Introducing myself -- and my social skils (or lack thereof)

Post Reply New Topic

Hey guys and gals, I'm a 51-year old guy who has the social skills of about a 20-year old. I'm actually enjoying it to a certain degree, but I am a bit out of step. But then that's been true of most of the things in my life.
My therapist (MD/Psych) and I actually disagree on the Aspie diagnosis. I say yes, she says no, because I have "too much" empathy. But most of the rest of the traits (obsession about trivial things) are definitely there.

The only time that I become sociable to any degree is when I've had a few drinks. But I never drink at home alone. How tragic to do that, I feel. But about once a week, I show up at a pub, and I'm, well, there. Sometimes I come across as odd and a "know it all", but at least I'm interacting.

I think one of the reasons for our disagreement is that I've gotten good at "faking" empathy. That is, I actually put it into my brain's operating system as a task to attempt to look at things from other people's points of view. I have to really work at it, though. Because I write computer code (among many, many other things) I've often found that my brain works just like an O/S, mostly Unix -- and algorithmically very much like the original C language. No object-oriented stuff here.

I'm jealous of the fact that most of the people I see seem to be swimming in a pool of shared social experiences, while I wait and watch from the side of the pool. I'm not so afraid to jump in, as much as I'm just not sure that I want to be in the water.

Any observations are very welcome. Thanks!
-mM

hi.

I can definately feel where you're coming from. Good analogy with the swimming pool by the way. I've used a similar one refrencing a famous mural depicting the battle of gettysburg, where the artist included himself in the painting, but just as an observer sitting under a tree while the swirling melee of battle happened around him.

You might wanna look into personal intimacy problems as the source of these feelings rather than over-logical thinking. It's the one part of social interaction that has held me back more & more as the years progressed. As a kid, I was quite popular as the class clown, but at that age people just wanna be entertained so that worked for me. However, toward middle school when cliques began to form & people looked for a sense of belonging, I found myself being a social nomad. This trend continued to now where I can only interact on a surface level with people concerning activities at hand.

Being very logical can be a good thing, but can get rather cumbersome if it becomes a shield preventing you from interacting on a deeper level.

As if I had a choice!! I wish I could turn it off. I've honestly had to interrupt sex (in the middle of sex) because some chord progression in the music we were listening to was so intriguing. It's not that the sex was bad -- it's that the chord progression was overwhelming.

Everything in my life is an algorithm. A bunch of processes. I can "act" social, but it's all a learned skill. While I'm talking to people, I'm constantly running through my head, consciously, "how would I feel if I were them". It's my "empathy" algorithm. Sometimes I forget, and I catch myself talking incessantly about something that I know they have no care for; I just went off on a tangent.

Following threads of conversations is the hardest. I'm a non-stop series of non-sequiturs.