Having a conversation

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Hello everyone,

I am new here, and I was just wanting to ask: Do you find it difficult to have a conversation with someone?
Talking is so difficult for me sometimes. Every time I start conversing with someone, I never know how to respond. When I do, it's usually something like: "that's cool/interesting/nice/" or something like: "I see..." , "I know", or "I understand". If it's not any of those, than I just ask questions about what the person told me about. However, that usually comes down to a thing where I look like I am interviewing the person instead of having a conversation with them.

Something else I want to mention, is that when I have a conversation, I am very concerned about what the other person is thinking about me. In other words, I try to analyze and "filter" my responses in my head, thinking whether what I will say will somehow appear inferior, or just hurt their feelings somehow.

Does anybody else feel the same way? And if not, why do you think this is happening to me? Do I not have enough general knowledge to have a conversation? Am I boring? Do I have nothing to say to people?

Any comments, personal experiences, or advice, would be much appreciated. Thank you

Conversation?

WTF is that?

I suck at it.

I don't really have that problem. I do my research on the Internet to see what people usually talk about. I use that imformation durring coffee break at work in order to keep it interesting. Poeple like variety, so I talk about a variety of things. I save my special interests for WP, due to the fact that I was scared out of talking about my parents at a young age.

Good lord. That's too much work. I don't want to try that hard at conversing.

I filter out information too that would be embarrassing or inappropriate in some way. I wish I didn't but it's something that I just do.

When i was a teenager this was a massive problem for me. I literally had a pre-defined template of questions e.g., hi, how are you, what you been up to, how was your journey? I had a virtual phobia of drying up in conversation or appearing 'quiet'.

These days I speak if and when I see fit to do so (which unfortunately for others is a lot!)

Strenia: the trick is to ask questions, it forces the recipient to do all the talking. There's a funny example of this on The 40 Yr Old Virgin where he answers every question with a question

I do that.. or I phrase my statements as questions on accident. It's all a big question mark anyways, right? Right??

I have a lot of trouble holding a conversation. There comes a point when I run out of data and am not really sure what we're talking about anymore. Usually I end up telling an embarrassing story about myself and, if nothing else, it allows the person I'm conversing with to feel like I am not being hostile by remaining quiet or ignoring them.

I'm horrible at engaging. And, even if I have questions I want to ask, I forget what they are. lol

Welcome to WP!

I have difficulties initiating conversations in the normal casual manner, and usually my conversations initiate with a fact or a formal greeting. I can converse formally, but I find small talk quite difficult.

I never initiate conversation, I always wait for someone else to. As for sustaining a conversation, I never know what to say which makes me nervous because I can't help wondering what the other person is thinking and this makes me talk too much and too fast and I end up completely dominating the conversation and talking about stuff that they probaly don't want to hear about.

Yes I get that a lot. Maybe it's just too much self-consciousness? To some extent it's probably quite normal and proper - people don't usually present themselves exactly as they are, and a lot of what they say is designed to impress, or to avoid inviting contempt. It's easy to see how an Aspie could get bogged down with this, trying to consciously work out what NTs just do by intuition. So it could be that the degree of filtering isn't itself abnormal but the laborious way we have to do it makes it look like we're paranoid about looking weird - though no doubt social anxiety takes its toll there. And since autism makes it hard to read people, we get no feedback about the impression we're creating, so we can't easily test how adequate our filtering already is, and we don't know whether to try harder or to relax. Under those constraints, it feels safer to err on the side of too much filtering.

All I can advise is, look and learn. It's quite feasible for an Aspie to fathom what makes people tick, and how to get by in conversation. Maybe also it's worth developing an eye for how judgemental the individuals are who you meet. They'll give it away whenever they talk about others. If they're quick to condemn them, my advice is to stay away from them. In contrast, some folks are wonderfully non-judgemental, and won't feel superior or threatened as long as you come over as fairly harmless.

