference (it's not about alienation exactly) but that happens in a very literal fashion for me. 

I will be sitting there. And feel more or less normal, normal for myself that is. And then someone walks in. And the difference between our time perception becomes incredibly obvious. 

They rush around really fast. They may stop to talk to me but by the time I have figured out what they are saying they are long gone. It feels as if we are in two different worlds, one of which time is flowing much faster. It doesn't occur to me until someone tells me, that I am the one moving extremely slowly.

I read a purely speculative article that suggests there's a connection between this phenomenon and "autistic catatonia" (which I have been diagnosed with). I don't know if it's true but I know others who have the same time perception thing. 

The article is called Time, mirrors and autism. Part of it says:

"People with autistic conditions occasionally report abnormalities in their subjective experience of time, experiencing a period of an hour as a minute having passed. For example, a young man who presented with extreme pathological slowness and who was given a diagnosis of autism reported being always rushed by his carers. His own experience of time was evidently much slower than 'normal'. Such experiences
seem to be linked to the catatonic states, which are observed in 5-8% of people with autistic disorders)." 

Back to the original topic though. Yes I have felt like that. It reminds me of the lyrics from another song:  "And I turn to the crowd as they're watching / gathered all together in the dark in the warm / and I wanted to be in there among them / I see how their eyes are gathered into one". 

I have TLE and very litte sense of time to begin with. But I don't think the issue is that I'm having seizures.

As for religious experiences, there's a difference between having a strong emotional experience induced by messing with the brain in some way, and a genuine spiritual experience which has to cause a positive lasting change in your ethics to be real in my book. Unfortunately many people calling themselves religious/spiritual have missed that distinction and end up seeking a sort of internal/emotional lightshiw, which tends to then create a lot of selfishness. Temporal lobe seizures in my case have also involved things like a vivid visual hallucination of an object I've seen before (such as a Japanese doll belonging to my mother). That doesn't mean that when seeing the real Japanese doll in real life the image originated in my brain instead of from the doll. These ways of affecting the temporal lobes cause what I'd call a spiritual hallucination. But contrary to people on both sides who use that as evidence for or against the existence of God, "spiritual hallucinations" don't prove either that God is or isn't real. No more than a visual hallucination proves the object hallucinated could or couldn't exist.