Feeling low after social interractions?

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I find that after social interractions I always feel really low.
Today I had a lovely cup of tea with a really lovely person. I really enjoyed it, and was pretty happy.
Now this evening I feel really low.
This always happens when I do social things.
Does anyone else have this happen?
Does anyone know how to stop it?

If I have a good time socialising I start off on a high then I'm slow because I miss it. The last time my friends went my house my room seemed suddenly empty the day afterwards, depressing.
I don't have any ideas on how to stop it though.

I am not sure why you are felling low.

Personally, after a social interaction I replay and analyze the interaction in my head and become concerned about what I said, how it may have been interpretted and what is going to happen next. I may enjoy an interaction, but I get a horrible sinking feeling once it ends as I try to understand how I came across and what the other person may have been thinking.

i can't handle the inability to connect with people anymore. it is very hellish. even the ones i feel i had a good time with, there is still a gap (huge one). i am 40yrs old. i have had only one girlfriend (15 years younger).

it is very hard to go on.

sorry for the pessimism.

I'm always tired after interacting socially. I have to take a bit of time out to recover. Is that what you mean or is it something more?

I sometimes get 'mascot'-ed. The person is interested in me, but not so much as potential friendship material. More just as a different person whose different viewpoints they might be curious about, plus they can feel good thinking that this demonstrates that they're a broad-minded person or something, I think. This is very hard to detect in real time.

And I tell myself it's engagement, not conformity.

And I tell myself a series of medium steps and give the other person a chance to reciprocate, or not reciprocate. And yes, I'm going to make all kinds of mistakes implementing this, but it does kind of give me a method.

People who are highly social party-hop. Well, I'm not so into parties, but maybe a variety of political clubs, nature clubs, sports club, with the goal that with such a goodly array I won't overdepend on any one organization. Maybe.

Yeah...after being around people like that, I have to have time alone; otherwise I get physically and mentally drained. If I did something that I considered "wrong" or "stupid" I might be down emotionally, but even if that's not the case, I still need to get away.

If I have people constantly trying to engage me, I might become perturbed and verbally lash out. I don't even answer the phone.

If I'm at an event where I'm scheduled to be around people all day, I'll have to take a walk somewhere. A lot of times, I'll be in a position where I don't know what to say to anyone in that situation or just don't have anything to say, so it just seems appropriate for me to go off by myself.

It gets taken as standoffishness or just being a loner, but it feels like more than just THAT.

I always get very down after social interactions, I think its a combination of being drained form the extra mental energy used to follow the interaction and a 'come down' from the adrenalin pumped round during the 'nerve wracking' social situation.

I find the best solution is to schedule in down time as soon as I get in such as browsing forums or lying in bed reading, so i can switch off and not to talk to anyone for a few hours, that way I recover quicker.

I also ruminate and replay the event and chastise myself for the things I did wrong which is very unhealthy and just make me feel worse and does not lessen social mistakes as they are largly out of my control.

I need to get to a place where Im ok making social gaffs and dont let it hurt my self esteem and let it go imediately, it would be less draining Im sure if I could let go a bit and not worry so much.

I think there's an aspect of 'Is this as good as it gets?' and receiving partial acceptance, and perhaps on my part of looking for insta-friendship which is not very realistic even when we do have common interests.

Well I get really tired after socialising and the tiredness makes me down.
So it's not really the social stuff that makes me down, it's just an indirect consequence.

I get this. I enjoy socializing sometimes. It gets addictive. I want to retain that happy feeling. Afterwards I feel sad because I'm alone again. I don't know if you can stop it. Maybe throw yourself back into your solitary pursuits. Or just let the feeling wash through you, let it be what it is.

I lived in Las Vegas for two years and played poker (but got my money from family and jobs). I learned that talking at the poker table reduced my concentration. So, I’d play solid poker, maybe take a walk for a break, and then often find my way to the sports book hoping for some conversation (the casinos had nice chairs and big screen TVs for the sports gamblers).

‘Do you have a favorite in the game?'

Opening conservation, and I’d try and say it as I was sitting down, at the very beginning, keeping it relaxed, casual, and confident. No big build-up. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and that’s fine, too. Most of the time got some positive response, often brief. Well, the person could be sleep-deprived, ‘fun’-ed out, gamble-ed out, social-ed, whatever, and it’s all good.

Every so often, get into a rather in-depth conversation. One time this guy from North Carolina (I think) was telling me about being a paramedic and about being relatively newly divorced. Now, and this is the part that’s a little tricky, fifteen minutes seemed to be about the maximum and then it would kind of bog out. Now, some of it was that I wasn’t too forthcoming about disclosure. I generally tried to talk about nonpersonal topics out there in the world, like sports, but sometimes it would shift to aspects of the person’s life, like this guy. Also had a great conversation with a doctor who worked in neonatal, and another great one with this guy who was from New York and knew the child of one of the Schindlerjuden (we had gotten talking about screenwriting and movies and I had said that I thought Schindler's List was a great movie) And a number of other really good conversations. However, if I had it to do all over again, I might have sometimes experimented with ‘You know, I’m Aspie’ ‘That means Asperger’s Syndrome . . . ' 'well, it has it's pluses and minuses, I guess like anything else . . . ' 'I'm not that smart. I have failed math courses. I tend to get either an A or a F in math. I definitely have to put the time in.'

But I think a lot of it is that 15 minutes is about long enough to talk with a new person, even if the conversation is going well. And that’s kind of the benefit of groups where you can see the same person every week or every month. And every month is so seldom, that’s why you kind of need to get multiple groups going.


(Oh, yes, the poker, I’m strong in math---A in statistics, A in C++ programming including probability programs---studied the poker books, and broke even. Lost money if you count hotels, etc.)

I used to have this problem a lot. mainly as all of my social interactions ended up being unmitigated f***ing disasters. My solutions was to give up on social interactions altogether. Given that I am generally indiffernt to others people anyway, this was not a great sacrifice.

Having said that, it would be nice to be better able to understabd social interactions for the odd occasion I DO feel like being around other people.

That seems to make sense. It's sort of difficult, because I know that if I've just left a social thing it's likely to be weeks or months before I get to go to something again.
I like your untied kingdom thing by the way!

Well, I don't know if this is the case for you, but even when I am enjoying a social interaction, it's still a lot of work and a strain. The longer it goes on, the more the strain. When I'm finally away from it, I need a period to recuperate. Sometimes I feel a bit "low" then, sometimes I'm just happy to be home where I can lock the world out. I have learned to accept feelings like this as things that just happen, and will pass, and that tomorrow is another day.

Hope that helps, somehow....

Hey,
Yeah, I do find that if I have a sustained period of social interractions (like if I'm staying with people for a week or I have loads of things booked in to my schedule in a week) I get really tired and need to have some alone time.
I think I also spend time after social things beating myself up over what I could or should have done better.