Talking to NT's - Running out of conversation topics

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I tend to not share a lot of NT interests (sports, family, gossip, etc), and I often am not able to elaborate verbally.
I am a much better writer by nature. I am happy alone, but get nervous when beckons me to have a conversation with them, and when speaking to large crowds.

Even talking with family members often results in long silent pauses. I have my own little world. I tend to use a lot of interjections when I speak. I feel like my facial expressions makes me look crazy when I do public speaking or private conversation. I haven't looked at myself in the mirror in almost a decade.

So, do you ever find yourself doing this? Do you ever worry about doing this?

Does my fear of talking and consequent failure to be a good speaker indicate to you that I lack intelligence?

I feel like my fear of speaking makes me sound slow, stupid, absent-minded, or mentally ill.

If you want to speak with someone I would suggest this...

1. Find someone who knows about your condition and ask if you could speak with them for
about 15 to 20 minutes on a particular subject.

2. Maybe not someone too close but someone you think you can trust and maybe understands your condition a little.

3. Be patient with yourself and with the other person.

4. I'd also suggest working on talking not non-verbal communication (eye contact, reading verbal cues, etc.) at first. Just an idea.

I can't offer much useful advice, but just wanted to say I sympathise.....I've been telling myself for years that I should try to learn to converse "normally," but I still find myself either going silent or talking way too much. I fear it's probably the Aspie self-centredness that makes it so hard. On those rare occasions I do start getting the to-and-fro thng right, I quickly start to feel panicky, as if I'm about to fall off a motorbike that I can't really ride. That's when it's purely a social situation....when it's a collaboration on a shared goal, I feel that getting the job done properly distracts me from any interest in social timing, though if the goal is truly shared, I don't suppose the other person would mind, as long as we're succeeding. Though even there I have a lot of trouble expressing my ideas concisely, and it's usually not long before I'm aching to just do the job on my own to keep it simple.

I've often wished for some kind of coaching help, but I'm too shy about it to ask anybody I know to do a practice run with me. People in general don't seem very patient, so if I don't reply almost immediately, they tend to jump in, and I feel I'm building up a backlog of things they haven't allowed me to say, and I start getting afraid I'll forget to bring those things back into the talk. Sometimes the other person has a knack of being able to stop me rambling by interrupting just at the right time - often I appreciate the help, but such people can often turn out to be rather dominant, and I have an aversion to spending my life in a subordinate position when I'm just as intelligent as they are.

I also get a lot of mental shutdowns when in conversations, where my focus on what they're saying vanishes, and I feel too embarrassed to just admit it and ask them to start again - frankly I think it would try the patience of a saint to do that for me as often as I'd need it. So I come away feeling like a fraud, and just hope that they don't notice I wasn't listening. I used to keep nodding and saying "yes," but these days I try a lot harder not to start doing that, because it seems crazy to deliberately pretend I'm following what they're saying when it's going in one ear and out of the other.

I also think other people don't always stick to the rules themselves, but I might not notice because my attention is all on my own mistakes, and I don't realise that they're making it impossible for me. Or maybe I just get too fixated on the ideal of a perfect to-and-fro conversation, and can't grasp that it probably doesn't matter very much if one person temporarily goes beyond their word-quota.

I think the one-track mind problem has a lot to answer for, I can't think about the subject matter and stay tuned into the dynamics at the same time, I get lost in the details.

Hmmm.....like I say, I don't have much positive advice for you. I think your idea of getting somebody to help you practise is a good one. Just that in my case, I find it very hard to imagine that anybody would be prepared to take the trouble, or even be particualrly good at it. I have very low expectations of other people, and rarely ask them for any help. I suppose I imagine everybody's like me, i.e. much more interested in their own little world, so I'd feel I was putting on them. If there were anybody out there offering "conversation coaching" for a low price, I'd be onto it like a shot, but I haven't noticed anything like that, and if it does exist, it'd probably be very expensive and quite possibly run by a charlatan who was just out to make money. No doubt there'd be no money-back guarantee if the sessions didn't do much good.

But don't let me bring you down - I'm a real dyed-in-the-wool cynic, and objectively I'm sure the world isn't really as bad as my feelings tell me it is. If you have the nerve, ask for help - the worst thing that can happen is they'll say no, or not manage to do a very good job.

I think that mikemmlj's advice can work quite well. I'm NT (and a good talker) and have a friend with AS who finds conversation difficult. He's described to me the "horrible feeling" he gets when he can't think of anything to say to someone and silence falls. So now he just tells me "I can't think of anything to say" or "I don't know what to talk about" and I fill the gap and get the conversation going again. Usually I don't even wait for him to say it- if I can see he's struggling, I just say something to prompt him a bit. He's still better at online text conversations, but at least we can speak aloud if we want to without him feeling too anxious.

that's interesting Jenny, I usually find it's the other way around for me. One the internet I tend to read things in a particular tone, which may well be different from the poster's intent.
If I run out of topics, I tend to let the conversation end there, so that it doesn't feel too forced. I like to let others talk more, and I often enjoy letting them do so, rather than writing reams of internet monologues, becuase it gives me a chance to learn from others, and teaches me how to be a better listener.

We used to have a few problems with misunderstandings over tone (I'd puzzle or annoy him with random funny remarks, for example) and I thought he was rather humorless at first. Using emoticons and choosing my words carefully has generally overcome the problem, though. I've found it very interesting that he can express himself in a sophisticated way in writing, yet struggle to communicate verbally- something I've since found is very common for people with AS, of course, but that I didn't really understand before. He himself only realised recently that he has AS and had previously thought that his difficulties with speaking, including a lack of facial expression and lack of intonation in his speech, were personal failings rather than characteristics of a neurological difference.