Dyspraxia blog

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Human interest

As Christmastime is with us again I've been faced with the annual challenge of facing and conversing with a great many more people than would normally be required of me. I find interaction with other people one of my greatest personal paradoxes that is extentuated even further when family and friends are involved.

Simple put, my problem is that I have difficulties with people and communicating with them. I'm certainly not what I would call 'a people person' and I hold little interest or possibly even a passive dislike in most people. As a child I was always regarded as extremely shy. I disliked having to converse with others and when visitors called would always prefer to hide away in my room until they had left. Even a simple hello or goodbye seemed challenging and taxing. Today I've made advancements in that I will greet and make some amount of small-talk with friends or family members. There still remains however and underlying unease at the whole experience. Yet I have trouble understanding this as I like the friends and love the family members in question.

More broadly I have a desire at some level to get to know new people, make new friends and even perhaps get involved in a relationship. However on a street I am troubled by proximity to others and certainly display little drive to get to know anyone I see. On occasion I might see someone who I find attractive, but even then my mind seems devoid of thoughts that would interest me in this person.

This is not to say I don't have friends, as I do, and some good friends at that, which makes the whole situation all the more peculiar. What I am experiencing though is that increasingly the people I am meeting are through text based forms of communication online. I do find these much easier to work with, as on forums at least you can read any amount of messages without any pressure to post a message yourself. Then when I do come to post I can word my message carefully, taking time in that the response. Once I've got to know someone in this context there's instant messenging; also text-based, but nearer to real time. Eventually this will lead to telephone conversations, which although difficult for me, are generally the most preferred.

I suppose what I'm trying to track down is the source or sources for this problem in communication. Is is some autistic related phenonenon, whereby my brain simply is unable to put itself in the place of another person, in a manner often described in Aspergers Syndrome. Alternatively, could lack of confidence be the key, drawing on my difficulties with thinking on my feet, making small talk and generally seeing through a successful conversation. Perhaps it's something else entirely.

All I know is that in practice all too often my head goes blank when it comes to thinking of topics of conversation or replies to what the other person involved in the dialogue has said. Only with a few friends I have lots in common with can I successfully carry out long conversations. It's frustrating, and it's one of the main areas I want to discuss with a psychologist as and when I get referred. I'm hoping that once I've begun to understand the underlying cause, then I can look at tackling it, maybe overcoming it. Until then, it seems to be a matter of gritting my teeth and trying hard yet feeling uncomfortable in social situations which in theory should be stress free but which in reality are greatly problematic.

1 Comments:

At 5:11 pm, Blogger tracey clarke said...

hi dan, my son of 11 is exactly the same. He has got adhd and now a diagnosis of dyspraxia and is also been tested for dyslexia. He has just started high school and is having lots of problems! The hardest part is getting the school to understand the problems have u got any advise that can help please would love to hear from you take care x x x

 

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