>>52548I can relate to that quite a bit, in my teens my surroundings and autistic nature made me into hardened nihilistic misanthrope.
Then i got into college, and my new group was super nice to me, despite rolling on inertia after that period for a few months. I got lucky with them in a way, years there were my first steps toward socialization, and genuenly felt like a rehub program. After that it became more easy to just ease aroud other people and better contact with them.
I will try to list things which i learned in the process (over few years, i lost most of my sociophoby), but there's a chance that they won't apply in your enviorment for various reasons (high normie concentration/you're teen, and kids and teens are just violent towards such stuff from nature/idk etc.)
1. Don't blame yourself for spergin out/doing autistic stuff. Idk if you do it, but if you do - cut it off. It will happen, sometimes on daily basis, maybe even several times in one day.Gotta give yourself a slack with them, that's just how you operate.
2. Now, it honestly isn't a big deal that you don't register many of social clues, or have close to 0 body language, or use repetative set of signs. Yeah, it's weird, maybe offputting to some, but it isn't that much of a big deal. If you're interesting to talk to - nobody will care.
3. Same applies to situations when you twist words, generally say things inconsequentially, asks to repeat what've been said several times or read/hear things wrong way. Few will get irritated, but folk mostly doesn't care too much, and people that stick aroud you get used to it (still can get irritated, but have more tolerance). But still, don't be afraid to repeat yourself more clearly, ask to repeat what's being said, and sometimes explain that you misread or misheard things and apologise if you acted in dumb way.
4. Sometimes it will look like that even your close friends or other close people make fun of you in any way, or provoke, or something else. For me things like this are pretty hard to deal with, because my autismo brain reacts almost immediately sending me back to that awful mindset. But still, rule of thumb here - you just have to keep thoughts like that away for at least 5-10 minutes, cool off a bit, come back and then ask yourself a question if there really was any kind of such intend. On the spot you can try to laugh it off with slight delay, and half the time it even works.
I have a friend, and she goes into her defensive spiked shell every time she thinks we're trying to bully her in some way while talking. When she's in it, it's impossible to speak with her, and it takes few hours to talk her into calming down and try to see things from other perspective.
5? This one is a thing i kind of learning right now and not exactly ties into list, but eh: try to abstain from projecting yourself on others. People are like black boxes -you can see what input events correspond to what kind of response, but you can never be sure of exact decision mechanism that lies inside them. So, don't lean on an idea of "really knowing" / "perfectly understanding" anyone too hard. And as you can see, i'm a slow learner, because i do it right now in this post.
6. Lastly and sadly, “ The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them ” is a thing. Just like with my friend, you can be among people who intend no ill will, but in paranoidal state you just won't notice that. I know, trusting is scary, being loled at is painfull, but that's part ouf everybody's life. You might think removing it from your life will save you from pain, but in a way you're boiling yourself in your own head from loneliness and paranoia. My sociophoby decreased my quality of life quite a bit.
That's probably all, because i can't think of anything else.
From my experience - recognising everybody around me as potential threat at the same time as i hold them & myself to less than human was afwul.
Years after that i take my ability of speaking to strangers or cashiers (yeah…) without a problem as granted, and beginning to forget it wasn't always that way.
And i hope it woun't be always like this for you. You might don't get so lucky with groupmates, or irl groups of interests, or else, but now at least i gave you some ,minimal guides about it, albeit derived from my experience.
Please, don't leave yourself completely in such state, and take care.
