Part 5 — Social hangovers (and why needing to hide afterwards doesn’t mean you’re bad with people)

A strengths-based exploration by 🟠 the neurovision group

Introduction

This article is Part 5 of a 12-part series exploring the lived experience of neurodivergence, the invisible patterns, sensory realities and nervous system rhythms that shape our days.

If there is one experience that neurodivergent people often recognise instantly, even before diagnosis, it’s the social hangover.

Social Hangovers (and why needing to hide afterwards doesn’t mean you’re bad with people)

Some neurodivergent experiences creep up quietly.
This one kicks the door in and plants itself on the sofa.

If there’s one thing ND folks recognise immediately, even before diagnosis, it’s the social hangover, the crash that arrives after the connection, when the nervous system finally puts its feet up and says:

“Right… that was a lot.”

It’s not disliking people.
It’s not introversion.
It’s not awkwardness.
It’s not avoidance.

It’s simply your system asking for a lie-down after performing high-definition humaning.

The social hangover is real, and no, you didn’t imagine it

You leave the pub, the Teams call, the family WhatsApp drama, or just a really good chat with a friend…
And two hours later you’re face-down on the sofa like someone unplugged you mid-sentence.

You laughed.
You enjoyed it.
You were present.
And now your body has sent you an invoice titled “Immediate payment required.”

From the inside it feels like:

• someone switched you from colour to sepia
• sound turning sharp and light turning heavy
• your own skin feeling too loud
• the urgent need for darkness, silence and nobody looking at you
• the confusing guilt of “but I had fun… why do I feel like I’ve done a triathlon?”

Sometimes it hits instantly.
Sometimes it waits politely until you’re on the train home and then knocks you flat.

Either way, it’s not you being “antisocial”.
It’s your nervous system clocking off shift.

ND connection is not casual. It’s a full-body sport.

While everyone else is “just chatting”, we’re doing a comprehensive emotional audit in the background:

• scanning micro-expressions like subtitles
• predicting where the conversation is going three moves ahead
• adjusting tone, volume, bounce, honesty
• feeling other people’s moods in our own body
• translating our internal world into something socially digestible
• masking, unmasking, recalibrating, reframing

We do social the way some people do competitive sport: with intensity, precision and a 200% processing load.

Of course there’s a come-down.
We simply live deeper.

Connection is beautiful… and requires a recovery plan

What helps now?

• The “one proper catch-up, not three polite ones” rule.
  Depth beats duration every time.

• Choosing sensory-safe spaces.
  Quiet cafés over shouting over playlists in chain restaurants.

• Pre-announcing your exit.
  “I’ll need to vanish after this.”
  The right people don’t flinch.

• Building a landing pad at home.
  Lights low, headphones ready, zero conversation required for an hour.

• Renaming the whole thing.
  I stopped calling it antisocial.
  Now it’s post-gig detox.
  Far more accurate. Far kinder.

If you’ve ever texted
“Had the BEST time, currently dead on the sofa”,
you’re not avoiding life, you’re recovering from feeling it too fully.

And that is nothing to apologise for.

You’re not bad with people. You’re brilliant with them.

This same wiring that drains you also gives you:

• emotional depth that makes people feel seen
• instinctive empathy that catches pain before words do
• memory for tiny details others forget
• intensity that cuts through small talk to the real conversation
• loyalty that arrives before people know they need it

We don’t do half-hearted connection.
We do full immersion.
And full immersion comes with a recovery bill.

The right people understand that and they dim the lights, lower the noise and sit with you while you recalibrate.

Those are your people.
Keep them.

A gentle nod to the absurdity

Our community is full of people who:

• can have one meaningful conversation and need a two-day lie-down
• text “amazing time!!” followed immediately by “I must disappear for a week now”
• love humans fiercely but require witness protection after a birthday party
• can detect a 0.3-millimetre drop in someone’s smile
• have perfected the Irish goodbye because explaining the battery situation is too much

Social hangovers aren’t a flaw.
They’re the side-effects of caring deeply, sensing widely and showing up wholeheartedly. Go you!!

Come decompress with your people

If you read this and thought:

“Oh thank God, it’s not just me — I’m just paying the bill for loving people in 4K,”

then you’re already halfway home.

In our All Kinds of Minds community, we keep the volume low, the lights soft, and the judgement nonexistent.

We’ve saved you a spot under the weighted blanket.

👉 Join All Kinds of Minds — free, gentle, zero pressure, maximum duvet energy.

Come hide with your people.

You’re not bad at people.
You’re bloody brilliant at them.
We just charge premium rate.

Reflections ✨

• Do you feel “the crash” after social interactions?
• What parts of connection drain your energy most quickly?
• What strengths lie beneath your depth of engagement?
• How can you build a gentler rhythm around your social life?

Part 6 up next - The micro-shame spiral (and why that tiny mistake just winded you)

It’s the sudden, disproportionate drop you feel when you make the smallest mistake. It's normal, it’s the nervous system responding faster than the mind can catch up.

And inside it, beneath the discomfort, lies a set of strengths that are rarely acknowledged.