Jan. 30th, 2012 01:11 am
Peopled out
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textualdevianceIt's past my bedtime, and after spending most of the last 5 days busy as hell with adoption and chorus stuff, I'm exhausted and should go sleep. Need to blather just a little, though:
Why is it that I feel so overwhelmed being surrounded by a lot of people, and yet when I'm alone, I spend an awful lot of time living vicariously through the social lives of others?
I can barely stand rehearsals. Being in close quarters with 200 other people for hours on end is way too intense for me (retreat this weekend was agonizing.) Same issue with other sorts of large crowds. I can only take cons in small doses. I try to avoid shopping or traveling at peak times. And I can't stand clubs, concerts or anything else with a lot of noise and hundreds of other people around. Also dislike public transportation for the same reason. I love getting out into the real world, but only if it's sparsely populated with other humans.
And yet ...
1. When I'm in a smallish group of my closest friends--maybe 15-20 total--I am utterly blissed out and energized in a way I never am when I'm alone. And I also envy the close-knit, family-like relationships so many other people seem to have, and find myself investing in them by proxy (sometimes in an unhealthy way.)
2. I'm perfectly happy to socialize in crowds online, and will merrily chat up complete strangers if we seem to have enough in common.
Some of this is undoubtedly the physical-world stimuli. Even when there's chaos online, my immediate physical world is usually quiet and calm. And I can get up and walk away at any moment if it becomes too much or I get suddenly tired or have a headache/other issue come on. I have an escape route that I don't easily have in meatspace. From an ADD/possible Aspie perspective, it's just much easier for me to concentrate and process stimuli I'm only getting via text (and images, occasional video, etc.) My brain otherwise starts frazzling with input overload.
Some of it is also social anxiety re: physical issues. I can dazzle people with my sparkling wit (tm) online, but in meatspace, I rarely get past the physical barriers to get to do so with others. People make up their minds about me the instant they see me, and if they're visually oriented people, I get dismissed before we've said three words to each other.
And also, wrt the close friends thing ... well, they're close friends. I've known most of them for a dozen years or more. While we don't see each other as often as we did when we were in chorus together, there's still a history there that makes me considerably more comfortable than I would be with people I had never spent so much time with. We don't have the posse sort of thing I'd really like right now, but they're still good eggs, and I like spending time with them when I can.
I think many people might assume that because I dislike being surrounded with people--even friendly ones--that I'm anti-social. I don't think that's the case at all. I'm an incredibly social person, but only when that socializing is meaningful, when I have some control over the situation, and when I can leave when I'm full up or my body starts to give out. In a way, I kind of feel like I have a budget for how much I can socialize, and I don't want to spend it all on stuff that isn't going to pay off for me. So rather than go to a club where I'm going to have my nerves frazzled in 20 minutes and come away from it with nothing but sore feet, a headache and a hangover, I'll either hang out in online fanspace and gibber away about something of mutual interest, or hang with people who don't demand that I'm "on" all the time.
I'd chalk this up to getting older, but I can remember being like this for probably the last 20 years or so, at least. I did my club days, and have enjoyed festivals and concerts and all that. But it didn't take me long to get that the contact I had with people then was superficial, and took so much energy to participate in v. what I got out of it that it left me with a deficit at the end of it.
So, yeah. Not anti-social. Just easily overwhelmed. Really, I think I've always sought out genuine connections with other human beings, but before I figured this out, I was, as they say, looking for it in all the wrong places. People don't go to clubs or cons or whatever to have three-hour conversations about philosophy, French politics and cat behavior. So I'm not going to find that there. And given how much bandwidth they take, why would I even try? I'm not being rude or stuck up or think I'm better than other people when I avoid big parties or dances or, well, endless rehearsals. They just take so damned much energy, and fry my brain so much that I can't do those things without having a lot of downtime in between them.
The happiest moments in my life are when I'm chatting and cuddling with the people I love. And I'm not going to find that stuff in a sea of random people.
