A Problem With Autistic Oversharing

 Women with Autism Oversharing

Some social stuff seems to get difficult. I and my husband got into a conversation, I was talking about my endless social problems and how hard social stuff is for me. He pointed out, I had problems in my old rural town too. It's true, I did. While I have more fond memories there, I was younger and times were different, there were still struggles.

I wonder at times if I try too hard socially. Maybe I need to just let up on it. Some people in my autistic group told me they don't have friends or only pursue things socially with other autistics. That makes sense. 

It's too easy to make too many of the same mistakes over and over. Socially things are difficult because often I'm having to dedicate a lot of brain power just to keep up because of the hearing issues. On Zoom, I'm reading captioning text, and that can take longer to keep up with things then if you hear spoken language.

The other day I was in a women's group and realized with horror after I was done, I had massively overshared. There was the land mine that we were to choose an ancestor to talk about. I chose "The Aunt Who Loved Me", and even though these were positive memories, there was the edge of why I was living with her and WHY I wanted to stay and I said way too much.  At least I was smart enough when I told them she died young and said it was better not to get into the nitty-gritty details. 

Remember I try to keep my past a secret with most. Things seem to ooze out. It's always been hard here because this community is so reticent. I like a lot of people here but more affluent socioeconomic groups are less apt to pour their hearts out, so it seems easier to make major mistakes here. It's always made things far harder for me. I've talked about moving to more working class and rural areas again, but husband doesn't want to move. He told me, "You've struggled in other places". "You will take autism where ever you go". 

I had the embarrassment of even crying which that sucked. The people there were nice, but later I thought, "you probably just stressed them out". They are going to see my endless pit of problems if I am not careful.  Sometimes I envy people with normal lives who don't have so many "danger zones" to steer clear of. The "family" stuff is a mess I usually avoid. The whole pressure of trying to "appear normal" takes a toll. Later, I asked, "What am I doing? You aren't normal."

Recently, I've studied some stuff about PDA autism, it's a subset of autistics who desire social connection.  It seems to fit me to an extent. To be frank with you, this is a curse, because it's an endless rotation of failed dreams. I do enjoy people don't get me wrong, but everything socially is so messy for me. Years ago I did manage to adjust my expectations and enjoy activities for themselves. That helped a lot.  I enjoyed this discussion. However the pressures sometimes can be difficult. The autistics who are free of so many social desires may have an easier path.  I need to chill out, go to activities on Zoom I still enjoy but be a bit more cautious socially. 

Autistic oversharing is a real deal. The door opens up a crack and it can all come flooding out. That's life when you have to spend so much time masking and "trying to appear as normal as possible". You get a friendly group and you pour your heart out.