Inability to have conversations

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I am finding that I am losing the ability to have certain types of conversations now. My brain is no longer able to sustain them.

Like, what type

It's very important now that every social interaction and conversation I have is very tailored to my needs. I can't have interactions that cause me stress.

If I have an interaction where I am being treated harshly, or unfairly, or I am being told that I need to comply to or accept things that do not make any kind of logical sense, I can no longer handle that. And the interaction has to be calm and relatively slow. If not, I cannot handle it.

What are your thoughts as to why? An increased level of background stress, chemical or physical changes?

neurological deterioration from neurological stress and fatigue due to constant over stimulation and social abuse.

That makes sense; the system has been overloaded and is at least partially burned out.

Yes

Well, I'd like to share with you a few ideas which might help with handling certain conversations.

Sometimes even if you encounter a conversation you cant handle, sometimes you can actually handle it. The problem is it might not always be worth your effort to do so, and thats why I dont always suggest trying to handle it when you know you're struggling to do so. Just keep in mind you can, and if you think the person you talk to is worth that effort, you can go ahead and try to handle it, and you would probably succeed with doing that.

And generally, its also hard to tell what causes this, and you cant always do things 100% perfectly. If you made a mistake, remind yourself you're a human being and not feel shame about it that way.

Hey guys, do you just avoid conversations you feel uncomfortable with, or try to handle it sometimes? I know avoiding is easier, but thats not the only option you have. Right?

Some people will try to stress you out by not giving you time to come up with a response or by pretending to misunderstand you so they can pretend they have an excuse to yell at you. They'll blame you for problems you didn't cause. Especially if this mostly came from parents, bosses, teachers, or anyone in a position of authority over you, they were probably stressing you out on purpose. Their reasoning is this stress will make you think quicker, which will make you more productive. It can also cause you to develop PTSD and some severe anger issues if you endure too much of it. I think many of these people also just enjoy tormenting others. From what you've written, I suspect you've spent too much time around people like this. I've found the best solution to this is to try to stay away from these people, when possible. If you can't, then just interact with them as little as possible. When they start with their bullsh*t, just respond with "yes", "no", or "I don't know", whenever you can. Put as little thought as possible into your responses. Slow down, mentally. This will make it easier to remain calm. Also try to appear calm on the outside. Whatever you express externally will have an affect on how you feel. Keep your facial expression neutral so they can't get a read on you, which they could use to plan out an attack. Don't concern yourself with how the conversation turns out. The goal is to put up a wall between yourself and this person so their ability to disrupt your tranquility is diminished.

Thank you for your kind words. But this is different. I am extremely eloquent. I don't tend to make mistakes in conversations. This isn't about my lack of conversational skills. This is about my inability to tolerate people being nonsensical, abusive, manipulative, and petty in conversations. It is also about me having a hard time tolerating shallow, pointless chit chat.

It seems like whenever Autistic people say that we have a struggle, people automatically assume that it's because we don't know how to do something or they assume that we are anxious about doing something. That is not always the case. Sometimes the struggle happens because we know how to do something extremely well and we are no longer able to tolerate when others don't recognize that or when they do not do the thing equally well but act as if they can. I no longer have the neurological stamina for other people using conversation as a tool to socially "keep put me in my place."

Those examples sound like hectoring:
"talking and behaving in a loud and unpleasantly forceful way, especially in order to get someone to act or think as you want"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... /hectoring

I guess a lot depends on the power relations between you. If they have much power over you, it's a hard situation for anybody to deal with. If they don't, you've got a number of options:

Maybe raise your voice and say something like "If you'll stop hectoring me then we can have a conversation" or "Will you just calm down? I'm not going to let you talk to me like that" or "can you just slow down and lower your voice a bit? I want to take your criticism on board but it's not going to happen till you do." Or there might be somebody a bit less involved who would act as a go-between to normalise the process and help to arrive at some kind of conciliation.

You could just walk away or return their aggression, but it depends on whether they're trying to make a valid point or it's just somebody being nasty for the sake of it, and if it's going too fast for you then it's hard to tell until they've expressed themselves in a civilised manner.

But whether or not they have a valid point to make, I don't think they're going about it in a very mature, sensible way, and although you seem to think your disability is the problem, I strongly suspect the problem is that you're among people with lousy negotiating skills. You might think more slowly than the average person, but so does half the population, and it takes a somewhat rare talent to deal with people who try to get results by raising the roof.

