I hope someone can tell me I am not the only one in this.
After interactions with colleagues or acquaintances, I find myself replaying over and over and over again parts of the conversation where I was particularly awkward. My brain would play out different scenarios/simulations of that scene on how I could have done/said it better. I am unable to stop that train of thoughts and it goes on for at least an hour for interactions that are sometimes less than 2 minutes. What is upsetting to me, is that although I signal to my brain that I don’t want to think about it and to move on, it refuses to do that and I would be starring at my screen trying to focus on my work while my brain is running a process of “why are you so awkward and how to prevent that in the future”.
Although this is just my opinion and was not professionally confirmed, I sometimes think that I am either on the spectrum or have some ADHD tendencies. Then my brain say : this is just another excuse, you are just socially awkward.
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I can’t even tell you how much I relate to this, this literally just happened to me an hour ago. I want to scream and run away, or sedate my brain for a little while so I can have some peace from these thoughts. I’m trying to remind myself we live on a floating rock.
I’m on the spectrum, but I honestly don’t have a clue if it’s representative for autism or just social awkwardness, so I won’t say anything about that. But yeah, it’s been better in recent years, but literally any interaction used to keep me awake for hours, simply because I would keep replaying it in my head and thinking of (pretty much) every alternative to a conversation. ‘What did they think about what I said and how I said it and what if I had said this instead of that and how would they have responded and what would I have said then and what impression would that leave and how would they react and what would I say then and blablablabla’.. I’m honestly not sure how I stopped it, but I think I just decided that it’s bullshit. I can’t change anything about it, and I can’t look into other people’s mind, so it simply doesn’t make sense to worry about it.
One way that helps me put this type of thinking into perspective (cos I can’t help but do the same) is to think about how often you notice other people’s awkwardness or silly remarks, and how much you actually cared about it. Most of the time we tend to forget what others have said or done, or just relate to their awkwardness and find it quite endearing. Think about your response to when you see someone stuttering to get their words out, or if they’re excessively blushing etc. When I see that happen I just want to signal to them that it doesn’t make me think any less of them at all, actually the opposite! I can see things are harder for them and they’re trying anyway.
You’re definitely not the only one. I experience this too, replaying things over and over to see if I was awkward. Also I frequently play out future possible conversations and situations. I don’t know that I have any advice unfortunately except you could try therapy. (That’s what I just started trying and I think it’s helpful!) Also about wondering about being on the spectrum or adhd, you could be and it could be something you could talk about in therapy if you went. I have also wondered if I have adhd and I’m gonna tested sometime soon. Sorry I didn’t have much advice but just know you aren’t alone in this!
My son does this and he is undiagnosed ADHD. He also washes his hands too much and turns the lights off and on multiple times.
He can’t keep unwanted thoughts away. I just responded to a text from him regarding a conversation we had a month ago. He just wanted to know if I was hinting at wanting to sell our RV.
He knows he can always check with me and I’ll tell him if there was a subtext.
Best Wishes
I am right there with you. Although I have recently found a good group of friends that cherish me for who I am and I think that has been helping me build confidence because I notice I haven’t been ruminating as much. so my first suggestion, is to start with interest groups to find people with common interest. i have found that I click best and feel the most myself when we are both passionate about something. Another tip I have found is “play past the cringe” whenever you are stuck in a loop thinking about something embarrassing you did, try to remember what happened right after that and play through the rest of the conversation. This is a new tip for me, so I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I like the concept. I think it’s suppose to show you the big picture and how quickly they probably forgot it happened. and that in the end you probably had a decent interaction.
LMAO THIS IS LITERALLY ME. And I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD last year. Sometimes I’ll have an interaction with a girl and my head will be like “welp guess we’re getting married now”