Sorry everything I write is the worst kind of venting monologue, something brainworms. Why am I awake at 4am.
I really wish that the desire for socialisation was not a natural part of being human because socialisation causes me brain damage now and has done for a long time. I'm a serial message deleter, I will comb back over messages and conversations and wondering what subtexts and implied meanings I have missed, in what ways I have unknowingly jammed my foot in my mouth. If I'm lucky it becomes obvious days or weeks or months, or even years later, and I get to feel fucking mortified about it. I refuse to keep putting myself through that.
So I wish my brain would stop feeling lonely and shitty and sad and desiring to talk to people about stuff. I barely even have the means now anyway, I have no idea where to find servers or groups or whatever else to talk in, and no I will not try to go out into the real world and talk to people. That seems like a really atrocious idea, I can barely manage speaking any of what pops into my brain irl, it just becomes painful and stilted script following. Plus, where do you even find opportunities like that? Fuck putting myself into new and scary situations that might not even benefit me.
In many ways I actually really regret doing the digging-around about autism. I miss the blissful unawareness I had; I used to just think things were fine, or if they obviously weren't people were just being weird, people were just weird sometimes. That's the correct mindset, because fuck neurotypical social rules obviously. I knew (know? idk) someone who told me just that, but since the NT rules are the assumed ground rules, I always find myself checking for what I missed. Sitting with the vague and unhelpful notion that I said or did something wrong. This is the part of being a person that I despise.
Also using semicolons is cringe, I'm pretty sure I don't even use them right.
This is probably the single most unhinged thing I've ever put on this website, but people have told me not to self censor and delete shit instead of posting it. I'm always losing that battle but I still have to try.
BONUS POINTS EDIT:
This is so stupid it's embarrassing but also as I started leaning all the way left I've basically alienated everybody I know. I've leaned pretty far left for my entire adult life and longer, but I didn't have a coherent framework or lens through which to view the world and make anything make sense.
My wife introduced me to hexbear and the discovery of political theory, of coherent leftist politics, basically busted my brain. There were a good few weeks where I was literally incapable of seeing people bitch about rising prices or rent or stuff and not going "workers of the world death to the bourgeousie" etc etc etc, infantile disorder. My favourite place to do it was in and around that one stupid lib-ass queer discord I talked in, which was fun, they had to make a rule against it.
The worst part was when I did it in a group chat I'd been invited to by two girls who apparently thought I was okay. For a few months it was cool and it almost seemed like I had friends for a bit. But 1) I made the mistake of going on an insane rant when one of them did a "haha korea great leader" joke, and I left that chat afterword. 2) After that I realised that I'd been putting in the majority of the relationship effort, i.e. was always the one starting conversations with people, and having to bug people to follow up so we could talk again. I decided right then that I was gonna start leaving people on read, and wait for them to message me, just once.
The majority never did, and the few times anyone did I flipped out and went on more rants which honestly was probably some kind of defense mechanism. But the other girl from that chat, not the dumb korea jokes one but the other one, who was really into internet fic, she literally just has never messaged me again which honestly still kind of hurts. She's also disappeared completely from that server and I wonder if I did something so wrong somewhere that she just quit discord. Obviously all that has caused a decent bunch of psychic damage regarding talking to people, yay. I also haven't even really talked to my family since I became the most unhinged & useless online commie. I suspect it will go poorly, Idk.
This is the part of being a person that I despise
Hey comrade, when i read a few paragraphs in i started looking for this self-realization. Good. This is an important step. You and i are going thru something similar.
Part of what you're feeling is (from what I've read) typical of new commies. If it's not, it is my experience. Apologies if you already understood this.
When i first discovered communism, it was just like when i was a kid learning to read. You remember how the words you knew jumped right out of the world without your even trying to find them?
You've probably been looking for answers for years, now all of a sudden shit makes sense. You have a framework of understanding that fits.
Except you just learned just how absolutely positootely fuuuuucked the world is. That's... really not fun. The platitudes your friends/coworkers/family use to soothe themselves don't work for you anymore.
