How to isolate myself while still being healthy and happy?

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I have a lot of assignments to do for university and I'm very slow at doing them. I have a strong propensity to be social but have been trying to gradually suppress this desire in me since the start of university. In my last year of high school, I had very social co-op positions (educational assistant & volunteer in two autism programs), went out every Friday/Saturday night, and went to Toastmasters every Sunday. That year, I felt very good physically and emotionally and did not get sick even once.

However, I have noticed that every time I isolate myself (i.e. not talk to anybody, stay inside) for at least four days, I get some form of illness. I still exercise in my room and open the window for long periods of time to get some fresh air. I don't go outside because I don't want to expose myself to people; I'm afraid they would spark my social drive and it would overpower my task-focused drive.

I am also a sensory seeker and when I force myself into sensory deprivation like that, I actually start craving pain after a while and begin to do things like scratching my face vigorously. I try not to work with music in the background or go into coffee shops to do my work because, from my experience, my ability to do sophisticated tasks strongly deteriorates in these conditions.

I have isolated myself for five days as of yesterday and felt like my mind was just shutting down and losing touch with reality. I don't feel quite the same anymore. There are tons of you here who claim you don't need human contact and can isolate yourself. If so, how do you do it? And how to meet my sensory need without it interfering with my work quality and without destroying my body? My academic success is literally everything to me.

I enjoy solitude, and I'm much happier and healthier when I isolate myself. It might just be an inborn personality trait; I'm an extreme introvert by nature, and you seem to need more social contact. It could be that you can't learn to enjoy isolation, any more than I could learn to enjoy socializing.

What about studying in the library, so there will be people around you all the time? Weirdly enough that used to help me focus on my work, because at home I'd be tempted to do stuff I actually enjoyed.

The less I'm around other people the healthier and less stressed I usually am. I do like to go out as long as I don't have to be social, such as shopping, or can enjoy a one-on-one conversation with a someone I know and like well. When I was younger I was put in a home with around ten other people, not including staff, and would get a bad cold at least every other month, even though I would try to spend as much time as I could away from it. Then I was put in a home with two other people and one staff member and would get some kind of virus at least three times a year. A few months before I was dismissed from the home I started getting all kinds of infections. First I got an ear infection that was harder than usual to get rid of, soon after I developed an infection in both eyes that I was told people with thyroid problems usually get. I had my thyroid tested and it was fine, as far as I know. Then not long after I got a throat infection. The last two illnesses are unusual for me. I also was more angry most of the time and my meltdowns were more severe. During the 4-5 years I lived in a home no one knew anything about Asperger's and I was put on I don't know how many medications that gave me all kinds of awful side effects, especially restlessness and anxiety where I would pace for hours until my legs cramped up and I still couldn't relax and sit still, and it probably messed up my immune system along with everything else.

I live alone and I very seldom get sick now. Crowds of people, especially children, are worse than cockroaches, mosquitoes and rats when it comes to spreading infectious disease, and just being near groups of people makes me want to jump into a shower.

I socialise with myself, I find myself most fascinating to have conversations with. Fortunately I have the same interests as myself and understand my own communication style well. Ergo I can have many an interesting debate with my own mind.

Failing that, I go for a walk in the countryside...or preferably by a secluded part of the coast/the sea.

And if it gets really bad, I talk to George instead. For a stuffed penguin he is remarkably well read

(I jest about George, although I do sometimes say hi to him and give him a cuddle. He doesn't talk back to me though...he is not much of a conversationalist, he's is just plushie )

Last edited by bumble on 20 Feb 2014, 2:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Do you have anyone you could study with who would actually insist on studying and not talking or doing other things too much (or at all)? Would proximity while working on similar things be a compromise for you between isolation and interaction? What about going to a public library -- depending on the library there can be people everywhere but you can still find quiet places to study.

