This question clearly isn't geared towards the majority of autists, although you're free to answer if you have some valid input.
>Was anyone ever socially inclined but somehow lost the ability for whatever reason?
I feel like this is what's happened to me. I actually used to consider myself to be quite outgoing, funny and charming. My question is, what exactly happened? Now I can't really effectively socialise without ridiculous amounts of alcohol anymore, and when I have most of my encounters/conversations have been regrettable.
Society is changing faster than you can adapt, so you make too many mistakes and get scared.
>>28040254
>Acquired Social Phobia
This happened to me when my mother pulled me out of public school and "home schooled" me during key social developmental years
>>28040317
I think it's /partly/ a psychological thing, I feel like I constantly over-analyse everything I'm thinking and intend to say, and constantly second guess myself nowadays.
Even down to the most trivial things. I don't trust my memory, my cognition, or really any of my own abilities at all.
Perhaps I was always just operating under an illusion of adequacy and now that the mask has been lifted I can no longer cope/adjust. At least it was a comfortable delusion.
I guess my self-confidence is pretty evident right now.
After being a shut-in neet for the last 3 years I lost basically all ability to socialize normally. I even developed a stutter from never using my voice. Now I'm doing a little better improving myself slowly. No meme but weed seems to help me with the stutter and make me feel less anxious leading up to a social situation.
>>28040254
I feel like I was able to hold a normal conversation all the way up to my sophomore year of HS.
Somewhere along the way I lost all my fucking social skills and couldn't talk without saying something stupid and awkward.
I ended up transferring to an "independent learning" HS and only had actual class like twice a week.
Pretty much downhill from there. Never had to talk to people, so I lost the remainder of my social skills.
This literally happened tonight (little backstory, quit my job of 1.5ish years a few months back and have been reluctantly NEET since):
>dad asks me to run to the store to get something
>have minor panic attack and really don't want to go but feel too guilty
>say I just have to take a shower first, use this time to mentally prepare for leaving the house
>drive to the store
>awkwardly wander for a few minutes looking for what he needed
>grab the shit and head to self checkout
>been so long since I used my card I forgot how to slide the card
>fumble around and glance to see if anyone is watching
>employee that watches over self checkout comes over
>says I'm sliding it the wrong way
>mumble something about it giving me and error and awkwardly enter my PIN
>sweating bullets at this point
>exchange looks with employee, super embarrassed
>fast walk to car and drive home
>tfw you can't even make a 5 minute trip to the store without being a total social retard.
>>28041488
OP here, that's good senpai. As a former daily stoner of 5-6 years I can definitely appreciate that. Ordinary weed stopped working for me, and actually made my condition worse by the end of it, so I eventually stopped. However, if I had access to medical weed I'd definitely consider it again. Glad you've found something to help you famz.
>>28042026
Most daily social interaction unfolds as such for me, I can repress it though. I've been mostly a NEET for the better part of 5-6 years myself.
When I was in kindergarten through second grade, I was very outgoing and had a lot of friends at school. But I also had ADD and this started to make me a little weird as I would say non-sequiturs about how I liked my cat while people were talking about something unrelated. At school it didn't matter because I was already popular, but at the after-school Russian lessons that I started attending, my fellow students made fun of me for it. That was the beginning.
Then at the end of second grade, we moved to a different town, and I entered a new school. I found myself unable to make friends. I was weird, my self-confidence was damaged from my Russian lessons, I didn't know anyone, and I was more inclined to play video games at recess on the school computers than to go outside and do physical activity with the other kids (at the time, this was unusual). My retreat into video games and my rejection of physical activity was only amplified by this new situation because it was easier to play a video game than it was to go outside and try to socialize with strangers.
The rest of school, through high school, was not a good situation for me socially. But towards the end of high school and the beginning of college I consciously started to turn things around, and I had a great college experience, developing a circle of close friends.
You can turn shit around if you want to. People can change socially for the worse, but they can also change for the better. Consider therapy if you can't make it happen on your own.
>>28040359
What is with the quotes? Did she not actually home school you? Did she not teach you that putting quotes around a phrase like that indicates that it's false?