My ex-wife had a terribly aggressive way of voicing her grievances with me, and I never was able to deal with it. I used to tell her she was being too brash and needed to approach me more calmly and respectfully if she was serious about reaching me, but it didn't do much good. Sometimes there's not a lot you can do. She couldn't improve her method of confronting problems with me, and I couldn't improve my ability to listen to her at that pitch and speed, it always put my back up. On a good day I might be able to steel myself to that kind of thing and get some constructive results, and I try to allow for people's behaviour not being perfect when they're genuinely very upset about something, because most people regress like that a few times in their lives, but if it's somebody's normal way of doing things, I just can't function under those conditions as a way of life.

It depends, if you have a job where you encounter that type of thing?
If not then you could have a fun time just saying 'well sorry, but that's petty so I'm not getting involved in that'
I've said that myself to people and it feels alright.

You are 100% correct. One of my problems, because of my severe lack of social intuition, is that I can never see it coming. I get blindsided every single time. So I am incapable of avoiding this, because I don't have the ability to recognize it, especially in the moment, making me the perfect target for social bullies.

I was discussing this at length with one of my therapists and we were actually looking at my GARS scores on my diagnosis while we were talking about this. This problem actually showed up in that score. It falls under the "social interaction" category. I scored a 17 in social interaction. That's very low. My "social interaction abilities" are clinically low enough that expecting me to be able to aquire or learn the social skills that are required to recognize this behavior in others and be able to protect myself from it, especially in the moment, is as ridiculous as expecting a 100% completely blind person to be able to aquire the visual skills to create color palettes. It's simply never going to happen.

So my only protection is to avoid any kind of human interaction at all. Unfortunately that is not possible so the best I can do is to limit myself to safe topics with safe people and that's very difficult because safe people are so few and far between. They are extremely rare and difficult to find. But since I am forced to interact with others because I can't get anyone to help me, even my case managers refuse to help me, I am often in a situation where I am being socially bulled because being socially vulnerable attracts social bullies and they are so much more numerous than people realize. And even if people are not social predators, people, especially nts who have very strong social awareness, can sense when someone is socially weak and they often automatically become socially dominating when they sense this.

I cannot neurologically handle being socially dominated. So every day I become weaker, more fragile, and more vulnerable. And the more vulnerable I become, the brighter that vulnerability beacon gets and the more social predators and bullies are attracted and the more non bullies seem to dominate.

I don't have victim mentality but this is a true case of being a social victim. And unfortunately, as far as I know, I can't do anything about it because I have no ability to develop social awareness that can protect me from this. No one would claim victim mentality on a completely blind person who is struggling with people being abusive and manipulative to her because she can't sort out color schemes or drive a car. And no one would expect her to work hard to figure out how to develop the skills to do those things. No one would blame her for not being able to them. My social blindness, in that regard, is just as severely incapacitated as a completely blind person's visual blindness, yet people expect me to magically be able to aquire the skills necessary to overcome it. Because I am verbally eloquent and very cognisant of the actual language, people cannot understand that social retardation is a completely different thing. Lack of different types of social understanding has nothing to do with how well you speak the language. But because people don't understand this, no one is willing to accept how vulnerable and fragile I actually am and no one is willing to protect me. My therapists understand but there is nothing they can do about because this isn't something I need to learn or change. I am not capable of learning these skills so just like a person who has severe mental retardation and needs others to protect him from predators, I need the same kind of social protection. But I am not allowed that service because I speak the language well. So I will always be an open target for social abuse, bullying, and domination which causes me significant and ongoing neurological deterioration.

Last edited by skibum on 21 May 2022, 7:36 am, edited 1 time in total.

I did not know the word "hectoring." I think you are right in this. I often try to get away or somehow take control but even if I manage to the damage has been done and it is very devastating. I am sorry you go through similar things

Is there a particular place where this social bullying tends to happen? I'm guessing at work or with family.

Thank you. I am no longer capable of having a job. I am too neurologically damaged. Your idea is great. I would love to be able to have a clever comeback like that. The problem with me is that I can't recognize what is happening in the moment. My brain processing speed is too slow. So I usually don't really understand what happened in such a conversation until hours or days later. Sometimes I have no idea what socially happened in an interaction until my therapist explains it to me. And that could be a week or more later. In fact, I just understood about a time where I was socially bullied so severely that it would be considered criminally torturous. This happened twenty four years ago. I just happened to mention it to my therapist friend because I just happened to have the PTSD flashbacks that day. This conversation happened with my therapist friend last week. He had to explain to me how severely bullied I had been and so much so that it qualified as socially torturous. The damage that situation did to me was massive but I had no idea what was happening in the moment and I never even understood it until it was explained point by point almost 25 years later.

My friend told me that an nt would have recognized the social bullying immediately and all hell would have broken lose. But because I am so socially ret*d, I simply have no ability to protect myself in a situation like that. I am as vulnerable as a toddler facing a predator.