The Social Skills Hangover

I am not sure if I can speak for all Aspies but I experience what I term a "Social Skills Hangover". A hang over is as we are all aware when a person may consume too much alcohol at a party and the next day they feel fatigued and unable to cope. Well for me, I get the same feeling after I have socialised or attended a function of some kind. Having invested large amounts of mental energy in order to get through the social event or function, and often if this is a day's activity, I find myself having to safeguard against being literal also. Sometimes within the audience you may ask a question that may perhaps need some mental filtering. Mental filtering is the delay or filtering process between thought and spoken word. Aspies tend to have poor mental filters as the filtering process tends to not work and we usually speak our minds. When I have asked questions in the audience, I once asked about how the medical profession wants to ask us why we have contemplated suicide or if we have ever been depressed when all that we require may be a referral to an Asperger Clincic, in this case being Minds and Hearts.

Perhaps other Aspies have "social skills hangovers" where they too feel so drained after a social event and find themselves tired and feeling somewhat mentally drained. The distinction between Aspies and NT's is that Aspies run more on mental processing a great deal more and for us every hour, minute and second at a social event requires the use of more thinking. Now you can probably begin to understand why we get mentally drained and tired aftewards? Ask yourself do you experience a social skills hangover and does it make you feel mentally drained the next day?