Image of a screenshot of Twitter of a screenshot of Facebook.
The Facebook screenshot reads:
Fun fact about me: When I'm having a conversation with you, I will periodically bring up personal experiences from my own life, interspersed withing your own stories that you're telling me. I'm not doing this to try and make the conversation about me, or to take away from your own experience. Actually, what I'm attempting to do, is to try and show you that I do, in fact, understand what you're trying to tell me, and that I am giving your story my full attention.
It can really be off-putting to some people, so if I've ever done this to you during a conversation, I just wanted to make sure you know that I wasn't trying to take over your story, I was just doing my best to connect with you in the moment.
The screenshot of Twitter reads:
This. I am fully aware that I do this. And I feel so guilty every time, but this. Understand this.
Oh. I do this all the time especially when chatting to new people on the internet. If I do it and the chat goes cold, I'm wondering what have I done wrong.
It feels like I have a list of stories and anecdotes in my head to tell new friends and I'm just waiting for that trigger word or phrase to unleash my story.
Question: I don't know if this just me but sometimes when im talking and the other person interupts me, once I've let them finish, I'll purposely wait to see if they ask me to carry on. If they don't, I assume my story isn't interesting enough and feel a bit more boring.
I'm the same way. I have lists for everything!! The most used app on my phone is my list app. And to demonstrate that I do the same thing, your comment triggered the following response in my algorithm. I used to assume that social interactions and life in general was me having a flow chart of how to behave in every situation. If I find myself in a novel situation, I would consider the most relevant flow chart based on salient qualities, with safety and other people being happy/not upset as priorities. Apparently, and I might be completely wrong, that's not how allistics do it. They wonder what other people would do in novel situations, and pick the one they relate to the most.
I do the same thing! If this is an autistic thing, I would guess it's because we aren't good at telling if a person is interested using allistic cues like body language and tone. Instead, we come up with other methods, such as the content of their verbal communication, to see if they are interested. Interestingly, I've noticed that directly asking is not effective because people will lie and say they are to "be nice". So if I then go into my Ted Talk on whatever topic, they will get upset with me for believing their words and not the communication that occurred in the allistic dimension and I missed entirely.
Re-reading this, and thanks for the reply, I've just realised my story must be boring if they interrupt me in the first place! 😁
You're welcome!