On guard!

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This isn't exactly the typical "I'm like 'this' ~ how about you?" question. It's more like "I used to be like 'this' now I'm like 'that' ~ how about you?"

Being "guarded," valuing privacy, aloneness and personal space seems to be a pretty common thing among us all, but I remember NOT being that way when I was very young.

As a really young child, I was pretty outgoing and fairly trusting of people. I'm still pretty trusting, at least at first, of people when I first meet them. I wouldn't loan money to a stranger or anything like that, but that's only because I've learned that's a real red flag for someone you've just met to ask for favors right of the bat. And that's kind of my point.

I've LEARNED not to trust certain behaviors in people I've just met. If a new acquaintance doesn't raise any red flags though, I tend to extend trust before suspicion, until I see an obvious reason to suspect their motives. Don't get me wrong, I always have my antennae up for those red flags, but I don't act that way toward them.

While still quite young, I pretty much just trusted everyone. In fact, it took quite a bit of bad and offensive behavior for me to draw the line and say to myself, "Now I really don't trust that person."

If you are on the spectrum, what's been your experience?

Have you always been trusting and still are?

Have you always suspected people's motives as long as you can remember?

I'm curios whether being guarded is more of a learned behavior than it is "intrinsic" to the Autistic mind.

I'm very well-defended. Can't remember being much different, though no doubt I learned to be that way during childhood and early teens. It's really second-nature these days, so I have to think hard about it if I want to take a few more chances instead of being all boring and safe all the time.

Physically it's almost as if I'm half expecting any passer-by to attack me. Doors and windows of my home are routinely locked even if I'm just going upstairs for a few minutes. But strongest of all is my defense against being pushed away.....I'll either keep well away from any situation where I'm vulnerable to that, or I'll be ready with a script that will make it impossible to see that a rejection has had any impact on me at all....if I really want desperately for somebody to do x for me, I'll just pretend that it would be nice but not essential.

My parents were quite guarded as well, and would try to weigh up anybody new who came into the house. The notion that they could turn out to be a bad guest was never very far from their thoughts. Also Mum was often very rejective towards us, which is where my cast-iron defense of rejection probably came from.

I used to be a prickly little cactus, but I find I can open up a lot more now.

I recommend martial arts, I think Aikido is a good one, it can help you feel more flexible and secure in mind and body. I think that the more you feel you can trust yourself, the more you can feel safe extending trust to others.

I was never trusting, but when I was young I tried to hide it and be as open as everyone else seemed to be. As a result I was taken advantage of and often felt incapable, even unworthy, of protecting myself. Now I'm much more guarded and it must seem to others that I've changed. but really I've just learned to express without shame the attitudes I've held all along.

When I was a kid, I was very trusting. Now, I am the exact opposite.

Very trusting up until middle school. On guard after that. Trusting from age 29 until age 45, on guard since then, mostly because of health issues. At some point in my life I was so trusting or naive that I thought the world was a fair place and tried to explain that to people. The world was a friendlier place for me when I got married at age 29 and it stayed that way for a long time.

Fortunately when I was young as I look back, I was so socially naive, that I didn't even understand sometimes that people were making fun of me. It's a good thing that there was no internet then, I would of typed it in google and figured it out, and probably of got depressed. I started doing that when google came out and it helped me figure some of those things out later in life. I guess ignorance can be bliss sometimes.

As a kid and young man, I'd assume my own level of ethics in anyone I met.
This ran in the family: For example, my mother one time picked up a hitchhiker, and he stayed with us for a month until my mother kicked him out for eating us out of house and home. And another time she loaned $2000 to neighbors when they were in trouble, and they never paid it back.

I was the same with risks.
I've been burned here with loaning money too. Too trusting.

At home as a kid we were 'broken in to,' by not dead bolting the door, as one night my mother awoke and confronted 3 silhouettes standing in the kitchen. She yelled ,screamed and cursed at them, and they ran out to escape.

I know better now, but sometimes worry if I awoke I might see a silhouette standing over our bed with a club. We don't deadbolt the door because of rural living. We should, but I'm afraid of 'Tombstone technology' is at play here.

With people, I'll give someone the benefit of the doubt, but I have to know their reputation before I extend.

I put up a good front of cynicism, but I am regularly surprised when people's behavior turns out duplicitous.