Connecting to other people

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Hi,

Basically I have this feeling of "seeing the world from the outside and in".

I'm participating in the world on a daily basis, but it's in a conscious way, not in the unconscious way I think most people do.

This makes it very hard to feel any true connection to other people. They are in the world all the time. So they can only make connections based on this (in my eyes extremely superficial) world. They don't see things from the outside, so when I am "connecting" to other people I am actually just faking being "in" the world the same way as they are. Obviously people sense this difference - they don't get as much out of the connection either.


(1) Do you experience something similar?

(2) Do you know of ways to connect better to people in this world when you naturally view the world from the outside?

That's a good description of this experience.

Nope . . . I think it's a permanent state. The best way to deal with it is to accept it.

how can you be certain that the rest of the world isn't feeling exactly the same way?

Yes I experience exactly the same and I have often wondered if other people feel the same? How can they? they seem to act like they are in the world and understand the social constructs.

But what you described is exactly how I would described it. I feel disconnected quite often.

I don't think most people feel that way at all. They truly feel like being a part of the world.

I see people see the world from their own point of view, that is, subjectively, not objectively the way I've done it for a large part of my life. The more subjectively you look at the world the more normal will people consider you to be. Is something good for you, then it's good. Is something bad for you, then it's bad.

Yup. Sounds like my experience. So we are seen as being in our own individual worlds, and we see the larger world from this outside perspective.

Your right how can normal people experience this? I have not had one person other then other autistics explain this experience to me. When I explain this experience to my family no one can relate. Just going from personal experience here.

Most of my life I have only felt like %50 there in the moment.

Ironically it's actually the "normal" people who live in their own little worlds, although it doesn't seem that way: They have never seen the world truly objectively, but only seen it from their own little subjective perspective. The world is much easier to handle when you only have to care about yourself and not the whole world - obviously.

Do you think a president loves his country so much he would willingly sacrifice his job for his country and become an infamous, anonymous person again? Or taken to the extreme: die for his country? I highly doubt it. He loves his country, because it benefits himself to believe he loves it.

you are also seeing the world subjectively because you are a human with your own set of subjective filters. you are no more objective than anyone else by default. the feeling of not fitting into a social group (or being an aspie, if you are) doesn't give you powers of observation over and above any other person who sees or experiences the group.

You are right, noone has ever seen the world truly objectively, because we are human.

My point is that when people say autistics live in their own little worlds they are actually not correct - they live in their own little worlds too little, i.e. they care too much about the world as it is and too little about themselves.

i think what people often mean is that autistic people are living in an impractical world, where hours could fly by... with no food eaten, for example... while a favourite hobby is enjoyed to the limits.

It's definitely impractical.

I might rephrase my question to:

"How can you unconsciously think more of yourself, i.e. without having to tell yourself consciously to think more of yourself."


Thinking subjectively unconsciously is what works in this world.

Last edited by qawer on 26 Feb 2013, 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Do you have issues taking care of yourself? I am trying to figure out what personal perspective you are coming from when you say autistics are not selfish.

No, but it happens on a rather conscious level. When I am with others and I tell myself to think about nothing but myself and my own life, it's much easier to "connect". But I don't truly feel a connection because it happens consciously.

It would be nice to actually think subjectively, unconsciously. In that way the connection should improve a lot.

It seems to me that normal people are mostly interested in the superficial details of things and of each other. Watching what other people consider important really amazes me, because they seem to spend a lot of time talking about things that are mostly aesthetic rather than functional.

For instance, every time I watch the nightly news, I see sports segments. But sports aren't news. They're games. There are people whose emotions are significantly influenced by the number of times a group of people (who they don't know) were able to make a ball go into a particular area. I think that's amazing.

Or there is news coverage of the clothing that a particular person is wearing. I understand if someone is violating a particular social taboo by wearing a particular type of clothing, but other than being nice to look at, that's not news, either. Looking at all of the people who dressed up nicely to go to an event which happens every year and which people usually dress up nicely for isn't news.

Or if someone asks me how something works, if I "know", that means I can tell them exactly how it works and how all of the parts work, on at least one major organizational level(like how cells work in biology, or how the chemical reactions work within them chemistry, or why things tend to react in the way they do in physics), but other people don't seem to have that depth of knowledge in any subject. For instance, a stereotypical teenage girl may absolutely love makeup, and may have an idea that particular products do particular things, but doesn't generally seem interested in how those particular products do those particular things. When I am interested in a subject, regardless of whether it's a topic, a process, an object, or a person, or something else, I learn everything that I can about it.

I don't connect to people either. I am very introverted and talking to other people forces me out of my bubble and I don't like that. conversation isn't spontaneous for me, I have to think of something to say and it is awkward. I approach conversation in a logical way and don't connect emotionally.

Except for close relatives that I enjoy talking to, when I am around other people I would rather remain in my own bubble and just listen to and observe the other people. I don't feel a connection. I feel like the universe is inside my head and human social interaction is just skimming along the surface and very shallow.

This is hard to explain, but I feel that I don't connect emotionally because I am too emotional and keep my emotions inside my own thoughts and appear detached and unemotional on the outside because I don't know how to act any other way.

I guess you can say that I view the world from the inside out, but I am not so sure that when you say you view the world from the outside that we are not talking about the same thing but just expressing it differently.