Thoughts on why small talk is so uniquely painful
Thoughts on why small talk is so uniquely painful
Image text: @agnieszkasshoes: "Part of what makes small talk so utterly debilitating for many of us who are neurodivergent is that having to smile and lie in answer to questions like, "how are you?" is exhausting to do even once, and society makes us do it countless times a day."
@LuckyHarmsGG: "It's not just the lie, it's the energy it takes to suppress the impulse to answer honestly, analyze whether the other person wants the truth, realize they almost certainly don't, and then have to make the DECISION to lie, every single time. Over and over. Decision fatigue is real"
@agnieszkasshoes: "Yes! The constant calculations are utterly exhausting - and all under the pressure of knowing that if you get it "wrong" you will be judged for it!"
My addition: For me, in addition to this, more specifically it's the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don't know the answer to that question and that's why it's so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that's appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvPSP-2xU4h/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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For me, I'm moderately ok with the whole task and "lying", though I'm in a "faint praise" culture where I can more or less express myself somewhat adequately through "polite faint praise".
The problem I struggle with is that I really have no idea if the "small talk" is going well or not. Just can't get a read on most people as to what they were hoping to achieve with the small talk and whether any of my actions were well received or came off as rude. So it's an anxiety minefield to start off any conversation where I often carry plenty of doubts into the rest of the conversation.
If people were more happily like "Actually I feel X because of Y ... but that's ok happy to get started with stuff now" then I'd be much better off most of the time.
What I think I have determined people are doing with small talk is that they feel obligated to talk to people even if they have nothing to say. So there are these cultural scripts of discussion topics that are considered standard and appropriate. They aren't particularly interested in the other person, just in fulfilling the cultural script. So as long as you perform your part in the script they are happy to be seen engaging with another human doing the appropriate motions.
Yea, this tracks. And so I suppose, this "performance" is the "lie" I struggle with. I'm happy to lie about how I'm going, to an extent, but the lie of completely performing without any care for whether it's an actual conversation ... that will never not feel awful and tiring for me.
Agreed. I never internally feel compelled to participate in the social protocol. If I feel compelled to talk to someone about something, I usually just go to to them and maybe say hi! And then dive right in to the thing I'm thinking about. Externally compelled, yes, I do feel that. I was practicing today at the store to not ask the cashier how they are. It felt weird but not actually bad. I just smiled mildly and looked them in the eyes once or twice. And then at the end just said thank you, have a nice day. They smiled too so I hope they were happy to not have to play the game.