Feeling trapped inside ones self...

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This is the way I feel a lot of the time. My non-speaking self seems very disconnected from my speaking self. My rational mind does not want or anticipate overeacting and yelling over minor discrepancies..It seems like I yell in response to some messed up interaction and and then have to apologize for it afterwards, because I really did not want to yell and overeact. It is very frustrating..Just like when thinking to myself, I find it very difficult to anticipate how difficult things will get once I open my mouth...It is very frustrating...I yell at my business partner a lot...when I really don't mean to...and that starts a negative cycle that I really did not want to cause....but once I have yelled I can't stop at least for a while.....I respond negatively to people who annoy me, even though these people have not wronged me..I don't have very much self control...Examples are the tall skinny girl who works for us and is excessively chipper cheerful...During one of her efforts to make lighthearted chitchat, I muttered under my breath "don't talk to me"...even though I don't particularly dislike her...I am just not acclimated to talking to her...and her general mood tends to clash with the mood that I am in, and I can't fake it...I understand that it is necc. for me to be at least cordial with people who rub me the wrong way, but I cant do it...I slammed the door in the face of one girl who I concider to be a pest because she showed up during off-hours, and there was no real reason for her to be there...when I should have at least been able to give her the chance to speak her mind....

I think that the ability to be nice to these people would be simply a matter of my breaking character and making an attempt to act decent..but once I have established a negative protocol, it is hard to break out of it...It is something that makes me really dislike myself.

I can barely speak to the girl who is having Flakey's kid..and Flakey expects me to stick around and be some sort of grandmother-figure to the kid..since i am old enuff to be the girl's mother (if this were medieval times)...I do things to perpetuate the cycle of mutual dislike, because it is easier than making an effort to find some sort of common ground..(this mostly consists of being unable to look at or speak to her)

I wish I had more self control or a social mask I could put on...it seems to be getting harder and harder as I get older...

I am even concidering going into some sort of therapy to help we deal with it,...though I don't really know where to go..I hope that I could maybe ask the psych who gives me my ADD meds for a referral...because I can't really talk to him that well about such things..

This applies to other parts of me aside from social interactions...it applies to executive function too...and other stuff besides...so that this thread is not a completely worthless diversion back to my mundane set of personal problems..

Kudos on the desire to improve your situation! Give yourself brownie points for the right attitude.
I experience a disconnect between internal me and expressed me also. When I lost the need for approval from others, I lost my motivation and patience to bend to the NT level as well.
I don't have any answers, but just want to encourage you to persevere in understanding yourself .

[quote="poopylungstuffing"] My non-speaking self seems very disconnected from my speaking self. [/quote

This is EXACTLY how I've ALWAYS felt, for the most part. I've only felt like I was truly one WHOLE person for a few short periods throughout my entire life.

I use facades most of the time to deal with it, because honestly if it were up tome I'd become a complete recluse and watch everything from an outsider's perspective, even my own life.

But yea, what you said is so true, I feel like my speaking self is a completely different person. Most of the time when I look in the mirror I can't imagine that it's really me. I just don't feel like I have a human form, really, never have. I kind of have to disassociate myself from my own reflection. It makes no sense to me that there's a person representing ME running around talking and carrying on with the outside world. I feel like I only exist inside of my own mind.

The social mask is hard and it's DRAINING also. I don't use as much of a facade now as i have in the past but it's still there. I have to use one, I would be an UTTERLY unpleasant person otherwise. I just wouldn't talk to people, I'd have NO friends, probably wouldn't even talk to my own family, and I don't want that to happen because I love my family and I love people, it's just way too easy for me to go non-verbaL and get locked up inside of myself if I don't pretend not to be. It is definitely being trapped inside of one's self.

I have to be careful when using the facades, though, because I'm so disconnected from the person that I'm pretending to be that my "characters" become a little outrageous without my knowledge, or before I realize just how bad it's gotten. I know it's not ME, so to me it doesn't matter, but other people don't know that, so they can easily think I've lost my mind when my behavior starts becoming eccentric. Fortunately I can do a complete 180 and go back to "normal" again but I'm not always great with monitoring my behavior closely enough.

An analogy I could use is the episode of Family Guy where the Griffin parents are drunk or stoned or something and they play a duet for some kind of talent show and in their minds they sound wonderful and perfect, but in actuality, in the play back tape they are knocking around like inebriated idiots...

I have been able to use a social mask a bit more in the past, and it has tended to be a bit outrageous...I did this when I was in high school, and when I was a bit older...Either that, or I have thought I was doing a good job at being social, but actually I was just being pedantic about my interests...and later I would get critiqued by my partner for rambling, and so I'd become hyper aware of having made a fool of myself..

Could it be a problem of anger management?

I sometimes get the impression that you're trying to emulate an extremely tolerant personality that can't really exist - but I could be miles off target there.

I feel like I am trapped inside myself. I have a different problem to a certain degree. My outside self is very quiet, but there really is alot going on inside my head. Very few people can tap into the real me. Very few people can be bothered to make the effort. Very few people realise that there is anything beyond the empty silence buffer.

I once saw an episode of Deep Space 9 calle Chrysalis where one of the genetically modified people was cured by the doctor. She had always been silent and lived her whole life inside herself. I feel like that.

Other times though I am totally out of control. There are things that I can't handle like certain social situations or times when I feel like I am expected to behave a certain way and seem to fall short and I don't know why. And I behave totally crazy when I'm like that. Last night I was at a dance and there was a guy I liked there and I couldn't talk to him. I actually wanted to talk to him, but he doesn't know that. All he could see was that I didn't go near him all evening. I always do that and the guy thinks I'm not interested. I seem to have no control over it. Things like this upset me and I start behaving angry with the likes of my sister who knows me well. But she doesn't know why I'm angry and then I start saying things like I'm sick of being alive and everything is black and dismal and all I can be is negative about everything, even though I don't really feel like that. I think I am trying to demonstrate that I am upset about something but can't articulate it and she just thinks that I am angry with her and it creates friction between us that doesn't need to be there.

I don't seem to be able to behave appropriately to the way I actually feel or to be able to articulate what I am experiencing. And the worst thing is, when I try and explain, no one understands because they see the outside me and I am trying to explain the inside me. It's so tiring.

I sometimes, no, quite often, feel like I'm trapped inside myself. I also relate to what musicbox said especially. I also can't seem to explain what I mean without people misunderstanding it, mostly because I can't find the right words so it gets annoying when people try to guess what I'm trying to say but they guess wrong.
Another thing which is similar I think, is I've always been in my own world and I zone out a lot and stuff. When I was in school, in year 8, I made this little analogy in my head, when I was in lessons I was inside a cardboard box which was surrounding my table, and I was in the box daydreaming and drawing little doodles while everyone else was engaged in the lesson. I told my mum this at the time, and she said "well don't! focus on what you're supposed to" as if I could, just like that.