Social withdrawl: learned, or born with it?

Post Reply New Topic

You'd need to define social withdrawal.

I'd say I innately need [a lot] less social interaction than the average bear, but I do still socialize; talking on the 'net, having friends in school, and playing games/hobbies with others for example.

So, it's not really a "withdrawal", rather just needing less.

Mine is a learned behavior from a young age. My earliest report cards always stated- this child will not shut up I still can go from one extreme to another, but I keep to myself for the most part. I try to be more social sometimes, but usually end up feeling overwhelmed and completely lost.

It was definitely learned, in my case. My early report cards also said I was too enthusiastic and outgoing, to the point of being disruptive in class.

Leaned. My Mom tells me I was quite social as a toddler, but that my way of interacting was to organize people. As I became older my peers, of course, rejected this. I never had the social skills to interact with my peers effectively and have been withdrawn since I was a kid.

I can only say for myself that it came from what I was taught about socialising. I thought making friends is all about being on good terms with others, and then I was taught social status is something you HAVE to maintain, it became another tool to bully me with. And I won't do something I'm bullied into, especially not at a tender age such as 8 when my feelings are important to me.

I think I was born this way. I hated my birthday parties as a little kid, and also remember asking my mom to get rid of kids who had came over to play, maybe after about 15 minutes, so I could be by myself.

I'm not sure.

I was very socially outgoing in elementary school...in fact, I was often leader of the pack; I even organized a kickball team in the 4th grade, and paid all of my players a nickel a week from my piggy bank! haha

When 6th grade and middle school hit, though, I realized that people no longer seemed to 'get' me, and I became withdrawn. So, I guess you could say it was learned. However, I was always very shy about certain types of interaction, like asking where I could find something in a store. I wasn't able to interact with store employees until my late teens, which my mom always found very frustrating.

Im pretty sure I've always been withdrawn, I have really early school memories of sitting watching the other kids play, while I was on my own. I was slightly more open in my early twenties, but I've definitely withdrawn again.

inbuilt for me, I never learned withdrawal..

Jason

My daughter was born with it. As a toddler (1yr old) I would take her to story time at the library. All the little kids would flock to a toy box in the center and play with the toys and each other. My daughter would cling to me, watching them, and would never go near the other kids. Now she will play with those she knows well, but will not go near others.

According to my parents I wanted to make friends in kindergarten and was very active but I got rejected by almost all of them so I stopped approaching people. And my earliest report card stated something along those lines that I didn't interact with children in my class at all.
Then again, as a toddler I was very quiet and didn't react to people much....I have a theory that, me, reading social stories about friend making (especially, friend making for outsiders, I don't know why exactly we had those kind of children's books) made me think I should do the same and it didn't work out so I gave up.

Nonetheless, now and then I'll try to be social sometimes but I prefer being "found" by others. And even if I'm "found", I'm bad at keeping friendships....unless the other person makes a great effort. I'd say I like to talk about my interests, I have urges to talk and if I have someone who listens, I'm good.
So, yes, withdrawn but I need a listening someone from time to time but making the effort is very difficult (it seems like a question of luck and chance to me than anything else).

Interesting. There's a lot of variation in these responses. Some autistics are/were very chatty and active, others were always quiet and withdrawn. Some people have told me that Autistics are naturally shy and introverted, but this thread shows otherwise.

I've always been shy and introverted, but I've had a fear of people added on to that from how much I was bullied.

So in my case, I was born with most of it, and learned some more. I have to fight back the part that I've learned, so I try to make myself be around people (who I know to some degree so I know they're safe at least in terms of sensory stuff), even if I'm not actually really interacting with them much.

If I don't fight back the part I learned, that part gets worse and causes more problems.

For myself, I think that its both. I have always been pretty withdrawn, but I think that I have become increasingly more withdrawn over time.

I used to try to talk to people, to make some friends. The more people rejected me, the more socially withdrawn I became. Damn if I was gonna keep failing socially, I told myself. So I quit talking to others, quit joining school clubs that clearly didn't want me (even if they claimed to be all-inclusive). I just gave up on trying to fit in. As my social problems escalated, so did my depression. Okay, I'm going to shut up now. This is getting painful, recalling my childhood.

It was learned in my case. My parents kept on getting on my case for talking about my special interests and my mum would get very angry with me. I was convinced that my parents hated me. I stopped talking about my special interests to the typical population when I started high school. If my parents didn't want to hear about my interests and if they've warned me that the kids at school are going to bug me about my interests if they found out what they were, I've decided to keep those interests to myself which meant that I didn't do much talking in high school, because I didn't know how to do small talk.

My small talk has gotten better over the years, but I can only do a half an hour of small talk with my parents and than I'm worn out. I know that they wouldn't want to hear anything about my special interests. They didn't want to, 30 years ago. Why would they want to hear about them, today? I only talk about those special interests to the people who accept my quirks and my differences and not to people who think that autism should be cured like my parents for example.