Trouble describing yourself and chatting about your own life

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I've posted in a few threads before on how I have trouble verbally communicating in complete sentences without having to ponder on what words to use halfway through, but today with my psychologist we've stumbled on something that really bothers me: I have even more difficulties talking about and describing myself!

I could literally only think of only two adjectives that described my personality!

I already knew I couldn't really talk about myself without using really compact sentences with no fluff involved, but that blew me away - I think I've gotten even more depressed as a result. How am I going to bond with other people if even I can't advertise myself?

Can anybody relate? I know we're going to talk about this subject in my next session but it's hard not thinking about it.

I can relate.

But take it easy, you're gonna make it, please don't get depressed.

I think it's not uncommon at all to feel the way you do if you have Asperger Syndrome, you're not alone with this issue:


People with Asperger's syndrome 'lack brain signal linked to sense of self'

"Hyperscanning" Study Reveals Impaired Sense of Self in Autism

People with autism struggle to view self

People with autism lack a developed sense of self.


Personally I think the lacking sense of self is a "tangible" manifestation of a lacking Theory of Mind.

Bonding with people is more about experiencing together than advertising yourself, imo. People first get to know each other when they do things together. Your personality is how you do things, what you do, etc. Actions tell a lot more than words.


Relax, enjoy life, don't think about this before your next session.

I think you're talking about describing yourself from the outside? In a personality/social-comparative way...from a third-person perspective?

I don't think of myself through other people's eyes...so my concept of self doesn't really go beyond "I think, therefore I am" in a very literal non-philosophical sense. I think I have a very strong sense of self, but it is very concrete and not based in language nor third-person perspective.

I don't have a self-identity based on other people's perspectives of me -- my perspective of me is my experience of being myself looking out at the world -- not me looking in at myself. Other people's perspectives of me have always remained other people's perspectives....although I can see how some of those perspective make sense and I can sometimes use them to describe myself a little bit.

So I think maybe I can relate somewhat in that I have difficulty with describing myself from a third-person perspective, but I don't see it as a problem. Other people either find things about me that they like or they don't...self-advertising is not something feel a need to do unless I want to get a job (but that's mostly skills-based rather than social/personality-based, and I have unchanging scripts for that).

I think people will bond with you based on getting to know you -- and you don't need to be able to describe yourself for that to happen. I developed friendships with people despite barely speaking at all -- bonding with people depends on the people you're trying to connect with as much as it does on your specific abilities.

I have trouble with saying what I want to say sometimes as well. It's like my thoughts are locked in my head and I can't get them out.

I can completely identify with this. I've always felt like my self-identity is a big blank spot, or like everyone can see me except me. This has lead to me asking people who I think know me to tell me what I'm like ... which seems to perplex them, or make them think I'm just fishing for compliments. I'm not, I really need someone to tell me about how I come across, the patterns they see, the behavior...

It's so frustrating.

When I am asked to tell someone about myself I freeze up, and change the subject because I don't know how to tell anyone about myself. I guess this might relate in a way to Temple Grandin's premise that in her case, "I am what I do".

I've long wondered if self-identity is a social phenomenon -- that it's constructing an imagine of yourself that you want other people to share. Sort of a 2nd order Theory of Mind thing.

I can relate: writing resumes and social network profiles is very difficult. However, I think it is not an autism related problem: if you look around social networks and online dating profiles, you will notice that many people either put a variation of "It is hard to describe myself" or nothing at all in their profiles.

A few years ago, I realized that the reason I had trouble doing this is because I'm always changing, so I don't know how to describe myself in a vacuum. For example, I used to describe my hobbies as chess and basketball, but sometimes I liked chess and sometimes I didn't. And it wasn't a hobby as much as an interest, but its a static question and I didn't know how to give static answers. I thought I was supposed to describe my personality, when the point is to answer the question.

Now that I'm more of a control freak, or rather, now that I'm better at controlling things, I'm better at describing myself.

I generally have a problem with this as well, although it's understandable for me, no one really talks to me that long, the few who do often tend to talk more about their problems, their lives. There's very little interest in myself from other people, so I'm normally only talking about them or a random topic.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I've always tried to bond with people through actions rather than words, but as you might guess it rarely works and when it does it doesn't seem to last. It's not that the people around me are uncaring, I just don't give them much to work with! I do have several friends that are OK with me not talking much and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but they're often not around so I become much more aware of how I'm unwittingly isolating myself from new people.

The "sense of self" being impaired by ASD does seem to make sense, those were very interesting links qawer.

Mindslave, I don't have problems listing my hobbies/interests - my psychologist even pointed out to me that I initially only gave functional descriptions of my life (what I do, hobbies, etc.) when asked how I would characterize myself and what makes me different from the other people in my life.

Jaden, we're in the exact same boat. The problem is we seem to be unable to volunteer information about ourselves - at least in away that would make sense in an everyday conversation. It's not necessarily that other people aren't interested in you (although I can understand if you have a special interest which other people don't care about), it's more that there's a give-and-take component to socializing we have difficulty doing.

If asked to describe myself I have no idea what to say other than a brief description of what I look like. I have no idea how others see me either.