Does anyone else feel like they are trapped behind a glass..

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yes I totally relate to that. Story of my life

I only feel like that in certain situations. Like when my cousins come round, they all have one thing in common: the pub they go to on Friday nights, and they sit there for hours talking about all their immature shenanigans that went on. When this happens, I feel like I'm trapped behind glass.

I was just mentioning to someone how it felt like I'm behind an invisible glass wall.
I don't know if it has anything to do with a "fantasy world" vs reality, but I very often feel a disconnect. It especially feels this way when I wish I could join in a conversation but I can't really manage to say anything. I'm always just watching... too afraid and inexperienced to socialize. I feel like I can understand other people, understand their emotions, fully realize how weird I look on the outside not speaking, but I can't communicate back since I'm on the other side of this wall...

I don't feel this way so much when I am alone. I do spend a lot of time partially in my head, but I feel connected with the rest of the world most of the time. I think things felt more real when I was younger. Hard to judge and compare though.

I wanted to use that very image in a PSA (Public Service Announcement) I was thinking about doing for a school assignment. But my own glass wall got in the way of being able to express my idea and form a team to make it happen.

I have felt like this all my adult life. It is as if the 'real' world is a hair's breadth away from me, but when I try to reach out and touch it, it recedes. I had put this down to my being lonely and to having no family, but perhaps it goes deeper than this. I have tried to hard to join the world, by studying, joining groups etc but always feel behind glass. There are odd occasions when I connect to someone, but usually I feel so alone.

Oh yes, I do feel as if I am trapped behind glass, although I wasn't conscious of this feeling until I graduated high school and started college.

Didn't Donna Williams once talk about feeling like she was "watching the world from behind glass" in one of her autobiographies?

I feel as though I'm underwater most of the time while most people live on dry land (water being my mind/imagination/my own world I guess). I differ from the little mermaid in that I'm actually comfortable where I am and wish people would stop trying to drag me out of the water, but at the same time I'm isolated there and wouldn't mind being able to make short trips on land more easily. Um, don't know if that makes sense at all or if I just got lost in my metaphor...

I saw something very similar in a pharmaceutical trial commercial for AS. The message seemed to be to give your kids experimental meds, and suddenly the walls would disintegrate and they would suddenly join in. It was so simplified it ticked me off.

Oh jeez...yeah, that ticks me off, too, just from reading about it.

I second that "ticking off"

I have had problems with depersonalization since puberty. It never seem to go away, but it does ebb and flow a bit.

I sometimes daydream I'm in the middle of a crowd and I'm screaming my lung out "HEEELP" like a psycho, and people would keep on walking as if nothing happened. It's not that they are not listening, they are not "hearing" me.

Or yelling at someone to stop and he would still go on, pretending not to hear (and i'm forced to hit them so they would aknowledge my presence).

I'm imagining those because I think I experienced similar situations in real as a kid, but they were so traumatic that I "occulted" them. I somehow experience it as an adult... people don't "hear" me, and asking for help is useless for instance.

I heard it's typical of autism.

"Behind a glass screen" is exactly the words I used to describe myself at my diagnosis interview. Sometimes the the screen is thicker, sometimes it's cloudier, it depends on my health and stress levels.

Feeling my way along an invisible wall

Looking for a doorway in this Hall

seeking exits all along-I am always finding

rooms containing the masks I am wearing

Seeing those outside this place

but can they ever see through

all the masks my face is hiding

Overhead in a blue sky I watch clouds go by

lost ever deeper in a glass labyrinth.

03/18/2012

Sincerely,
Matthew

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxAI2Y3XhZA[/youtube]

This was for adults--more of a