Slowly you start to notice the chains binding you. Only you see that you are not free, and as you struggle in them, and try to tell the people around you that they are chained they look at you like you're the crazy one.
Not only are you struggling with that craggy chestnut, you have just come to understand youre not neurotypical. I am also on the spectrum, and i deal with increasingly debilitating anxiety and depression. Also i recently discovered i was asexual.
Learning all these things together, in rapid succession has made my brain feel like it is on fire some days. The worst days (days long past thank jebus) i remember having trouble keeping my head up. I mean literally it felt like a strong hand was pressing down on the back of my skull.
And so we come to self-hatred. I too
struggledam currently struggling with this. When i didn't know i was "different" i could at least chalk up my self-hate as a symptom of my depression. Now armed with new information the self-hating guy in my brain (truly the hardest working motherfucker in the building) had a new tactic: Telling me that my asexuality was an evolutionary response to not having genes worth passing on. Maybe that sounds dumb but he was really convincing.Thankfully i found trans subs on reddit and then hexbear. I found trans people to be so brave and cool compared to me. These people weren't even born in the right body! They can't hide and mask like me! They have felt more wrong for longer, dealt with so much more, will face so much more than me just trying to live! I love em, my cute/handsome friends. They give me hope that i too can change, that i can see despair and laugh anyway. After all, what does a coward like me have to fear coming out to his friends and family (tho i do anyway, a lot)?
Oops im rambling about shit i shouldn't, probably putting my foot in my mouth. I... Just really want you to know you're loved and tell you that I'm the same. I betcha a bunch of us misfits are. I would love for you to get a bit of benefits from this ranlmble of mine, because believe it or not, knowing you are struggling the same way i am makes me feel just a bit better.
We're gonna make it.
Thankfully I have known I am not neurotypical for several years, thankful for that. NT is for nerds, even if I'm really bad at talking. Also hey, asexual gang!!! It's Fun®!
Otherwise though, yes. It's been like putting on the glasses from They Live
and noticing all of the OBEY signs everywhere. All out of bubblegum...You might be utterly shocked to hear that I don't actually hate myself though! I resent having social difficulties and the asexuality thing can be difficult at times, but I genuinely wouldn't wanna be neurotypical, or straight or cis. Or allosexual actually because allosexuals are weird :| I promise being trans is not as amazing as you make it sound, but thanks as well. I actually really miss having trans communities, I ducked out of old reddit/4chan ones for being hypersexual and self hating, respectively. I miss my people though, and hexbear is all I got left.
This is a FOOT IN MOUTH ZONE so no worries! I really appreciate you (and every one else of course) replying to this thing, and I'm glad(?) to know I'm not the only one feeling this. Hexbear has neat weird people, which is very cool.
You might be utterly shocked to hear that I don't actually hate myself though!
Surprised for sure, but more happy than anything... Guess i was projecting my own self-hate. I only recently accepted i'm a card carrying Ace, like 6 months ago. Heck, you might be the first person i expressly came out to on the 'bear. I read that it is not unusual for people to have to start venting a lot of internalized homophobia and i suppose im on that journey? I dunno but it's a weird fucking trip I'm on.
Speaking of They Live, i recently rewatched it. During the meeting of the aliens they projected total takeover in 2024 iirc. Crazy coincidence huh? Damn that movie was prescient as hell.
Edit I'm so glad i mentioned it now, we can eat garlic bread and stuff! I also have a ton of burning questions about it
Yeah I have problems with me but I'm rad actually no big
also Nice, my ace realisation is about a year old now, but I've been dealing with the stuff around it since I was like 15. Grats to maybe your first express 'bear coming out!! 
Not unusual or surprising, I spent like five straight years digging through the guts of all the queerphobia I'd gathered from 4channel. Still find lil bits of it in my brain even...
I had forgotten that, would be a lot simpler if the explanation for 2024 was just aliens. I love They Live, "Figures it'd be something like this!" goated.
