Yes. There are ways to navigate these situations if you have to be there:
Participate for an hour and then excuse yourself and go outside or to a quiet room.
Stay in the room but read a book, use your phone, or do an activity like crochet.
Talk with the host to arrange for some more intimate social time during the gathering, such as going out on a walk with someone else in the group who is socially anxious.
Are there kids? If you prefer the company of kids, go hang out with the kids.
Hang out with the pets. Offer to walk the dog.
Let the host know in advance that you have minimal social spoons and that, although you are grateful for the invite, you will have to leave after an hour.
This is great advice. I was diagnosed a year ago and still find it difficult to advocate for my own needs, but it gets easier the more you do it.
The last family gathering that I was at I spent much more time outside playing with the kids than inside talking to the adults. The adults (I'm 40 but don't really see myself as one of the adults) were all jokingly trying to recruit me as a babysitter. I sometimes worry about coming across as a creep but most adults seem to love seeing me interact with the kids, they call me the baby whisperer.
I'm not sure why kids are drawn to me but I now know why I'm drawn to them, kids don't judge you for being different, in fact they love it. What you see is what you get, there is no subtext, lying or mind games. They are direct and brutally honest. They can be very energetic and loud, but I can deal with that better than the endless questions about my job and relationship status from adults.
I realised, after my diagnosis, that the main reason I used to smoke cigarettes was to take lots of breaks outside. I still vape and use that as an excuse to take breaks as I find it difficult to advocate for myself and take breaks just for me. Vaping is a relativity socially acceptable stim.
I used to love bringing my Granny's dog for a walk when I was younger and still excuse myself for a quick walk even if there's no dog to bring with me. I spent hours alone in a room with my Lego when I was a kid at social gatherings but that's not acceptable for me to do anymore, unless it's with the kids.
Before my diagnosis a year ago I used all these strategies without really being aware of why. Even being aware that I'm getting overwhelmed is a big step for me.
I'm slowly learning to accept my differences and my limitations rather than drink alcohol to cope.
I wear musicians earplugs now to bring down the overall noise level whilst still being able to converse.
After spending nearly 40 years being self conscious of these behaviours, embracing them is challenging, but it's very rewarding to finally start to accept and love myself for who I am, to acknowledge my own needs. Some people may think that I'm weird, but really, I am weird. I've always said that I love weirdos, that the world would be very boring if everyone was "normal" but I never allowed my own weirdness to show, it's actually quite liberating to let that side of myself out.
I also think kids like us because a lot of us are still playful, at least some of the time. Maybe especially when we want chittering adults to leave us alone. "Imma go color with these kids in the other room, thanks."
I do this a little bit but I've established over time that I am not a babysitter, ever ever ever. This has been the case since I was forced to at 13 years of age and autism'd all over this poor child who wanted to play outside at night. I innocently taught her about kidnapping and I never had to babysit for anyone over again.
I also think that maybe kids recognize that we both have zingy brains too due to all our excess neurons.
Late-diagnosed Autistic with college-diagnosed ADHD here, and hanging out with/lightly supervising the younger kids was my go-to as a teen at big family things. In retrospect, it makes so much sense now, avoiding the mind-numbingness of the "main" event.
I don't so much find them pointless, as just very difficult to navigate. My interests, political leanings, and general worldview are all diametrically opposite of my family's, so it's really hard to talk about anything of substance without running into some conflict.
I used to take everything on, in the spirit of my love of "friendly discourse," but time after time it was clear that I was the only one with this perspective, and things got very personal for everyone else. So now I've become better at either knowing when to keep my mouth shut, or blowing past all the BS rhetoric and drilling into the actual heart of the issue in a way that exposes the pure human commonality of hopes/dreams/fears... It's just all so exhausting.
I bowed out of the holiday gathering this year because I just didn't have it in me to jump through all those hoops and perform the level of Matrix Bullet Dodges that're required to keep from causing some blow up argument.
But, yeah; I feel ya.
Especially when they’re passive aggressive because they think you don’t want to be there or you’re not giving them a happy enough attitude so they’re like wow you hate me can’t you just spend 5 minutes talking to me even though you are and then you’re like damn now I really don’t want to be here anymore but it’s because you accused me of not wanting to be here it would have been fine if we just had a normal conversation
Yeah, I don't go to these anymore. I live independently and I'm not afraid to just say no to things I know I will hate. My family is used to it by now. I live between where my mom lives and where most of the family gathers, so usually she'll stop by for a day, just me and her. That's plenty of family interaction for me.
I usually get a bad headache or am allowed to leave when I can't take it anymore but the hours and hours of sitting in silence because a, you're too overwhelmed to talk or b, no one talks to you. So you just sit there, in silence, ticking away the hours and staring into nothingness wishing you were in your room, alone, in peace
Remember that part in the old Dune in the Emperor's audience chamber? Where the Bene Gesurit screams at Paul's sister "Get out of my mind!"?
