Embarassed/ anxious after posts/ Emails

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Who can relate to a phobia of getting a negative reply? Even with people I've become attached to I feel as though I'm waiting for the shoe to drop all the time. What is this?

Past bad experiences?

Maybe it's a social anxiety of kinds. You say phobia.. is it really like a phobia or you just worry only sometimes?

Happens to me; sometimes it can take me hours just to type an email or a PM. Same with IMing people.

I can totally relate, I might send an email, sms, or post something and then I can spend all day checking for replies.
Chances are whoever it is I sent a message to may not get back to me for days, or at all, but I'll still keep checking, even when I know how illogical it is.
It's somewhere on the boundary between aspie obsessiveness, and OCD. I've been known to cross the boundary on occasion, but thankfully usually manage to come back to some form of normalcy; that's normal for me, which is not the same as NT or someone else's normal.

I can relate. I usually just post/comment and run away. I avoid checking my email as well. Here if I comment on a thread, I rarely check back to see what others have posted. I find it overwhelming and then if I do get a negative response, I am afraid to post anything. For example on a closed Facebook Aspergers group that is quickly becoming over run by NT parents but was originally for AS adults but parents could join to get insight into their kids' experiences, I posted about my dating frustrations and got mostly condescending and patronizing comments from NT women and some were even ignorant to my age as if I were 17 when I'm 45 and was married not to mention they know absolutely nothing about me or what it's like to have AS. The only supportive comment was from another Aspie girl. I've noticed now that most of the Aspies in the group have become silent. But now I don't want to post there or anywhere at all. I already have an issue with being easily overwhelmed and it took me 3 days to listen to and return a voicemail from one of my closest friends! Anyway like I said, I can relate.

Sometimes if I send an email or post on a forum like this yeah I'll check it a lot to make sure all is good, cause once you post generally it's too late to correct yourself. It's worse with email because you can do nothing about it when it's in someone elses inbox. But I don't know if I can call that a phobia as such.

[quote="2wheels4ever"]Who can relate to a phobia of getting a negative reply? Even with people I've become attached to I feel as though I'm waiting for the shoe to drop all the time. What is this?[quote]


I get this all the time, especially on forums but also with people I know well - I think it may be a fear of connection, even to the extent of a response from a stranger, and a negative one can send you into a nosedive all day, of course. I would not call it a phobia but part of the wonderful twitchy hypersensitive aspie life. And again I find that something I thought of as one of my idiotic ways of behaving is shared - that is oddly comforting

I really relate.



Yep. Hours and hours. After I click send I'm pretty tired or sometimes even worked up and I just think "sheesh was that really worth it?"



I definitely do this too. :p

Just a personal aside, feel free to skip. (For me personally I think these issues are also at play; I don't have a good sense of boundaries and am afraid of over-sharing (but I am not sure what is over-sharing and what is not) Something may seem fine as I am writing it and then after I've sent it I have this dawning sense that I've said something really weird. What scares me is my inability to evaluate what I say in a clear light and that my assessment of it can shift back and forth so rapidly. Also this is really hard to explain but I feel like I am 'wearing' a certain persona when I am writing and not really being myself (maybe I just have a weak identity). This can also make me doubt what I say.)

*I hope all of you other nervous posters keep posting because your posts are perhaps some of my favorites *

Me too. Not so much a phobia but I am always afraid of doing something wrong in a social setting, including this forum and getting negative responses. This rarely happens in a work situation though.

I'm like that but I wasn't always. It's from past bad experiences. I would be emotionally attacked by someone, kindly defend myself, then get attack even more. Then I would cry and sometimes cut myself. It hurt me. I felt so horrible. Now I always fear getting hate mail for saying... well anything. I'm always afraid I said something wrong and don't realize it.

Just recently... well I guess I worded something in a way that came across as rude and this person said to me "No need to be so rude." and went on. And I felt so bad. I didn't mean to sound rude. I was actually confused and shocked that what I said was rude. To me I simply talking. Another person agreed with them but was a lot nicer to me.

I've just left a Facebook group, without reading responses (if there were any) to a post I made. The last one I made in that thread seemed to initiate a negative response. I was actually offended by a member saying, 'My child has good manners as I taught them right from wrong from the start'. This was in a local group for parents of kids on the spectrum. I took it to mean that a child will always say 'please' and 'thank you', if you teach them well - she did imply that a child with what could be conceived as poor manners simply hasn't been taught them by their parents. As a parent of a highly non-compliant Aspie, this is simply not always the case and I wanted that to be noted. I replied in a nice way and mentioned that I didn't want to offend. But, her response was a little high horsey again, e.g. 'I was only saying what worked for my child...'. My thoughts were, well actually you didn't say that, you failed to mention that there's so much more to it than a parent being a determined teacher, it's not just because you taught your child right from wrong. I said my peace and left the group, without telling them.