Difficulty coping - advice very appreciated

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Hello everyone,

I am new here, though I have been lurking for a little while. I came here because the problems I have seem to be common to autism spectrum disorders, but this is the first time I have really tried to explain the problems I have to anyone, and I am a little anxious about it. However, I am about ready to try to seek out some help, and if anyone has any advice or comments I would be very grateful for them. I'm sorry if this post is long.

My life has been very isolated as I have very little family, and I have only ever had a couple of friends in my whole life, as I suffered from severe social anxiety and social phobia from childhood. I am 31, and I have never had a relationship or a very close friendship because of my difficulty understanding or trusting other people, not to mention their inability to understand me. I have always been "different" and was bullied and rejected throughout my childhood and adulthood, so I withdrew completely into myself and was never able to ask for help from anyone.

I have great difficulty in social situations, partly because I have trouble following the way people interact with one another, but mostly because I am very easily overwhelmed - if I am in a busy environment or in the company of more than one or two people at once my brain shuts down and it is very difficult for me to make any coherent communication. On the rare occasions when the family I have are together they are used to me being completely silent while they talk to one another, not because I don't want to talk, but because I am not able to. On the other hand, I am OK when I interact with someone one-on-one, so long as they are friendly and especially if they are accepting of non-standard social behaviour like lack of eye contact, though I am able to "perform" for short periods of time, which I find very exhausting. The overwhelm and brain freeze impairs me in other aspects of life as well. I have difficulty with tasks like shopping because I must enter a busy environment, and I am extremely clumsy, forgetful and generally exist in a state of confusion. My lack of aptitude for basic tasks often irritates others around me and is sometimes misunderstood as laziness or being difficult because I have such difficulty explaining myself.

Despite all of the above, I would not say I am unhappy as such. I lead a very simple life (necessarily, as I otherwise can't cope with it) and I would be contented if it wasn't for my difficulty in looking after myself. I like my own company and have interests I am very passionate about. However, I struggle to manage the everyday tasks of my life, and I am also lonely. I am very gentle and sensitive and wouldn't hurt anyone for the world, but it has always seemed that the world wanted to trample over me. I know not everyone is that way, but I don't know how to go about finding someone who would both share my interests and be patient and understanding enough to be a friend to me. I am tired of struggling to cover up the difficulties I have, but I am also anxious at the idea of trying to explain them to others and ask them to make allowances for me.

I suppose I need professional help and have needed it for a long time, but my life seems to have been one long episode of confusion because I was so little able to understand the behaviour of other people. It took most of my 30 years for me to be able to recover enough from my crippling anxiety and become self-aware enough to understand just how much my experience of life seems to differ from that of other people and that I am not just stupid and slow (rather, I have considerable intelligence, but I have great difficulties interacting with the world).

Thank you to those who read this far and I would really appreciate advice or just plain welcomes/commiserations.

Hi, Welcome to Wrong Planet!

I also find a lot of everyday tasks to take an enormous amount of energy. I think what might take the average person 2 units of energy might take me 14. I wish there was an autism resource center who could link us with volunteers, and not just coach us on how to do something for often I know, but on some cases do the task for us or with us. For example, I find making a phone call to a bank or insurance company or a former employer about a W-2 to take a lot of emotional energy (often I feel like I'm talking with someone disengaged from what matters to me). It occurs to me, well, if I was a rich guy, I would just hire someone to make these phone calls as I sit in the adjoining room reading. Well, could there be an autism volunteer willing to help me with some of this.

I'm sorry you were bullied. I have been bullied, too. We live in a far more primitive society than we should. I've been in workplace bullying situations where a good person might say a friendly word but they do far too little for the magnitude of what's going on. And this runs very deep. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said when future generations look back, the real mystery is not going to be why the destructive people did what they did, but why the seemingly good-hearted and constructive people did so little in response. And if we look at perhaps the biggest case for all time, in Germany under the Nazis, yes, number-wise, a fair number of people acted as righteous gentiles, but percentage-wise, it was terrible. And I don't think there are easy answers to any of this.

hi, welcome to WP. i think living a simple life is a bless. It gives us immunity to the materialistic world. Just keep it on.

hi, welcome to WP. i think living a simple life is a bless. It gives us immunity to the materialistic world. Just keep it on.