Autistic loneliness…

After writing my post earlier in the week about Autistic Leadership…Authentic Leadership and how to take autistic strengths and adapt them for the workplace, I felt it was important to show the other side of the same coin. Despite understanding and adapting in my professional life, my personal life still holds many challenges and I can find it extremely hard.

I am a difficult friend…yet I don’t want to be.

I feel very insignificant and unimportant.

I have friends but socialising almost always happens at my instigation. I’m the one who keeps in contact, arranges to meet etc, yet I watch from afar others experience the reciprocity, give and take in this area and have no idea why I can’t achieve the same.

Often I start out in a friendship with the other person keen, inviting me out etc. Then eventually and inevitably that wanes and I seem to be the one who clutches on, keeping it active. These friendships stay, but this pattern of me being the one who stays in touch, organising to meet etc becomes the norm. I don’t understand why…If I say anything it is always blamed on life being busy, but I watch other reciprocal friendships happen and life is not too busy for those. It appears to just be me that life is too busy for…

• Am I too intense?
• Am I too demanding?
• Am I too uninteresting or boring?

I feel insignificant…

The characteristics of autism would suggest that autistic people are only interested in objects or things and not people and they do not feel emotions. The role that ‘systemising’ has in my life I can understand could give rise to that thought, but this isn’t true. I wish I could have friendships like others and as I am writing this, tears are rolling down my face.

This is a part of my life that I feel is the most difficult and I rarely share it with others. I would struggle to verbalise it and the emotions I am feeling would most likely not show, but they are there in abundance and I have n0 answers.

One of my earliest memories as a child, was at around 3 or 4, at playgroup, watching other children play and being unable to join in, not knowing what to say or do and no one coming up to me to include me. That feeling has never left…

When I feel like this for long periods of time I tend to disappear socially — I can’t keep going out there and trying to make friendships work, if I feel I don’t belong. I can’t keep putting myself out there to feel so small and insignificant.

It is easier to hide in solitude, amongst my family and my dog and within my own 4 walls, but this ultimately is not the answer. Work can provide me with an excuse — I’m too busy, I’m too tired but it is still an excuse.

The demands of work and the high concentration levels and focus I need to exert to achieve what I do, often mean the times I hit this place are often more extreme. In my personal life I need to be able to operate without my ‘jacket’, to relax and not suppress my autistic tendencies, to have people who are willing to accept just that, to recognise a meltdown or shutdown are just the aftermath of those high tension, high focus times.

But then the reality is, apart from my family, I have to put as much effort into friendships to keep them ‘live’ otherwise I would never socialise at all.

I’m not sure if I will publish this post, I’ve always tried to write from such a positive viewpoint in order to advocate strengths and I don’t like appearing weak or having no answers, but I can’t escape this part of my life and it is equally as valid and important for other people to understand. The reality is this will most likely never go away.

It is rare that I write publicly whilst experiencing emotion like this. I usually wait until the emotion has subsided and write from a place of positivity and what I have learned, describing myself rather than truly opening up in the moment.

I feel sad, I’m not a victim, or a defeatist. I will pick up and drive through this feeling, I will busy and occupy myself and I won’t speak about it with others or let anyone know how difficult this really feels. The feeling will sit there, ready to surface again soon, it happens most days, in the dead of night maybe when everyone is asleep, maybe when I have my solitude moments, or I am relaxing or when I see others effortlessly traverse this road easily in their lives.

Then I will go through that 4 year old feeling of sitting, watching everyone from the wings of life, totally unsure, insignificant, unnoticeable, unmemorable.

I often feel as if I disappeared, no one would ever really notice…

This is what autistic loneliness really feels like — to be among people yet rarely feeling I belong…

But now it is time to get up and I will go through my day, I won’t let on….and you won’t know….

….unless I am brave enough to hit ‘publish’!

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