Simon wrote:I do not believe this is a unique problem and I feel there are people on this board who can help, if they choose to do so.
Not sure if you're including me in that, but I'll give it a go - By applying more mindfulness to daily life I was able to discover exactly why I was feeling 'cornered' in social situations, by picking out what was going on in my head that led to that feeling and to emotions (such as shame) that went with it. Ofcourse, the results will be subtly different for every autistic -let alone human- meditator, and I also recall that I had to 'emotion-recollect in tranquility' (i.e. reflect on the experience
after the event had passed and I'd moved on) to begin with. I'd strongly suggest, though, that aversion to others -or even to interaction- as such is not the issue, so much as one's conditioned ways of dealing with other people and their communications is.
Being mildly autistic -though similar processes might apply with other conditions such as schizophrenia- a lot of thoughts and intuitions flood through my mind without enough mental energy being left over from simply dealing with whatever I'm doing in order for me to process them. The results of these diversions of conscious
thought into basic sensory processing centre around an overloaded micro-term memory - Whilst in (what I take to be) one series of 'dharmas' (the~0.06-second duration of a conscious mental action - see 'Abhidharma' references/commentaries) I might just about gain the impression that 'so-and-so means such-and-such', in the next dharma I'm back to following what's going on in a far more conscious, personally-involved way than 'normal' people have to, because the 'social' brain that normally processes all this as if it were just a dimension of sensation is -for whatever reason- functioning below normal levels - The 'flavour' of complex social interactions is hard to retain in a way that allows the social instincts to flow freely and integrate with one's sense of self.
Anyhow, later in the interaction, I still subconsciously remember that I've 'missed' something, and respond with a vague sense of angst or else something like guilt (depending on how clear an idea I had of what I've overlooked), but I still don't manage to grasp the situation sufficiently to piece together a full picture of what what's going on in the minds of those around me, let alone as to generate a meaningful response. What I do know -and in cases of 'full-on' autism one's social intuition may be too impaired to allow this- is that
I cannot act as I ideally would without superhuman effort, and that others will often notice there's a problem.
Different people may respond differently to a similar internal situation along those lines - For me, I acknowledge now that my 'grip on the outside world' being too weak to allow me to 'play social games' (leading to others becoming keen to exploit me through perceiving that) is what has kept me, via my understanding (of how things stand!), stubbornly avoiding the real engagement with society that makes such things necessary, despite my constantly 'beating myself up' with reminders (for 20 years) that such avoidance leads to both pain and negative karma for me and those around me in this world and in whatever reality may follow or enfold it. {Unlike many autistics, I find 'social game-playing' entertaining and even worthwhile, despite the fact that the intention and result is often the destruction of human beings.}
However, from a Buddhist point of view I realise that, fortunately, there are atleast three problems with this rather overwrought picture:
1) The extreme self-honesty of the whole enterprise means that in a successful sangha it is social game-playing, rather than the people who can't or won't join in, that ends up looking silly and being laughed at, in a way that it has no reason to be in any other broad-based gathering of people. In other words, someone who does 'pass judgement' on what is really our 'innate' functioning in a Buddhist centre is a bit like an obese person struggling at the gym - They're both where they are partly in order to overcome what we notice about them, and so deserve our encouragement rather than our trepidation.
2) The 'anatman' principle in Buddhism means that we have no business defending a nonexistent self from potential
destruction if we have more to lose by avoiding the situation at hand; this reminds us that being defensive is always
an 'own goal' in situations that involve other people, and furthermore alerts us that the kind of negative feelings that lay
others low when they 'lose the game' socially need not affect us.
3) Buddhism offers a kind of active (well, alert) form of inaction -its versions of meditation- that (we trust) removes the need for both dissipating inactivity (note for starters that Milarepa is said to have lost the need for sleep) and self-centred activity, with an unimpeded flow of mind-activity eventually taking the place of one's mind-body complex(?!). To begin with, though, meditation gives us a kind of 'power sleep', so that whatever our worries about sangha, we are likely to be better able to handle these better than worries about other organisations when we do 'take the plunge',
and then continue (especially if properly guided) to worry less about issues in general. {For some perspective, let's remember that the 3% or so of the population diagnosable with Antisocial Personality Disorder are said to be incapable of experiencing any form of anxiety, besides any emotional appreciation of people or things outside of oneself.}
Besides this is ofcourse the millions of people with autism and other mind-brain conditions who simply haven't given two hoots about their 'issues' and have therefore got on and succeeded in their endeavours.
EDIT: I realise I'm not very good at giving advice, since I really do give advice rather than just acknowledging the other person's issue, as the 'correct' formula has it. However, I only do this because I realise that even for an autistic person I have some odd angles on life which others may not have thought up despite their being to their potential benefit.