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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2024
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Autism
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After implementing what you've said in the past couple of my interactions, I noticed that people were more likely to smile and attentively listen after they've shared something themselves. Eliciting that initial interest from the other person removed a lot of the awkward silences, as it was filled with them talking more than myself. As I've been focusing more on what the person emphasizes, I'm able to find out more about what excites them to talk about, so I'm able to draw more attention to their interests and make them feel heard. Very good advice here.
To solidify this advice... Are there any "baskets" that questions generally could be sorted into? The open-ended type sometimes falls flat if I ask it from the "wrong" basket. Exactly as you mentioned with not wanting to talk about your own parents, but asking about them anyways and then not having much to say directly afterwards. Not to neg on details, but would it be unhealthy to think a certain amount of steps "ahead" in a conversation? This has been on my mind lately, but I'm not sure how to describe it other than I'd like to engage the person and get them to think about things rather than be a captive listener or have them monologue about themselves.
I feel like I don't understand eye contact or body language too well. We all know the awkward feeling of seeing someone far away in a hallway. I've never quite got this one down... If I know the person, it's usually okay to make some strange handmotions and tease a bit as you get closer. But sometimes, I can tell the other person doesn't want to look at me, but will raise their head to say hi as we are within 5 ish feet of each other. A strange autistic detail, but I just want to be more charismatic in general, and appreciate you taking the time to write these comments!
No problem! I'm glad I could help!
I'm also bad at the nonverbal stuff, so I can't help you too much there.
Kinda, yes. Conversation is improvisational. If it seems like you are trying to steer it too hard in one direction, people can get annoyed. There is a natural flow to conversations which is very much in the moment. If you are thinking three steps ahead, that's less brainpower that can go toward listening to what the other person is saying presently, which means you won't be able to follow the conversational cues I outlined in my first couple comments.
That's... not really the purpose of typical NT conversation. The purpose of conversation isn't to make another person think, it's to build a social rapport with them. In many ways, the actual content of the conversation is irrelevant.
Thinking happens automatically when the topic is something the brain wants to think about. You can't force interest. That's why so many of the tips I've given are about following the things the other person seems interested in talking about. The basic idea of a conversation is to gently probe different topics until you find one that both people want to talk about, and then talk about that.
The act of two people both conversing about something that makes their brains light up naturally creates a positive association between their conversation partner and the subject. This is how NTs become increasingly friendly and build social bonds.
Autists sort of do this too, but we tend to skip past the probing part and go straight to talking about the deepest aspects of our own favourite topics. If the other person shows an interest in conversing at that level, then we can make fast friends. But this often only works with other NDs.
NTs view this autistic approach as conversationally selfish because the back-and-forth of conversation is inherently fun for the NT brain. So the act of skipping straight to infodumping about a special interest feels to NTs like you don't actually care about having a conversation with them, you just want to lecture about your interest. NTs want to feel like they are being spoken with, not spoken to.