Your difficulty with finding appropriate responses to what people say to you......I get trouble with that too. Often an Aspie finds it hard to feel much interest in what people randomly talk to them about - we're more geared up to our own restricted choice of subjects which we personally happen to find fascinating. So maybe it pays to try to adopt a broad sense of curiosity. Also try to "read between the lines" and discover the emotional content of what they're saying - e.g. "rotten weather we're having isn't it?" means "I like you - do you like me?" so a good answer would be "yes it's pretty awful.....have you had to travel far in it?" which means "yes I do like you, and I'd like to carry on talking with you." Again it's not a thing that comes easy to Aspies, so it can take many years to make any headway. But without an awareness of the emotional dimension, it seems that people are just dumping random data on us.

Actually I'm not sure it's so bad if you feel like an interviewer. A good interviewer can really engage the interviewee and help them clarify what they're trying to say, and to test their ideas against opposing views without letting it degenerate into a brawl. But maybe you mean something like one lady I noticed - she seemed to be asking a newcomer the right questions - "how many children do you have?" "how old are they?" etc., and she nodded and said "uhuh" at each answer, but her style felt way too clinical and stiff, as if she wasn't really interested at all. It might have flowed better if, when the newcomer said one of her kids was 1 year old, she'd said something like "they're lovely/quite a handful at that age aren't they?" - I think it's a matter of delving into the other person's psyche, and trying to bring out the stuff they feel more strongly about - that lady seemed stuck at the "name, rank and serial number" stage, so her opening game was adequate but after that she was lost for words.

I think what many Aspies want is depth in their conversations, and they try to fast-track the process, which is usually too much for people, they prefer to begin with trivia (although it's loaded with deeper emotional content if you look closely) and then gradually talk more deeply as they begin to feel safe with the company.

It probably sounds like I see myself as quite an expert on this kind of stuff - I know a thing or two, but I'm still not quick enough in real life to apply much of it to "live" social situations, which is probably because of the Aspie brain's difficulty in shifting rapidly between subjects. I've often kicked myself for not saying things that seem like no-brainers when I'm safely alone with all the time in the world to be wise after the event.

I speak to others only if there's something I need to say, and that doesn't include general conversation. When I've tried that, it withers on the vine through lack of sustenance.
On the other hand, I can broadcast pretty well on a special interest.

Nicely said.





I find the "real time processing,"and shifting a problem here with myself, and it probably has a universality with autism. You can't have it all, unfortunately. Either someone is broad and shallow or still as deep water.

seconded

I also feel the same way. I can have them off and on. I also don't know what to say to someone or what to talk about and then at other times I am just talking about random things that are at the top of my head. I also feel I can't even have a normal conversation unless it's something I am interested in. If I am not interested, I end up doing those short responses as well and I find it difficult to even fake the interest or carry on that conversation. This upsets one of my aspie friends but it feels like therapy when he tries and gets me to fake it. And I also notice a way for me to have conversations is asking questions. I ask tons of them. It's how I socialize and when people get upset by my questions or go "none of your business" I feel I can't even have a conversation with people or even do small talk because I get that crap. So I have given up. Same as when I have read posts here by people who don't like people asking them "personal questions" and I have no idea what be considered personal so that means if I try and socialize, people will think wrong of me and think I am onto something. Makes me even more shy to talk to other aspies.

I now work as a teacher to Japanese folk, teaching English conversation. I find this really amusing, like did I subconsciously choose this job to help myself become a better conversationalist? I never noticed- before doing this job- how much I have to think about what comes next in a conversation. I sometimes mess up during my lessons and ask completely ridiculous questions, then think WTF? Why did I ask THAT? I also notice myself following non-linear routes and just asking whatever pops up into my head or what I want to know from my student. It could be 10 minutes after the initial topic was introduced, but I don't care.

I wonder...do NTs have to think about what they are going to say next? Does small talk come naturally to them? I am a good conversationalist- I think- but it takes work on my end and is quite tiring.