How long did it take you to learn ''people awareness''?

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I'm 23 now but for the majority of my life I've been completely clueless about other people and the way they think. It's took me until the age of about 21 to understand that people have feelings and my actions can affect them. Now, the reason I try to be as nice as possible to people probably isn't the best reason but I do it because I don't want to be a bad person, not because I care about other peoples feelings (much) but because I don't want that for me. I have no ill-will towards people, but I also have no or very little good will, I feel completely and utterly indifferent. Now don't get me wrong, if someone was in trouble or needed assistance in some way I would help as long as it wasn't a situation I disagreed with.

I've always had people tell me that I'm rude or coarse, or that I'm selfish. I've also had my own father think that I'm a psychopath because he says there's no "warmth" in the way that I am with people, and he's right but it's not a choice I make, it's just me.

My question is, at what age did you feel like you'd accumulated enough knowledge from spending time with people to finally get a basic understanding of what's appropriate and what isn't? As well as WHY is it appropriate or not?

Around age 15++ or so. It wasn't very pleasant.


While it's true that I must realize everyone else's needs, it just made me more annoyed or guilty than sympathetic or reliable.

The awareness doesn't grant me empathy and sensitivity, it grants me to incline hate and apathy instead because the guilt does nothing if not make things worse. The awareness doesn't give me enough understanding.

In some cases, understanding made me worse than better.
I'm aware that I'm mostly an unwilling participant, but there's something else is with me -- whatever it is, it screwed something, it's likely because of the concept of guilt.


Maybe because, in a way, I'm too young or too immature to be aware of certain things. There are things that aren't meant to be aware of early, and it might've happened to me at some point.
I won't be surprised if I'm meant to be aware in a much later age or so.

I'm also 23 myself, but I feel that I found out a little too soon.

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I am 32 years old and “people Awareness” is still a learning curve. I am much better than I used to be. I go through spells where I can be sympathetic, reliable etc. Then I get episodes where I regress. Sometimes end up avoiding people if they have an emotional issue etc.

I have been in a situation where someone did need a lot of support and I helped them but it was thrown back in my face the person had a problem with “people awareness” themselves. That particular person once said to me I am a good low-maintenance friend. Which was quite upsetting.

It think it also has to do with our experience over time and how our attitudes can change as we get knocked around by life, at some point people stop caring. Try to be nice, no guarantee they will be nice back, so, whatever. A lot of people lack "people awareness", non autistics as well.


and one slips down into the quicksand of depression. Isolated and alone, "people awareness"...? yeah right. they all blew me off and forgot about me.

I had people awareness when I was young, I UNlearned it.
Nobody cares out there.

Not sure if this is "people awareness", but I remember when I must have been around 8 or so, becoming aware that there was a social convention that one had to share sweets around with ones friends. I never really got the hang of that, I'd prefer to eat them in private to avoid sharing.
I'd get upset when people didn't share with me, though

I guess I always found it hard to take on board that other people's feelings were as valid as mine, and that I had to lend them equal weight to mine, and I still struggle with that idea sometimes, if I'm honest.

Still not quite sure if this is truly selfishness, or if other people feel the same but are just more willing to be generous for the sake of following the social conventions

Some time in adolescence.

I find it very difficult to have any "people awareness" online.

This all.... is not the same as the real world, and should not be confused for it.
This is all just text on a computer screen to me, no people here. At least not in a human sense, just icons representing someone looked at this same thing before at some point in time. Quite lifeless. I logically know you are real people, but there is no "connection".

To me, the internet is a failure for social means. I'm just wasting time typing because I have nothing better to do.

I found out in my mid-teens about it.

Some friends and also family would let me know when I was inconsiderate and sometimes hurtful. So for many years I tried my best but mostly failed. My inability to read others leaves me sometimes guessing as to what they are feeling. I can sense something is off but I have no idea. Or sometimes I think something is and I am told otherwise. Either way I mess it up horribly so I tend to be as polite as possible and listen far more than talk. I really hate talking. Writing such as herr is another matter.

Now that I am older and retired, I could care less mostly. I always tried to be the better person, but one way or another I either offended or was given no consideration in my own case. Basically not a two-way street it seems. I don't interact with many anymore and that's fine by me. The less the better in person at any rate. I find it too stressful as I feel lacking the basic tools to interact with others in an ordinary way. I just play the game as little as possible and stay in my own world...

<--- Longer than whatever age it says over there.

My people awareness is still very weak, so I avoid situations where I must deal with people unless absolutely necessary. When I deal with people, I mostly use polite expressions and avoid personal questions because it's safer.

I'm still learning.

I haven't started that class yet.

I think different people awareness skills developed at different times for me. Some of my self-awareness skills developed a little later than others. Until I was about 11 I didn't really think other kids judged you on anything, which was why I got confused when I saw other kids laugh at me whenever I was doing or saying something exceptionally odd for my age.

Also I remember getting really anxious and upset if my mum cried when I was a child. Seeing an adult cry seemed terrifying for me, especially my mum, and I didn't know what to do. I don't know if it was a normal kid thing, because most kids don't like it when they see an adult cry. But I believe I made my mum feel worse by yelling at her not to cry. I got more mature about dealing with my mum crying when I reached my late teens.

Well, I was quite well off as a kid, though sometimes girls bullied each other in elementary school and I don't think I quite got that. In teenage years all hell broke loose, lost my social skills completely, was bullied because of that, I despised girly social get-togethers, almost everyone seemed vain and stupid, I stopped trying to talk to people. Later I've been myself unashamedly and missed some obvious social rules, that I didn't think of except maybe two years ago, so at the age of 23, I understood for example that females like it (and like you more) when you complement their clothing or accessorries. Never did that in high school.

It depends on what people awareness entails. Like someone else said there are some 'aha' moments but overall it's a learning curve.

I was indifferent towards other children except some relatives I knew well enough until I was about 7 years old. I didn't try to play with them and I didn't care what they thought about me and I wasn't interested in what they thought at all. I knew they had a mind of their own, different to mine, but it was uninteresting.

Till age 13 I had no idea how badly bullying can affect people even if it's done in ways that leave no severe bodily harm, don't destroys property and isn't sexual assault even though I was bullied ever since I started primary school (but except for some bruises I didn't get injured, that any of my things got destroyed was rare because I watched out that no one got any of my things in their hands at all times in school and there was no sexual abuse; in primary school some boys would frequently hit or kick me, later on most bullies just said mean things or occasionally spat at me). I understood that severe forms of bullying can cause serious harm (if someone gets injured, something gets destroyed or if it's sexual) but I didn't understand that social ostracization or simply the fact that someone would go out of their way to harm you could hurt. It didn't hurt me. Most other children would either ignore me or bully me. School was boring. I sometimes preferred the bullying. It made things less boring. Some people would try to be nice but that always made me feel guilty because I knew that I didn't know how to interact with them correctly. I also knew that the bullies weren't nice and therefore I didn't care about accidentally hurting their feelings.
I felt guilty when I realized that bullying is more severe than I had thought because I had sometimes been mean towards other students too - not on purpose to those who tried to be nice towards me but I still had done things the person to whom I did them hadn't deserved and I realized that there was one person I hurt much more than the same things would have hurt me.

Another realization came at age 15 when I first had internet. I had known before that people's opinions and interests differed, but internet forums helped me realize how much. I had known before that most of my hobbies and fascinations weren't shared by most people, but some I had assumed to be much more universal than they are.

it's not something you ever stop learning, or finish learning. there's always something to uncover, find out.

answer: it takes one's whole life.