Good questions
I believe that I can help out somewhat at least.
I have trouble being able to tell when it is appropriate to talk. I have to constantly pay conscious deliberate attention to the conversations flow to see if it's appropriate to speak. Many times I still get it wrong. Sometimes I still speak out of turn, or say something that is misplaced contextually to early or too late. I also feel a lot of pressure being in any type of conversation especially a group conversation, because I begin overwhelmed with the task at hand; processing and participating, navigating, and understanding on a social level, the conversation. I take note of a rule that I have learned if I notice that the flow of the conversation presents one that I recognize. It can be truly exhausting, especially if the person or people speaking, are using humor or jokes that are not my adopted style of humor, or if they are things I am unfamiliar with.
I personally try to see someone's words when they are speaking as if I am reading them from a book. I have found this to be helpful when I remember to do it, or as long as the speaker isn't speaking so fast that I can't process it in that way.
It's almost like the computer programs that you see for the folks who can't speak or are blind. The words get put up on the screen by typing or eye movements, but the screen reads them out loud slower than they are typed.
My brain visually puts them in a couple of book lines, and then rather than reading them out loud like the computer program, my brain processes them like I'm reading to myself, but like the computer program the getting out of the meaning is slower than it takes me to to put the words up there visually.
Does that make sense? lol
I have a lot of anxiety in conversations due to so many factors.
People often tell me that my facial expressions don't match what I am trying to get across, and it's much easier with people who know me, and have grown to love me and see past what just seems like a difficult person to talk to. So it's really like walking into a minefield to me, knowing that inevitably I am going to step on one, and I probably won't ever know I'm dead as it's happening(because if you land on a mine just right, you're blown to bits, and never knew what hit you)So if I hit some sort of social landmine, and someone doesn't point it out to me, I may never know, because it's just something that I don't notice on my own usually.
Usually the only indication that something has gone amiss in the conversation is the other person's facial expression, but I rarely understand what it means. If I notice this, and ask, and if they know me well enough to know that I am not an insensitive person, they tell me, and I am able to clarify what I am saying to them. If the person isn't comfortable with me, and they don't know me well enough to know that I really don't know what is contextually inappropriate about what I said, then as you can imagine, they get offended, they don't feel like they should have to explain it to me, and I am left in a state of blank confusion because I just offended them and I have the audacity to then ask, did I say something wrong?
But I am persistent, and have developed a thick skin. The weird thing about me is that I actually like being around other people. Many on the spectrum do not at all for various reasons. Too exhausting, no one understands them, for many people their stimming is so different that they don't feel comfortable being around others, or others treat them badly because of their differences and who wants that? There are many reasons.
But I plug away at it, and keep on trying to figure it all out, and when I get exhausted and frustrated at it, I take a break from it and retreat for a while, until I get up the fortitude to navigate some more social minefields. Because really they're not real minefields I tell myself, yeah they may be painful, but they are nothing compared to real ones, and the battle scars I get from them help me to remember all the things that are truly important in life.
I would also like to point out that as with social issues for people on the spectrum, mine detection is not about intelligence. You can have a highly intelligent person, that just doesn't always navigate those social mines properly. They may avoid one, only to be felled by another. Because as with mines, you can have all of the mine detecting knowledge that your forces are capable of, but if a mine has been developed that is not detectable by your current technology(for a person on the spectrum, previous experience with a scenario in a social setting), then someone's probably going to get blown up. Unfortunately in social settings you don't get the luxury of sending a drone in to blow up the mines for you
Written word, I can go back and edit!....it's just easier because I am not in front of a person having to figure out their body language, and I don't have to worry about mine coming across the opposite of what I am trying to get across. I don't have to read facial expressions, and I don't have to worry about mine "betraying me" by being the opposite of what I'm saying. It's the absence of the the traffic jam on non-verbal cues that we don't get anyway that makes writing enjoyable. I also don't have to worry about how you are interpreting what I am saying in real time; that is to say you can read what I wrote after I wrote it, and then I get time to process your response, or non-response in my own way, without the pressures of accepted social expectations (producing a situationally appropriate reaction on demand) that I don't understand anyway.
Group conversations? Can you just gouge my eyes out with spoons?
Trying to understand non-verbal cues and social expectations with one person is hard enough. Now add more people and the traffic Jam of those non-verbal cues and social expectations are directly proportional to the increase in the number of people in the group. Then add onto that group dynamics which even neurotypical people take classes to learn!!
That's how it's different to me
Hope this helps!
