this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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Autism

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Thoughts on why small talk is so uniquely painful (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/autism
222 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Image text: @agnieszkasshoes: "Part of what makes small talk so utterly debilitating for many of us who are neurodivergent is that having to smile and lie in answer to questions like, "how are you?" is exhausting to do even once, and society makes us do it countless times a day."

@LuckyHarmsGG: "It's not just the lie, it's the energy it takes to suppress the impulse to answer honestly, analyze whether the other person wants the truth, realize they almost certainly don't, and then have to make the DECISION to lie, every single time. Over and over. Decision fatigue is real"

@agnieszkasshoes: "Yes! The constant calculations are utterly exhausting - and all under the pressure of knowing that if you get it "wrong" you will be judged for it!"

My addition: For me, in addition to this, more specifically it's the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don't know the answer to that question and that's why it's so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that's appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvPSP-2xU4h/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

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[–] KuroJ 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No worries!

And so many people like myself, and perhaps yourself, may have a lot of symptoms but have managed to fly under the radar because we were able to get good enough grades in school for example, and have good enough social skills to make and maintain friendships, and get and keep jobs, all to varying extents. But inside, unbeknownst to those around us, we have been expending 10 times, 100 times the energy that most people use in order to meet those expectations put on us. And we just assumed everyone was struggling this hard with everything. But it turns out it’s not supposed to be this hard.

This makes so much sense. I do find myself struggling at times to keep certain relationships going with people I meet or sometimes even with just my friends. For example, sometimes when I get a message from a friend I end up not reading it, and saying to myself, "I'll look at it later", then that later becomes later and later... until it just constantly starts eating away at me every day and maybe two weeks later I might finally respond... I'm glad my friends that I do have don't take it that I'm being rude πŸ˜…

Anxiety because we learn to be on high alert for when we are not behaving in the socially acceptable way so we are constantly in fight or flight mode in order to stay on top of those expectations.

I definitely feel this. Sometimes I have to process in my head how to respond a certain away when I'm around people in a social setting, and when I actually say it out loud, I just think to myself how stupid that must have sounded and the people around me probably think that I'm weird.

Thanks for the videos! I know what I'll be watching tonight, and if I do run into any videos regarding Black men diagnosed with autism I'll send them your way :)

[–] ScruffyDux 3 points 1 year ago

There's some awesome black autistic creators on Tiktok. You can find them via the hashtag #Autizzy.