I can't hold a conversation.

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With my mother: I try to talk to her about anything, she interrupts me, replies with something that's either irrelevant or at least not really an answer to what I was trying to say. When I try to clarify what I meant she interrupts me again and continues. And usually immediately after one of these exchanges (but when I am still trying to get my point across) she tunes me out. Face to face, she'll simply walk away and start talking to someone else, or she'll keep changing the subject until I'm too lost to get back to what i was trying to say. Sometimes both.

The problem with trying to hold a conversation around other people is: The moment someone else is involved, I get frozen out of the conversation. When I try to speak I get interrupted over and over again, or I get complained at because I interrupted, even though the person who complained about my interruption talked over me. Plus, around some of these people - all relatives, I don't talk at all about anything I try to talk to my mother about. I can barely talk around my stepfather.

Over the phone, she constantly interrupts me to talk to other people in the same room with her, which is pretty amazing when she is on the phone and I am face to face, the telephone conversation is of primary importance. Otherwise, the same things happen - I can't hold onto a conversation long enough to reach a conclusion.

And I mean, I wish it were just my mother. So far it happens fairly often with my therapist. Even when I tried to talk to her about it and explain why I need to be able to finish what I am saying, she interrupted me and diverted the subject, apparently to what she thought I was saying. It happened several times with my attorney (along with several other communication mishaps).

It's really frustrating as the signals are so mixed. When I interrupt it is rude (and thus I almost never interrupt, and I never know when I can step into a conversation) but people interrupt me all the time and get mad at me when I say I wasn't finished talking. This is so frustrating I kind of wonder why people think speech is so amazing.

This is just recently, but this has been a problem since forever ago. I didn't realize how stressful talking to people was until I was able to communicate in text on BBSes, and then the internet, which is one reason why I've spent so much time using it to talk to people.

You CAN hold a conversation. And you can do so intelligently, politely and respectfully. I find that other people use that 'internal radar' to fill in the blanks - they feel they understand where your conversation is going and jump ahead of what they consider too many words. With others this probably works well. I find, with me, other people ALWAYS get my intentions and meanings wrong. They jump to the wrong conclusions and then blame me for not being clear. I'm sorry they cannot read me because of my differences but that does not excuse rude behavior in my book.

And thats what it is - blatantly rude.

In the past few years I've adopted a new strategy for this. When someone cuts me off, interupts and jumps to conclusions I visibly snap my jaw shut and say nothing further. Not a word. I may nod in response or make the effort to show I'm paying the bare minimum of attention. Some people never notice and keep right on talking. Others eventually notice and apologise and try to return to the conversation. And others who have told me I was imagining this behavior have witnessed my 'snapping shut' with others and, as a result have been more conscious of doing the same. Once I get too far away from my train of thought - its gone. All the prompting and cajoling to return to the conversation is useless. If my opinion and/or my feelings are important to them, they can heed them in the moment. I'm done with being an afterthought.

Can I? I don't get many of the rules people seem to operate under when having conversations.



I agree that this seems to be the case. My mother is very good at jumping to conclusions by reading things into what I say. I got extremely frustrated a week or so ago and said I would like to have a real conversation with her for once, but then she accused me of really meaning "having a conversation where she agrees with me" but what I meant was a conversation where I can actually say what's on my mind without getting interrupted or having my perspective trivialized, or being told what I really must mean or be thinking. Or tonight, I said "You interrupted me again" and she said I was reading things into her words. It's really the opposite, though - I only have her words to go on. If she expects me to read between the lines, I can't do that, but I don't know if she meant that, either. What happens is I can't really say anything because my words are not taken at face value and I end up in the constant surreal experience of trying to talk to someone who is not actually talking to me, but talking to their idea of me, and it is intensely frustrating, which makes things even harder.



I've tried to do something like this but I have no idea if it's been noticed. Usually once my conversation is stepped on, I might as well not exist.

This is why I like online messaging and texting. It's considered acceptable to be quiet when you have nothing to say. What insanity!

Yeah, it's why I like e-mail and forums. Chat can become really stressful for me, to the point I tend to socially withdraw from everyone for months after I chat too much.

I consider online communication 'conversation'. When posting you very clearly address points, ask for clarification and respectfully consider others points of view. This just proves that you can communicate.



This is my problem with therapists. They end up addressing issues that I don't even have. And I have NO idea how they have reached the conclusions and assumptions they do because they are usually so far off base of what I'm actually feeling and think that I am trying to communicate. And, in my experience, there is no explaining this. The tendancy to read into words is so pervasive that most people don't even realize that they do it and can't even wrap their brains around the concept of it.



Perhaps try something more obvious and direct that your mother will notice. When she does these things, stand up, turn your back and walk out of the room. Instead of trying to explain yourself, let her try and answer her own questions.

"Where are you going? Why are you walking away?"
"Why do you think?"
"Your mad because I'm not agreeing with you..."
'No. I'm not mad at all. Why would you think I'm mad?"

If you can find a way to get her to voice her opinions of what she thinks she 'knows' about you and simply tell her she's wrong, it may inspire her to eventually ask you for the correct answers. Just an idea.

For me, written communication and verbal communication are very different things. Written lacks the real time give and take that can be downright confusing.



Oh yes, so very much.