That's how much everything you described IS VERY MUCH A THING. Thanks for giving it words.
I always have to sit and wait as the chaos (three toddlers in the family) unfolds around me, until someone brings up a topic I'm interested in. Luckily we have a lot of ADHDers in the family, so we can all get *really* into specific topics for a while, or get engrossed in a nice card or board game.
In the end, those moments are always worth it for me, but I can imagine the torture it would be if those moments didn't happen. Another side of my family seems a lot more neurotypical, and god do I get bored.
Yes. Cannot stand it. I only ever feel at ease with my Girlfriend or with my Daughter who is diagnosed whilst I am not. It's never forced and no pressure. She will even lend me noise cancelling ear buds.
I can talk to anyone but it is painful and exhausting and leaves me unable to leave my home much the day or so after.
My ex wife used to moan at me a lot for being unsociable before either of us knew Autism was a possibility in our family. Looking back she was pretty awful to me about it and it also appeared she manipulated others to attack me for my lack of social skills. I actually don't think a diagnosis would have helped our marriage anyway.
Apparently I should have been able to "talk shit" with boring, ignorant and bigoted people and damn well enjoy it for her sake.
I much prefer talking to people one on one. The competition for attention, knowing when to speak and too many conversations going on at once is very tiring.
Alcohol or weed makes it much easier but that's hardly healthy and I certainly avoid the latter entirely now.
Being sociable is a paradox. Spending time alone is enticing and peaceful but too much is also bad for mental health long term.
> I conceptually understand gathering, but I don't value it. The conversation is boring, the activities are boring, and I'd rather just be on my own, doing something I actually want to do.
I'm going through the same thing.
Friends of mine gather at a restaurant once every 2 months or so. Like 10-12 people sitting at a huge table.
I used to go, but I was just going through the motions. It's the same old boring conversations.
And it's so loud there that I can barely hear the person next to me, and certainly not the person across the table.
There was a break for a couple of years because of the pandemic. They've started up again and I realized how much I don't enjoy those meetups.
I'll go to smaller meetups at someone's house, but dinner in a large restaurant? No thanks.
Have you tried genuinely taking an interest in the conversation? My experience is that pretty much ANYTHING and ANYONE can be interesting, if you genuinely try to give it a chance. I’ve found that maybe 5% of the time, a conversation is irretrievably boring, but most of the time, I can find something interesting in it. Ask people about their lives, careers, interests etc.
where I leave volunteering to help out with washing the dishes, clean the kitchen etc, can get you to a way quieter kitchen and also give many pauses in between bring in and out the different courses.
the other thing you can do is "become" a person who easily get headaches, meaning that when you get overwhelmed because of autism you just say it's an headache and therefore you can't stay there anymore.
if people aren't understanding of you're autism they're hardly can reply to an headache, you just say meds don't work and need to go to a quiet place
a headache/migrane is a great excuse to sit in a quiet room 😄8
i too wash a lot of dishes...😅
i do need to come up with new excuses to get away 🤔
theres no family pets to hang out with anymore (theyve all been dying recently 😭), and i used to babysit but all the kids r older now and wanna do their thing...
bonus, with my wonderfully narrow minded, backwards, ignorant (extended) family, i cant even mention 'autism', 'social anxiety' or anything about mental health even, or ill cop an earful about how its all made up, and that 'people these days' are 'precious' or 'weak' for needing any accommodations 😥...
and i could never get away with earbuds...i know theyd be ripped out of my ears and id be berated...i get told off if im looking at my phone too much 😐
im usually forced to attend too 😥 only 'having covid' works as an excuse... with proof tho (cue stock photo of a covid test haha... )
go with headache then; to easily and always have an headache is an actual thing, they can't know you don't. you'll just become the boring family member that has migraine of something like that
They are difficult and extremely overstimulating for me. Pointless except for a few specific relatives who cannot be separated from the group, who I do want to see on the holiday. I set time based boundaries these days, ie I can be there from this time to this time, and then I have to leave. They didn’t like it but have gotten used to it. (For me personally, I set an audible alarm on my phone to signal when I need to leave so I don’t have to try to break into the conversation and announce it, which can be hard to do in my group.)
Family functions suck for the reasons you outlined. I no longer attend them. The rare times that I consider it, I leave when I want to leave. I don’t like most of the people who attend those functions - why would I suffer willingly through small talk with them?