You can ask me questions and eat garlic bread, I know an acceptable amount of stuff at least.
I relate to a lot of this. I would block all of my online friends as we got closer, because it was too painful to keep ruminating on my interactions with them. Medication helped. Before that, I tried reminding myself that I'm okay with being perceived as someone weird, but kind.
People don't seem to perceive me that way, or at least I don't get that feedback. What I get is the intense sense that people just barely tolerate me, like an annoying child.
Also hey what medication? I've been on some SSRIs and SNRIs and such, but while they stabilised me some numbed me out too much, and all of em made my skull throb with excruciating pain. Couldn't bear it...
holy shit, do I fucking feel this whole post 💔 I recognized myself in a lot of what you wrote, but this
What I get is the intense sense that people just barely tolerate me, like an annoying child.
I have never related more to a sentence in my whole life.
Ugh idk what else I was even going to type, time to go cry.
Crying to this thread is in vogue, I do it too
I wish I could explain more of what I mean, how I can tell someone is tolerating me like an annoying child. Bur I don't have intelligent thoughts about it, just sad
In my experience, it's subtle stuff that people totally deny when you relate it to something you've done but acknowledge in reference to other people — "Yes, that sigh meant I was over their bullshit, but it didn't mean I was over yours!" kinda stuff. I think it comes from just not wanting to talk about whatever stupid things I did to slightly offend, but unfortunately I'm "oversensitive" to that kind of nonverbal feedback and have a hard time dismissing it.
"They didn't think it was worth discussing, so why am I worried about it?" is just an impossible stopping point for me, I can't not be worried about it. And then I distance myself because I feel weird, and the relationship suffers.
idk. maybe you relate?
Yeah, a bit I think. I guess you can just tell from things like that. Stuff that would indicate annoyance in any other situation but they insist you are fine. They just seem annoyed with a veneer of politeness in front, I guess...
My brain is hardcore fried from the 100+ replies(!!!!) I've had between this post and the other one, so I might have better thoughts on this more later.
I admire your willingness to continue to engage! I think I probably would have deleted my account after having 20+ notifications 😂😵💫
no obligation to continue this thread, just know I totally feel you, you're not alone in this 🤗 hopefully it'll get better for both of us.
Also hey what medication?
If you don't mind me asking, what flavour of neurodivergent are you?
So going by Harvard's recommendations the prime candidate for a medication given what you've described would be buspirone but it might also be worth considering beta blockers such as propranolol.
Personally I'm auDHD and I have found that I respond particularly well to clonidine for the sort of symptoms you're describing here (which fit pretty closely to what is known as rejection sensitive dysphoria - a contentious set of symptoms but one which I'm convinced of the existence of) and clonidine being an alpha agonist, it tends to work in a similar way to a beta blocker. But clonidine is one of the drugs that has been identified as a good second-line treatment for ADHD, with the other being guanfacine, so ymmv. (Sidebar to mention that ADHD occurs in autistic people at a rate of about 20-40% so it's not wildly outside the bounds of possibility that you may have ADHD as well.)
For the more general anxiety stuff, outside of benzos (which are very tricky with regards to addiction and which I'd strongly recommend against in most cases) I have found that amantadine works really well but it has a pretty narrow body of evidence supporting its use and what evidence exists seems to indicate that when prescribed for autism it isn't particularly useful however for a range of mental illnesses it works quite well. In my experience, I wasn't seeking to treat symptoms that are integral to autism with amantadine but instead to treat symptoms that I understand as being sorta secondary or the product of environmental factors and my autistic nature responding to those factors, if that makes any sense lol? (What I'm trying to describe here is like - I'm always going to have sensory sensitivities. I don't think there's anything out there which will treat this. But for example I find that being exposed to lots of auditory stimuli, especially loud and abrupt noises, sets my nerves on edge and I end up with anxiety that gradually ratchets up during the day in response to this central experience of autism - being sensitive to sound. Amantadine has worked well to help me manage my "secondary" symptoms of anxiety.)