I was trying to talk to my therapist about gender and my difficulty identifying with any gender, and she asked me if I had an opinion as to why more autistic people might be "gender variant" than neurotypicals, and when I tried to answer she interrupted me and said "I don't think only autistic people feel alienated." And this completely confused me and derailed my train of thought - I have never once claimed "this thing is unique to autism" but whenever I say something is characteristic of autism, she has to bring it around to something like "I think lots of people experience this" which is one of the most frustrating things for me to hear - not because I disagree with it, but because I don't see the relevance. I am not talking about lots of people, I am talking about myself, nor am I trying to say it is unique to me.

The other day I was actually trying to talk about my difficulties with verbal communication, and she interrupted to say "I think that most people have trouble communicating some of the time" and when I said "Yes, but I think part of the point of autism is that this is harder" she brushed that off too. Really frustrating, although I am getting better at trying to maintain my conversational thread with her. If I need to go back into therapy after this, I am going to a different clinic - one where I will actually be able to see a psychologist, as it turns out.



It would be interesting if she were to actually notice me walk out of a conversation... It'd be a novel experience, at least.

Thanks for advice, I'll try to work out a way to make my frustration clear.

Me too! I find email and forums more like letters (no matter how short) that I can sit and think about. Chat is just like a conversation only over the computer. Just as stressful trying to come up with things to say!

I respectfully disagree with this. I think online chatting (say, in a chatroom or over msn messenger, for example) is like a conversation. Emails are letters, not conversations. I never have conversation over the internet. I only ever write posts or emails which are simply me stating my opinion. Oftentimes (almost always), I am not even writing with the intent of having a back-and-forth conversation (I rarely even return to see if someone has responded). That is not conversation.

I remember trying to keep track of four or five other people in a chatroom once and it actually broke my language. Things were flying by so fast and trying to participate meant getting left behind and I found I couldn't concentrate on even forming a proper sentence. With less chat overload I tend to become restless and a bit hyper from the overload. It's strange, and I stay away from it now.

Me, responding to this - I consider it coversation. It's two people exchanging ideas. It is definitely slower than realtime interaction but I don't feel it is any less a conversation. For me, stating my opinion and getting a response is a conversation. All those nuances that can get missed and make face to face conversations so frustrating are elements but not the core of communication. If you post a thought and never return to see if you got a response - I'd consider that walking out of a conversation...

I once got into an argument with this guy who said told me that online communication isn't really communication because 93% of all communication is nonverbal (body language, facial expressions), and I found it highly implausible that people were communicating things with anything other than their voice. Part of the issue with that was I already got more out of online interaction than I ever did face-to-face. The first time I was ever really able to make myself heard and understood was when I got online, so having someone tell me that it's supposed to work the other way around was pretty bizarre.

How little I knew.

(Despite my returning on occasion ) I guess conversation can mean different things to different people. To me, this is not a conversation. According to the dictionary (dictionary. com), a conversation involves spoken words. I do see msn messenger as a modern update to a conversation, but I tend to stick with the modern definition of the word. I don't see conversation to be a series of letters which may or may not be read, responded to, or returned to.

I had a very similar experience with my therapist- about the 'everyone has trouble with communication sometime...'. I just stopped and said - 'Well, that's interesting.' The unexpected response stopped her in her tracks and prompted questions. I basically asked her at what point I said my communication difficulties were exclusive and we went around a bit on that. She tried to explain that she said this to 'reassure' me that I wasn't alone. When I told her that simply feels like she is discounting me and my difficulties and not taking my words seriously - or even listening to what I'm say at all, it got kinda ugly. She couldn't understand that I had no emotional subtext at work in what I was saying and in fact couldn't even recognising that THAT was what she was reacting to - a perception/assumption that was false. It all ended badly. I let my frustration get the better of me and told her I didn't understand the concept of talk therapy. Just talking with no goal and no point made no sense. Later I realized I had insulted her profession and, probably her personally.

I know that autism is the disability - but I'm beginning to think that it may be the only disability that is so because of others peoples inflexibility. I can understand this therapists inability to take words at face value but she was entirely incapable of grasping the concept that she wasn't taking my words at face value. Whenever a therapist says 'I think...' they should follow up that statement with 'Do I understand you correctly?' How many people would benefit from that small, simple communication consideration no matter who they are?

Yeah, I agree with you. To me a conversation is "real time" and requires different skills and thought processes for me to manage than an e-mail exchange or a forum thread.



Yes, this exactly. My therapy does have a goal and a point, although I do not know if she sees it that way. A lot of the stuff I've discussed I've needed to be able to talk about with someone for a long time and most non-therapists aren't really suitable for that.

I don't get the reassurance thing. It feels totally opposite that to me. I don't feel emotional subtext in what I'm saying, either, but she apparently reads into it and responds on that basis - like when I tried to discuss my social difficulties, she cut me off and said "But you're handling it!" because I was able to deconstruct after the fact and explain it.



That would be quite helpful. I was really happy the day my therapist admitted that she found me very hard to read and that often she can't make heads or tails of my emotions. Not because I like confusing people, but I think that was the first time ever someone face to face had not tried to lay responsibility for communication difficulties at my feet and demand I change to suit them.

See, I still think our culture has yet to catch up to the ever changing dynamic of the internet. It is changing perceptions and basic concepts and the dictionary is one aspect that is still redefining itself in the internet's wake. If two people are txting back and forth - is that a conversation? What makes that a conversation but not this? Perhaps it's not the method - voice or written word - but more the level of participation of the participants.