>>2507073Same. I usually don’t feel all that lonely until I go out to socialise and I run into something that feels like an invisible wall between me and other people. The more I run into it, the more it hurts, and the more likely I am to go back to isolating myself. Then after a few months of that I forget about the wall and go out there again, all bright eyed and bushy tailed, certain that it will be different
this time and I’ll be sure to have a good time
this time, only to run head-first into the wall again. I’ve had CBT from a social anxiety specialist (who admitted she knew nothing about ASD) which only ended up making me feel worse in the long run because even when I’m at my most optimistic and confident, other people didn’t get the same script and still treat me the same way they always do.
Anyway, I’m wondering if anyone has some advice on how to deal with it when people are rude to you. For example, one thing that happens very often is when I’m talking to someone and a little circle of people forms, and then someone steps in front of me and cuts me out of the circle. Often they knock into me with their bag or even step on my toes. Usually when I say “hey, excuse me” or something along those lines, they just ignore me, and I don’t want to start shouting or physically shove myself back into the circle because that would be rude too. So I take that as my cue to leave.
Another common thing is that people start loudly talking over me when I’m talking. I used to think this was a sign I was going on too long, but they even do this when I’m only on my first or second sentence. If I stop talking to let them finish I never get another chance of getting a word in, and if I raise my voice (because maybe I was talking too quietly and they didn’t realise I was talking already?) they raise their voice too to continue talking over me. Again, I don’t like shouting, so this is my cue to shut up. The worst is when they start talking about me in third person like I’m not there, but fortunately that doesn’t happen very often. Usually they just act like they never noticed me there in the first place.
On one occasion a coworker sat down on my very small desk while I was trying to work and knocked over my (fortunately empty) coffee cup onto my keyboard. She didn’t apologise and no one else in there room acknowledged that anything happened either even though they all saw. When I told her to find somewhere else to sit everyone just laughed and she didn’t move, so I grabbed my laptop and went to work in the hallway.
We never covered any of this in social skills training. Instead we focused on recognising basic expressions on cartoon faces and learning how to be less of a nuisance. The assumption was always that if there’s some conflict between an autistic person and another person, it’s the autistic person’s fault for being socially awkward. So the only conflict resolution we ever learned was how to apologise, never how to effectively stand up for ourselves. Has anyone ITT ever had something like assertiveness training? Did that help?