Why is it that I feel so overwhelmed being surrounded by a lot of people, and yet when I'm alone, I spend an awful lot of time living vicariously through the social lives of others?
I can barely stand rehearsals. Being in close quarters with 200 other people for hours on end is way too intense for me (retreat this weekend was agonizing.) Same issue with other sorts of large crowds. I can only take cons in small doses. I try to avoid shopping or traveling at peak times. And I can't stand clubs, concerts or anything else with a lot of noise and hundreds of other people around. Also dislike public transportation for the same reason. I love getting out into the real world, but only if it's sparsely populated with other humans.
And yet ...
1. When I'm in a smallish group of my closest friends--maybe 15-20 total--I am utterly blissed out and energized in a way I never am when I'm alone. And I also envy the close-knit, family-like relationships so many other people seem to have, and find myself investing in them by proxy (sometimes in an unhealthy way.)
2. I'm perfectly happy to socialize in crowds online, and will merrily chat up complete strangers if we seem to have enough in common.
Some of this is undoubtedly the physical-world stimuli. Even when there's chaos online, my immediate physical world is usually quiet and calm. And I can get up and walk away at any moment if it becomes too much or I get suddenly tired or have a headache/other issue come on. I have an escape route that I don't easily have in meatspace. From an ADD/possible Aspie perspective, it's just much easier for me to concentrate and process stimuli I'm only getting via text (and images, occasional video, etc.) My brain otherwise starts frazzling with input overload.
Some of it is also social anxiety re: physical issues. I can dazzle people with my sparkling wit (tm) online, but in meatspace, I rarely get past the physical barriers to get to do so with others. People make up their minds about me the instant they see me, and if they're visually oriented people, I get dismissed before we've said three words to each other.
And also, wrt the close friends thing ... well, they're close friends. I've known most of them for a dozen years or more. While we don't see each other as often as we did when we were in chorus together, there's still a history there that makes me considerably more comfortable than I would be with people I had never spent so much time with. We don't have the posse sort of thing I'd really like right now, but they're still good eggs, and I like spending time with them when I can.
I think many people might assume that because I dislike being surrounded with people--even friendly ones--that I'm anti-social. I don't think that's the case at all. I'm an incredibly social person, but only when that socializing is meaningful, when I have some control over the situation, and when I can leave when I'm full up or my body starts to give out. In a way, I kind of feel like I have a budget for how much I can socialize, and I don't want to spend it all on stuff that isn't going to pay off for me. So rather than go to a club where I'm going to have my nerves frazzled in 20 minutes and come away from it with nothing but sore feet, a headache and a hangover, I'll either hang out in online fanspace and gibber away about something of mutual interest, or hang with people who don't demand that I'm "on" all the time.
I'd chalk this up to getting older, but I can remember being like this for probably the last 20 years or so, at least. I did my club days, and have enjoyed festivals and concerts and all that. But it didn't take me long to get that the contact I had with people then was superficial, and took so much energy to participate in v. what I got out of it that it left me with a deficit at the end of it.
So, yeah. Not anti-social. Just easily overwhelmed. Really, I think I've always sought out genuine connections with other human beings, but before I figured this out, I was, as they say, looking for it in all the wrong places. People don't go to clubs or cons or whatever to have three-hour conversations about philosophy, French politics and cat behavior. So I'm not going to find that there. And given how much bandwidth they take, why would I even try? I'm not being rude or stuck up or think I'm better than other people when I avoid big parties or dances or, well, endless rehearsals. They just take so damned much energy, and fry my brain so much that I can't do those things without having a lot of downtime in between them.
The happiest moments in my life are when I'm chatting and cuddling with the people I love. And I'm not going to find that stuff in a sea of random people.
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I'm not as sensitive to large crowds as you (unless it's a crowd I don't want to be at--loud club I was dragged to vs. geeky convention), but I definitely don't get energized the way extroverts do in crowds, and I always go into extreme hibernation mode post-conventions because I need SO MUCH ME SPACE to recuperate afterward.