I dunno, could you take breaks? Schedule yourself sensory time? Or would it work for you to listen to quiet music with no words -- or ambient nature sounds or something that would give you sound but not take over your focus? Or play with fidget toys while you work? What kind of sensory input do you crave?

My need for isolation is limited to about 5 days; after that I need some form of interaction.

I was important for me to learn to recognize when my need for interaction kicks in, and find ways to meet it. It is like eating and sleeping: just something I need to take care of.

I can usually get what I need by having a beverage at a local coffee shop, then doing my weekly shopping and chatting with the store clerks.

Studying is fun.

I always have the maximum number of books I can have out of the library and I even go there to make notes and I am not even at University, or College or School...

I get excited over learning. I can be a bit odd like that.

Solitude and isolation is cool, but taken in large doses, can be detrimental to one's mental health. I'm guilty of spending way too much time by myself so I have to force myself to do things outside my comfort zone. Really, I'd much rather be sleeping to waste my time away, or even drinking except I'm now in recovery. As soon as I get over this depression I'll get back to doing the things I enjoy doing.

You can call me and we could have an entire conversation on the phone about what you're studying. You could even read the textbook to me in sections and we could discuss each section in turn.

If you don't have time to do that then scheduling breaks with sensory time seems like a good idea. You could play really loud music and dance and jump around or something and then get back to work at the scheduled time.

You should also have some toys to fiddle with or paper to rip or something else you can scratch at while you study besides your face because that's a bad habit.

I hope your recovery goes well and you'll soon get back to things you enjoy doing, like music.

I'm either obsessed with it and love it, or find it grueling and impossible to focus (depending on whether or not it's related to my special interest!) I seem to not have any middle ground. The type of studying I hated in school was for courses I was required to take, but had no aptitude for.

My first thought was, and you don't want to hear this so I don't know why I'm saying it anyways, is that perhaps you need to give your priorities a long, hard look. If what matters the most to you necessarily causes you distress, why does it matter the most? Can you not still be alright/pretty good academically AND have a social life? Must you put everything that you enjoy aside because for a little bit, it will make it so your focus has waned?

Working too hard will eventually lead to a loss of being able to work, physically or mentally. A good balance between work and play and rest is crucial for happiness and success.

I'm actually a little surprised that you find that you still work best upon finding your mental health sagging and being cooped up. I always work best with mental breaks of something unscheduled. I simply could not focus on my tasks the way you describe yourself being. The moment my mental health sags I'm next to useless.

Like many people recovering from a life that fell apart due to late diagnosis, I am living with my Mum since my Dad died a few years ago. It's interesting to compare how isolated , both by choice and involuntarily, I am now/was then.

Back in the early 2000s when I was in my late 30s/early 40s I rented a room or two in London on a low income. My landlord and landlady were nice people and would occasionally invite me for a drink. I did enjoy it up to a point, but socialising with them was hard work - though I didn't know why at the time - and also, I really just wanted to be left alone and get on with my own things my own way. Yet I was desperately lonely because I had nobody to be friends with or boyfriend to who was like me; I didn't know that what I was had a name. I would spend ages developing software or websites on the computer, watching sci-fi shows. The only regular socialising with real people was visiting cat shows very occasionally and committee meetings of a couple of cat clubs of which I was webmaster.

In particular I often found myself and talking to myself as if I were two different people, as if I had at last found somebody on my own wavelength; I longed for company of people like me but I didn't know what that meant. If I needed to get out of the house, I would travel around London just for the scenery or walk footpaths and canal banks.

In the latter case, I visited museums I found along the way, as some of them were on or near the Thames (e.g., canal museum at King's Cross) or admired industrial archaeology along the way (e.g, Bazalgette's pumping station near North Kent). In particular, I watched Gallions Reach go from a wasteland with a ruined pub and a DLR tube line to a university student accommodation area and new build houses; the old A road viaducts, some simply sliced off after being abandoned and part-demolished are fascinating, as was the change in Island Gardens / Cutty Sark DLR and surrounding area over the last 20 years.


