Feeling like you have no origins/connections

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Really hard concept to explain, but something tells me some of you might be able to relate.

I've had a 'problem' throughout my life, that I've only very recently gotten into discussing with people. I do not, nor have I ever, feel any connection to anything or anyplace. That is to say, I have a hard time, if not an impossible time, identifying as a member of any group, be it a nationality, citizenship, family, age group, gender....ANYTHING. I have never been able to grasp the concept of being expected to act a certain way or adhere to special rules based on being female, adult or child, or of a particular social class or educational bracket. I am myself, nothing else, since I'm really the only one I can relate to. I'm expected to find peers of whatever sort based on age, gender, occupation, and nationality, but I find that having these superficial things in common really amounts to nothing.

When it comes to family, I consider them no different to anyone else. There are good and bad people among them, but I feel no special connection to them. I developed an obsession with geneology while attempting to establish a connection between myself and my relations, but came up with nothing, besides a specific extension of my obsession with history.

Additionally, when it comes to not feeling any attachment to any particular place, I have a lot of difficulty grasping the concept of other people feeling 'homesick' or having someplace they consider 'home'. Home to me is, and has always been, wherever I'm sleeping at the time.

Discussing this with someone recently, it was suggested that this was probably an Aspergers thing. It makes sense that it would be, but I was wondering if anyone else here feels this way, to this extent.

Yes! I totally get that! I have always felt that I belong in another time/place and that I am just passing through. I even felt that in my parents' home as a child.

Same here! I feel absolutely NO connection to my childhood home, even to the point that when I was kicked out, I felt virtually nothing. I also have less than no inclination to go back to visit, since there's no homesickness there to speak of, and the only thing I have to look forward to is clashing with my family.

So far as coming from another time, for me that's a whole new discussion. People have a tendency to think I'm 'retro' as some sort of fashion statement, when in reality, as far back as I can remember, I've felt like I was born a good 40 to 50+ years too late....and still have a REALLY hard time dealing with society as it is now.

I agree with this. I can't wait to get away from my family. I was planning to move to New York, but now I think Rome would be better, cos then I can learn to speak Italian and then conveniently forget English, so if I ever see my mother again I won't have to speak to her.

God no! It's seriously overstimulation/overpopulation HELL for Aspies....or anyone else for that matter! I've been here nearly 18 years, and if it weren't for my job and health problems, I'd be out of this living hell in a heartbeat.

Where do I want to go? Who knows? I have it narrowed down to wherever my family ISN'T!

Actually I've always thought everybody felt like what you're describing.

I'm willing to have my tongue torn out by a vulture so as not to talk to any of my relatives.
Before you move anywhere, you have to really know how to protect yourself!! Stay with what you know! Be careful kid cuz ya scare me!! !

It would make a lot more sense to me if they DID, but I was informed very early on of all the sorts of connections I should feel to others, and I was never able to comprehend any of them. The more I talk to people, the more I realise that not only do they naturally feel like they belong in certain boxes (like age groups, career paths, and genders), and connections to things that I feel have nothing to do with them as individuals (ethnicity, nationality, family), but they're constantly seeking out other things to connect to....like Irish-Americans in New York City, for example. As if it's not enough that they're so weirdly inextricable from their American and family identities, they all seem to have a 'draw' to a country and culture they've never even visited or experienced firsthand. Irish pubs in NY and Boston drive me insane, with all the Irish-American who automatically feel they've something in common with me just cos their grandparents were born in the same country as I was!

Wow, I thought I was the only one who felt like this. Thanks RoisinDubh, I feel less alone now.

I get on quite well with my parents - from a distance - but there's a terrible burden of expectation with being in a clique of any kind. I asked my parents when I was about ten where they had adopted me from.

I know what you mean about not feeling different about particular people though. Have you heard of the monkeysphere? here's a funny article about it. I've thought ever since reading it that I have no monkeysphere. People find my emotional reactions to my friends too cool and my reactions to everyone else - not warm exactly but not dismissive enough. I can't cut someone dead if they start telling me their life story on the bus for instance. Perhaps I just don't know how to do it but I think it's more than that.

I also feel retro. Perhaps I watch too many old movies but I think there was a formality 50 years ago that must have been quite relaxing for social inepts like me.

I agree with this as well. I have never felt a special connection for my family members. I've pretty much always been guilty over it because I know (or have been told) there is something very wrong with feeling this way. But it's true.

I do have an attachement to 'home' though because I am unsettled in unfamiliar places. I prefer to be home and I miss it if I am not there because I can relax and be myself at home.

I also find it fun and interesting to meet someone who is from the same place as me or ect I guess you might say that I do enjoy having something in common with someone. If we didn't, why would any of us be here? lol

When I am in a group and feel okay there, then it feels like I belong to that group. But when I am not in that group, then I do not miss it a lot. Just certain individuals, but not that group.

It is a bit like the Dutch saying: "Uit het oog, uit het hart", out of sight, out of heart.

yes! i relate to some of this- i have a real relation to things, but little to other people.


i have also always felt 'out of time', to the extent that when i was a child (8, 9, 10) it was widely assumed amoung my friends that i was re-incarnated because i used to know lots of weird things about the past- eg- details of old money ( eg-the worth of a farthing).
i still sometimes hear of somethng and think 'oh i remember that', and then realise i cant, because it was something from the 1910s etc.

i have just had a general feeling of never belonging anywhere, sometimes feeling as though i was about to dissapear, i was so dis connected.

it all def sounds aspie based.

OMG, I get that too!

Also, sometimes when someone says something that I haven't actually experienced, I'm like, "I know exactly what you mean," then I realise I've never even experienced it but I still completely understand whatever it is. So I must be reincarnated!

this sounds so, so familiar. I've always felt like this too... I thought it was the nomadic genes but looks like it's another part of the AS set of traits (and unlike what someone said above, I've always been very aware that this is not normal and only met a handful of travelers who felt the same).

i think you have described it really well. thi si sthe lack of connection we feel - as if there is a menbrane that separates us from other humans and even from social constructs and notions.

i differ however, in that my main connection is to things. the family home i grew up in was sso significant in that it was the keeper of patterns and designs, cracks and surfaces that filled my childhood world. and there were obejects too. still are. these are my closest friends.
i actually suspect i am quite fetichistic in this regard - which is quite common in AS people.

I do not feel much for most people. i can feign a kind of chameleon friendliness these days - in hte second half of my life - and yet when the person is out of my orbit i can feel absolutely nothing at all.

in fact, my chameleon friendliness is a social script that allows for a kind of counterfeit relating.

That is what i call it - counterfeit relating.. Liane Holliday Willey talks about it in her writing.

in short, i think many of us feel very lonely because of this. i know i do. a lot.

the most profound relating i have EVER come across has been of late. and it has been with other autistic people who accept me for who i am without criticism or questioning or disparagement.


oh ------ and family.... talk to a few siblings ont he phone. see them rarely. haven't been to a christmas gathering or function in about 12 years. don't ring them for birthdays. try to occasionally and usually forget. i do have a bond, but it is not a normal kind of bond and its meaning is not dependent upon an active expression. this disparity can exist within me quite comfortably. and is usually only comprehended by other ASD people.

thank you for a very meaningful thread.

Last edited by millie on 10 Feb 2009, 5:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.