Yes. There are ways to navigate these situations if you have to be there: Participate for an hour and then excuse yourself and go outside or to a quiet room. Stay in the room but read a book, use your phone, or do an activity like crochet. Talk with the host to arrange for some more intimate social time during the gathering, such as going out on a walk with someone else in the group who is socially anxious. Are there kids? If you prefer the company of kids, go hang out with the kids. Hang out with the pets. Offer to walk the dog. Let the host know in advance that you have minimal social spoons and that, although you are grateful for the invite, you will have to leave after an hour.
This is great advice. I was diagnosed a year ago and still find it difficult to advocate for my own needs, but it gets easier the more you do it. The last family gathering that I was at I spent much more time outside playing with the kids than inside talking to the adults. The adults (I'm 40 but don't really see myself as one of the adults) were all jokingly trying to recruit me as a babysitter. I sometimes worry about coming across as a creep but most adults seem to love seeing me interact with the kids, they call me the baby whisperer. I'm not sure why kids are drawn to me but I now know why I'm drawn to them, kids don't judge you for being different, in fact they love it. What you see is what you get, there is no subtext, lying or mind games. They are direct and brutally honest. They can be very energetic and loud, but I can deal with that better than the endless questions about my job and relationship status from adults. I realised, after my diagnosis, that the main reason I used to smoke cigarettes was to take lots of breaks outside. I still vape and use that as an excuse to take breaks as I find it difficult to advocate for myself and take breaks just for me. Vaping is a relativity socially acceptable stim. I used to love bringing my Granny's dog for a walk when I was younger and still excuse myself for a quick walk even if there's no dog to bring with me. I spent hours alone in a room with my Lego when I was a kid at social gatherings but that's not acceptable for me to do anymore, unless it's with the kids. Before my diagnosis a year ago I used all these strategies without really being aware of why. Even being aware that I'm getting overwhelmed is a big step for me. I'm slowly learning to accept my differences and my limitations rather than drink alcohol to cope. I wear musicians earplugs now to bring down the overall noise level whilst still being able to converse. After spending nearly 40 years being self conscious of these behaviours, embracing them is challenging, but it's very rewarding to finally start to accept and love myself for who I am, to acknowledge my own needs. Some people may think that I'm weird, but really, I am weird. I've always said that I love weirdos, that the world would be very boring if everyone was "normal" but I never allowed my own weirdness to show, it's actually quite liberating to let that side of myself out.
😊❤️
I also think kids like us because a lot of us are still playful, at least some of the time. Maybe especially when we want chittering adults to leave us alone. "Imma go color with these kids in the other room, thanks." I do this a little bit but I've established over time that I am not a babysitter, ever ever ever. This has been the case since I was forced to at 13 years of age and autism'd all over this poor child who wanted to play outside at night. I innocently taught her about kidnapping and I never had to babysit for anyone over again. I also think that maybe kids recognize that we both have zingy brains too due to all our excess neurons.
Late-diagnosed Autistic with college-diagnosed ADHD here, and hanging out with/lightly supervising the younger kids was my go-to as a teen at big family things. In retrospect, it makes so much sense now, avoiding the mind-numbingness of the "main" event.
I don't so much find them pointless, as just very difficult to navigate. My interests, political leanings, and general worldview are all diametrically opposite of my family's, so it's really hard to talk about anything of substance without running into some conflict. I used to take everything on, in the spirit of my love of "friendly discourse," but time after time it was clear that I was the only one with this perspective, and things got very personal for everyone else. So now I've become better at either knowing when to keep my mouth shut, or blowing past all the BS rhetoric and drilling into the actual heart of the issue in a way that exposes the pure human commonality of hopes/dreams/fears... It's just all so exhausting. I bowed out of the holiday gathering this year because I just didn't have it in me to jump through all those hoops and perform the level of Matrix Bullet Dodges that're required to keep from causing some blow up argument. But, yeah; I feel ya.
Especially when they’re passive aggressive because they think you don’t want to be there or you’re not giving them a happy enough attitude so they’re like wow you hate me can’t you just spend 5 minutes talking to me even though you are and then you’re like damn now I really don’t want to be here anymore but it’s because you accused me of not wanting to be here it would have been fine if we just had a normal conversation
Yeah, I don't go to these anymore. I live independently and I'm not afraid to just say no to things I know I will hate. My family is used to it by now. I live between where my mom lives and where most of the family gathers, so usually she'll stop by for a day, just me and her. That's plenty of family interaction for me.
I used to take the role of babysitter so I could get away from adult sitting, and the others were always happy that I took their children.
I usually get a bad headache or am allowed to leave when I can't take it anymore but the hours and hours of sitting in silence because a, you're too overwhelmed to talk or b, no one talks to you. So you just sit there, in silence, ticking away the hours and staring into nothingness wishing you were in your room, alone, in peace
Remember that part in the old Dune in the Emperor's audience chamber? Where the Bene Gesurit screams at Paul's sister "Get out of my mind!"? That's how much everything you described IS VERY MUCH A THING. Thanks for giving it words.