There's also risperidone or aripiprazole to consider here but they tend to have a broader side effect profile and I'd probably consider them as more of a last resort.
Woah you can medicate rejection sensitivity???? Damn, I want some of that. Noting these medication names, ty.
I have a couple of ADHDish symptoms but I dob't think I qualify mostly :)
Thank you for all of these excellent potential recommendations, I might bug my doctor avout a buncha these!
Woah you can medicate rejection sensitivity????
Basically, yeah.
I wouldn't go into this with the expectation that medication will eliminate it but the working hypothesis is that rejection sensitivity on the nervous system level is a lot like what happens with a PTSD trigger; you get this inordinate response to stimuli and your body goes into a fight-or-flight mode, or at least something pretty close to it.
Rejection sensitivity (at least in ADHDers) is really closely linked to heightened emotional reactivity at its core. I'm of the opinion that there's a lot of environmental factors that feed into this, where a person gets into a positive feedback loop where they are exposed to a lot more negative feedback and rejection by others compared to their peers and the response to this compounds over time. I'm also of the opinion that with emotional reactivity in ADHD it tends to follow one of two major paths over the course of a person's development - you have the outwardly expressed form which is much more closely linked with hyperactivity, and that is where you get the more oppositional defiant disorder-style of responses (I object to the framing of this disorder and I don't really like how it's understood or pathologised but I'm using it as shorthand here) and then you have rejection sensitive dysphoria style of responses, which is more closely linked with the inattentive type of ADHD and which I see as the inwardly-expressed form of this phenomenon.
So if you can use medication to reduce emotional reactivity and the associated physiological response then you can reduce the symptoms of rejection sensitivity and that's what can make a really big difference in developing or implementing behavioural strategies to manage this. Obviously if you've gone through your whole life experiencing rejection sensitivity then it will take a good amount of time to adjust to things and to develop a different approach and a different understanding of things so I see medication as being the first step in a strategy to treat/manage full-blown cases of RSD.
With all of that in mind, for ADHDers the two medications that have the best outcomes for emotional reactivity are guanfacine and clonidine but because I'm no psychiatrist or anything I can't say that they would be just as effective for a non-ADHDer that is, for example, autistic. If the rejection sensitivity is more akin to a sort of low-grade PTSD due to the cumulative effects of socialising as an autistic person who is in an unsupportive environment or because they went undiagnosed as a child then my hunch would be that beta blockers might be more useful here.
Beta blockers and clonidine have an immediate effect. For guanfacine it's a bit more of a mixed bag - the physiological effects should be fairly immediate but they say that it takes a few weeks for the full effect to be achieved, and I'm assuming that this is mostly because of how guanfacine affects the brain (but that's a long story in itself). One of the good thing is that these meds are much easier to start on or to taper off of compared to antidepressants.
Inordinate stimuli response, fight or flight is EXACTLY what I get, all the time. Not even just for rejection sensitive stuff, (most intense tho) but also for just talking to people, which is why I'm basically taking today off for social battery purposes. I want these drugs now.
I am saving your comments, thank you for the superb advice.
There’s also risperidone or aripiprazole to consider here but they tend to have a broader side effect profile and I’d probably consider them as more of a last resort.
I was actually prescribed Abilify (aripiprazole) for OCD and it made me anhedonic, emotionally blunt etc on a really small dose. I had the same reaction to Prozac so I thought that maybe the dopamine lowering (if I have to describe it in a vulgar way) meds have a bad effect on me due to the ADHD (stimulants fucked my OCD on the other hand). Do you have any experience with those? I am curious because you are a fellow AuDHD
I've taken aripiprazole as an adult and I definitely noticed a reduction in my experience of agitation due to sensory overload and similar autism-related stuff.
I tolerate antipsychotics well so I didn't notice any significant emotional blunting and, unfortunately, I struggle with anhedonia in a major way so I didn't notice it affecting my anhedonia significantly in a positive or a negative way.