Nowadays, it's a bit different. I have more of a social life, see my Mum regularly (since I live with her) and have a cat of my own at last; I talk to him too, though my Cat is about as good as my French, so mostly it's one-sided , I go to Astronomy club and an Asperger support group for adults as well as my volunteering in reception/admin/retail roles.

Despite that, I still crave solitude and wish I had a place of my own so I could be alone when I wanted to. For that I have to walk and do a lot of that; fortunately there's a lot of footpaths around here and especially along the banks of the Waveney; sadly there's little industrial archaeology nearby except for the disused railway swing bridge foundations at Aldeby (near Beccles) and museums here either cost money or are orientated around rural and farming history rather than technology, science, or the serious weighty issues of the past.

I don't miss walking around the town watching people as if they were aliens, since post-diagnosis, I realise that I do enjoy socialising and people, it's just that it is draining doing it with NTs and, although I am getting better at it, it's still hard work. I still feel an outsider or alien, but don't revel in it as I used to; I just wish the Asperger group I go to had more members.


I guess the constant things between then and now are that (a) when walking I still talk to my imaginary self and it's also a good way to mull problems over, though I still think I'm crazy (and my cat agrees with me ) ; (b); I still have no true friends or a partner and until I have a job and thus money, would find it difficult to maintain those relationships in such a rural area, if only due to car/petrol costs; (c) I don't usually mind solitude and prefer to be with lots of people (work when I had a job, astronomy club and so on) or none at all.


So, for me, isolation and health/happiness are not mutually exclusive and, now that I have a social life that I can use or not as I please, can be "unisolated" when I need to.


On a more general note, the draining of socialising and commitment to other people, coupled with the "fear of the unknown", even if it is other Aspies, means that making friends would still be difficult; only for a girlfriend, somebody I really and truly loved, would I find it comfortable to make the effort to maintain a relationship. I think that may be the reason why many Aspies only have a partner (if they're lucky) and a very few, very close, friends.

Last edited by IKnowWhoIAmNow on 20 Feb 2014, 5:31 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I'm the opposite -- I feel at my most relaxed, healthy and happy if I DO get to isolate myself for five days! And I get physically, emotionally and mentally worse/stressed/ill when forced to deal with many people constantly and daily.

Asperger's and socializing. Can't live with it. Can't live without it.

Interesting. Whenever I take one of these personality measures, I always score moderately high on the extraversion side of things. I am not proud of it or happy about it, though. My whole family values "book smarts" more than anything else, so that's what I've been raised to value, at least in myself. My parents have always condemned me for wanting to go to friends' homes and parties ("all you want to do is party, grow up") - type of thing. Granted, both of my parents are introverts, so they'll probably never get it.

As for going to the library, that's pretty much like starving myself and then putting some food in front of me but not allowing myself to eat it. Being around people, and especially seeing them interact with each other (which also happens in the library) is extremely depressing when I can't interact with them. I've studied in the library a lot in my first year. One time I just broke down crying instead of doing my work and begged to go to my friend's place because I became so freaking lonely. And I was way more social back then than I am now. I've developed my tolerance gradually and total isolation helped. My grades weren't as good back then as I feel they could have been and I was only taking three courses per semester instead of the full five.

Plus, the sensory environment in the library sucks, with its fluorescent lights and desks that have horrible synthetic textures I don't dare to touch.

Been there, done that. The quality of the work I produced in this circumstance was not optimal, like with music in the background, because I am also very sensitive to external stimuli and any movements or noises in my periphery make my focus worse.

I need to go and work on my assignment now but I will try to respond to the rest later. I know that what I'm doing to myself is similar to torture. However, I feel like it's something I need to do in order to be able to have a job in the future that enables me to make maximum difference in the society in the future. The feeling I get from helping people is the best feeling ever and I would like to work in an area that allows me to do this in the most effective way possible.