Quote Originally Posted by xLucia View Post
I am one of those people who can just "drift off" as you call it. And it's not because I don't care or because I don't want to talk to anyone. But because (and I don't want to speak for anyone else with autism) for me personally, I "drift off" because I can get "sucked up" into my own little world, where all that exists is just me and whatever it is I'm doing. That "phase" can lasts for a few hours, a day, or on rare occassions, it can last weeks.
I know these kind of phases as well. During those times it's not that you don't care about others, but somehow you... sort of don't care about others anyway. It's complicated to explain. But your own interests or whatever are kind of "more important" for yourself than socializing during those moments, so that you forget about all the social stuff. And because I could never initiate a conversation anyway, it's even easier to "forget".
And it's even worse if you actually promised to reply to someone or something like that because you're then scared to talk to them because they could say something about not calling back earlier and it could maybe hurt you (even if it's a person you know that would never react like that), so talking to them gets even harder than it already is.
Oh, I'm so so bad at explaining, I hope you can understand what I mean.

Quote Originally Posted by Liam_Harper View Post
Basically social anxiety makes chatting and talking very difficult. The anxiety part makes you see potential dangers where there aren't any, such as "what if the thing I say comes across as rude, or over-friendly, or stupid, or offensive" and in addition, you tend to be more sensitive to emotions so rejection or ridicule would hurt a lot more. It doesn't mean talking is impossible or that socially anxious people dislike talk or company in itself, it's just that it's difficult. This is a disorder, it's your brain being wired differently so while you can work on it, you can't just snap out of it or grow a thicker skin.

Not belonging isn't necessarily true, everyone belongs somewhere and can make friends, but it's easy to perceive it that way if you fall into the trap of thinking social interaction is an impossibility for you. Having that much struggle to simply chat to someone can be discouraging. Honestly it can be a bad habit sometimes, it's unhealthy to get too deep into an "everyone hates me" pool of self pity, you tend to push away those who care. It's not always the worst thing to point this out (just in a nice way, not an angry one). Even if they don't seem to listen, they can understand it.
OMG, this somehow describes me perfectly, I'm kind of surprised about it.