Aripiprazole is a complicated drug with regards to dopamine as it's a partial agonist so at low doses it increases dopamine in the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, but not in the nucleus accumbens. At a moderate dose it reduces dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens but not the prefrontal cortex. At a high dose it reduces dopamine in both regions.
To add to the complexity, it's an antagonist for one serotonin receptor and it's a partial agonist for a different serotonin receptor and to put it in simple terms serotonin sorta competes with dopamine in the brain so if the partial agonist effect is increasing serotonin at a particular place in the brain then it could be negatively impacting upon the dopamine levels there too.
Because of all that I think it would be really hard to figure out exactly what the cause of the emotional blunting and anhedonia was without having a better understanding of the dosage range that you were at and also looking at how you have responded to other meds that affect dopamine/serotonin in similar/opposite ways, particularly in the regions of the brain mentioned above, but in short this is something that's way above my paygrade and you'd need the supervision of a psychiatrist who is attentive to this stuff to start to puzzle out exactly what caused tjese effects in you. You could say that it's very common for antipsychotics to come with side effects of anhedonia and emotional blunting but that feels a little bit of a dismissive response tbh.
Yeah, I should probably talk to my shrink in detail about this. Thanks for responding
Sertraline. Numbing for sure, I don't get anything done because I can't care. I hope your situation improves, if it means anything. I wish I had more to say but consolation is not a skill I have yet
i'm super sorry, but i want you to know that i always really appreciate your comments and whatever you have to say. i relate to this a lot, i'm always terrified that i'm annoying or pushing people away, and a lot of the time i spend like an hour after i post something analyzing it for the wording to make sure i didn't say anything i didn't mean
the only people i spend any time with are people who i have no real idea why they do, but somehow my constant autistic ranting about things i hate (and sometimes that i like) hasn't pushed them away yet. it feels like it's only a matter of time, it's happened to plenty of other people, but i really want to believe this is different
I guess I should stop deleting them 24/7 then, oops. Easier said than done, I too constantly feel like I am being annoying or weird
spend like an hour after I post something analyzing it for the wording
Mood, I can usually resist this urge at least. I go over my stuff looking for shit that's too aggressive or angry, which I guess is a kind of self tone policing but I don't think I over editorialise that badly.
somehow my constant autistic ranting about things i hate hasn't pushed them away yet
I want to know the secret to this, it would be great to spend like 30,000 words tearing something down and not have people act like you're a buzzkill!! I also have to keep bugging my wife* about if my rambles are annoying her though, haaaaaaa...
*she never minds, she is great
I guess I should stop deleting them 24/7 then, oops. Easier said than done, I too constantly feel like I am being annoying or weird
i would definitely like that, you're a solid presence on here and i certainly don't remember any times you've been annoying or weird
I want to know the secret to this, it would be great to spend like 30,000 words tearing something down and not have people act like you're a buzzkill!! I also have to keep bugging my wife* about if my rambles are annoying her though, haaaaaaa...
the only thing i can think of is that they're just as neurodivergent as me and are often equally prone to rants (much shorter than my own, but still). but even then i genuinely constantly dread the day they'll just stop talking to me for reasons i can't figure out
Will try my best
Yeaaaaaaah so I did find one person (other than my wife) who was neurodivergent and ramble-prone, last spoke on December 26
Literally just stopped talking to me for reasons I can't figure out
trust me, the same has happened to me so often. most of the time i never have any clue why and never get any closure. i assume it'll happen with my current friends as well, tbh. just gotta ignore that gnawing feeling every time they ask me to watch a movie over discord
I also have a really hard time socializing, but here are some things that help me:
- Hanging out in Hextube sometimes during movie nights, which is a great place full of great people.
- VRChat, which you don’t actually need VR for - The public rooms are full of creeps and screaming kids but there are groups for meeting people that have regular (usually weekly) events. DM me if you’re interested and I can point you to one.
