Practicing conversations

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Does anyone else practice conversations in the mirror
Whats something you did due to being autistic but you didn't realise it then

No, I only rehearse a range of audio possibilities. However, these days my better conversations are on Zoom, and when I'm not getting much air time, I get to watch my own reflection, which is surprisingly expressive. When I speak, my vision is almost absent.

I practice speeches and presentations in front of a mirror, but not conversations.

No, I can't be bothered to do that. I used to, a little bit, but I couldn't anticipate what other people would say, how they'd react, etc., so practicing didn't really help because when I got into a real-life situation it was usually nothing like what I'd expected.

So these days I just wing it. If I were to rehearse, I'd probably just try to think of a few questions to ask the people I was going to meet, but for some reason it's hard for me to do that even if I've got lots of time to work on it. It often feels a bit fake, and I'd rather wait till my curiosity drives me to ask a question that's occurred to me naturally at the time, which doesn't happen an awful lot, but it can happen. I much prefer people to just volunteer stuff about themselves, and to let me do the same. I try to listen and maybe ask a question or two about what they've said, or (more likely) if I can relate what they've said to my own experiences, I might volunteer that stuff about me, so they can see that we have something in common, or maybe just share the fact that our experiences are different.

As long as I'm with people who talk about things I'm interested in, there's not much of a problem and we can have a good conversation as nobody hogs the limelight too much. It's all pretty intuitive with me. If they're friendly towards me then that seems to animate me and we'll probably get on quite well. If they're not, I more or less ignore them. I'm not very fond of "pure" social situations where there's nothing else to do but socialise. I prefer it when we've got a task to perform together. That happens a lot when I meet other musicians, either jamming together or just "comparing notes" about music in general. If I'm going to make a friend, there probably has to be a reason why it should be me and him / her, some shared interest or purpose, though my range of interests isn't particularly narrow so it doesn't mean that most people don't interest me.

I talk about stuff I want to talk about to myself first out loud(I know that sounds crazy), but its almost like a pre-hashing of what I want to talk about and how it sounds, then I go and talk to the actual person about it. I think it is a way of getting the thoughts out into coherent speech. Luckily my husband has gotten used to this and doesn't think its strange when I'm talking and talking to myself then come talk to him.