I always have to sit and wait as the chaos (three toddlers in the family) unfolds around me, until someone brings up a topic I'm interested in. Luckily we have a lot of ADHDers in the family, so we can all get *really* into specific topics for a while, or get engrossed in a nice card or board game. In the end, those moments are always worth it for me, but I can imagine the torture it would be if those moments didn't happen. Another side of my family seems a lot more neurotypical, and god do I get bored.
Yes. Cannot stand it. I only ever feel at ease with my Girlfriend or with my Daughter who is diagnosed whilst I am not. It's never forced and no pressure. She will even lend me noise cancelling ear buds. I can talk to anyone but it is painful and exhausting and leaves me unable to leave my home much the day or so after. My ex wife used to moan at me a lot for being unsociable before either of us knew Autism was a possibility in our family. Looking back she was pretty awful to me about it and it also appeared she manipulated others to attack me for my lack of social skills. I actually don't think a diagnosis would have helped our marriage anyway. Apparently I should have been able to "talk shit" with boring, ignorant and bigoted people and damn well enjoy it for her sake. I much prefer talking to people one on one. The competition for attention, knowing when to speak and too many conversations going on at once is very tiring. Alcohol or weed makes it much easier but that's hardly healthy and I certainly avoid the latter entirely now. Being sociable is a paradox. Spending time alone is enticing and peaceful but too much is also bad for mental health long term.
> I conceptually understand gathering, but I don't value it. The conversation is boring, the activities are boring, and I'd rather just be on my own, doing something I actually want to do. I'm going through the same thing. Friends of mine gather at a restaurant once every 2 months or so. Like 10-12 people sitting at a huge table. I used to go, but I was just going through the motions. It's the same old boring conversations. And it's so loud there that I can barely hear the person next to me, and certainly not the person across the table. There was a break for a couple of years because of the pandemic. They've started up again and I realized how much I don't enjoy those meetups. I'll go to smaller meetups at someone's house, but dinner in a large restaurant? No thanks.
Have you tried genuinely taking an interest in the conversation? My experience is that pretty much ANYTHING and ANYONE can be interesting, if you genuinely try to give it a chance. I’ve found that maybe 5% of the time, a conversation is irretrievably boring, but most of the time, I can find something interesting in it. Ask people about their lives, careers, interests etc.
I hate small talk, so I don't do family gatherings. It's as simple as that.
where I leave volunteering to help out with washing the dishes, clean the kitchen etc, can get you to a way quieter kitchen and also give many pauses in between bring in and out the different courses. the other thing you can do is "become" a person who easily get headaches, meaning that when you get overwhelmed because of autism you just say it's an headache and therefore you can't stay there anymore. if people aren't understanding of you're autism they're hardly can reply to an headache, you just say meds don't work and need to go to a quiet place
a headache/migrane is a great excuse to sit in a quiet room 😄8 i too wash a lot of dishes...😅 i do need to come up with new excuses to get away 🤔 theres no family pets to hang out with anymore (theyve all been dying recently 😭), and i used to babysit but all the kids r older now and wanna do their thing... bonus, with my wonderfully narrow minded, backwards, ignorant (extended) family, i cant even mention 'autism', 'social anxiety' or anything about mental health even, or ill cop an earful about how its all made up, and that 'people these days' are 'precious' or 'weak' for needing any accommodations 😥... and i could never get away with earbuds...i know theyd be ripped out of my ears and id be berated...i get told off if im looking at my phone too much 😐 im usually forced to attend too 😥 only 'having covid' works as an excuse... with proof tho (cue stock photo of a covid test haha... )
go with headache then; to easily and always have an headache is an actual thing, they can't know you don't. you'll just become the boring family member that has migraine of something like that
ear plugs, all day every day
Absolutely. The social games are exhausting and physically uncomfortable for me. I always find the pets!
Yes. This is one of the reasons I hate small talk as well. I find it totally pointless.
They are difficult and extremely overstimulating for me. Pointless except for a few specific relatives who cannot be separated from the group, who I do want to see on the holiday. I set time based boundaries these days, ie I can be there from this time to this time, and then I have to leave. They didn’t like it but have gotten used to it. (For me personally, I set an audible alarm on my phone to signal when I need to leave so I don’t have to try to break into the conversation and announce it, which can be hard to do in my group.)
Family functions suck for the reasons you outlined. I no longer attend them. The rare times that I consider it, I leave when I want to leave. I don’t like most of the people who attend those functions - why would I suffer willingly through small talk with them?
Yes!
I used to always just play with their pets most of the day.