- Discord servers - I know of some stuff on discord that might help. Again, let me know if you’re looking for suggestions on that.
maybe this is controversial, but i think that even though seeking online relationships might feel less scary because the effort required and emotional stakes are lower, for much of the same reasons the potential for misunderstanding, rejection, and even abuse is much higher. i know there aren't a lot of places that provide opportunities for an adult to make friends, but finding people you can rely on IRL, maybe because they have a lot of the same problems as you, will pay dividends in the long term.
I would like you to tell me where the hell in meatspace I am going to find other socially inept autistic transfems. Are there gathering places we usually congregate at? If I take some yuri manga to the park and spread it around like bits of bread, will they appear like ducks?
Generally it would be cool just to find not horrible people, but Idk where to even find queers or leftists or whatever around here. I pass a queer center thing downtown often, but what am I gonna do, just waltz in? Fuck that.
Also the effort and emotional stakes online aren't actually lower, I got a taste of deeply fearful anxiety when some hexbears messaged me on discord today. It's more that face to face communication is the summit of all terror, and I'm even worse at speaking aloud than typing online.
i don't know how it is where you live, but if you lived around here I'd say you'd have great luck at board game stores and punk shows.
but i recognize there are places that we live other than blue state metropoles in the united states, and i recognize that finding others like us has always been a hard problem under cisheteropatriarchy. maybe it would make more sense to seek out a support groups. again i'll admit my privilege here, but a librarian might be able to hook you up with resources.
I hear this. I have the "panic over posting a message, think you're overthinking it, just slam that send button" thing and then the "I didn't think that through, I missed some possible misreading that should have been obvious, should I go back and edit it" thing. So I'm still figuring out what the right amount of thought is? Should I have even sent it?
Anyways, in case you're back reading your post or thinking about whether it was useful, it was to me. Thanks for sharing.
According to several people both on and off hexbear, the ideal answer is thatALL THE THOUGHT is the right amount, and you shouldn't filter yourself. In response I am prepping to post hard in the coming days :)
Glad I could help, weirdly this mental-breakdown-induced-post ended up being both popular and productive...
no I will not try to go out into the real world and talk to people. That seems like a really atrocious idea, I can barely manage speaking any of what pops into my brain irl, it just becomes painful and stilted script following. Plus, where do you even find opportunities like that?
there's a bunch of stuff like this!! Skip the Small Talk is national, though I've never been to one of their events. When I used to go to speed dating events I was most comfortable going together with a friend or two so I'd have someone to sort of rest "with" and regain energy between strangers. These events have local attendees, e.g. you can go to one at a lesbian bar to meet queer friends. So if you genuinely think it'd be good for you, I hope you consider talking to people irl! Our brains all got melted by the pandemic and WFH; if I don't make a conscious effort to go out and socialize I feel like I get "weird" and inarticulate. So when I go to these events I expect to talk to other people who are weird and inarticulate in addition to well-practiced extroverts. My most memorable encounters were people who asked WILDLY awkward questions, conversed about deep childhood trauma or whatever for 5 minutes, and then we never saw each other again. I hope you find your people!
When I used to go to speed dating events I was most comfortable going together with a friend or two so I'd have someone to sort of rest "with" and regain energy between strangers
I mean this is the big issue right there. At least in my experience and a lot of my other friends, making close friends after school is mostly from meeting your friends' friends through repeated group functions. It's wayyyy easier going from 1 -> 10+ friends than it is from going to 0 -> 1 friend after school
And I feel like people approach duos/small groups at parties or events with strangers like that one way more often than a single person too
The ones I went to were structured speed dating events. You sit at a table, talk to the person across from you, and everybody rotates when the organizer says. The friend is mostly for moral support so that you don't flake; you could go alone and have fun.
Oh that sounds cool, did you ever end up with close platonic friends from speed dating events before? Or just relationships
No but I was only looking for dates. I wasn't too successful on that front either, but I think speed dating type events are good for the experience / socialization practice on their own terms which might be helpful to OP.
