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==
That’s how it should be. Unfortunately, there’s a fair amount of people who take your honesty as a direct affront to them. After all, how do I dare to say I’m not doing so well? At that point, the socially acceptable thing to do is to display some empathy for me, and they don’t like me enough to put that effort! I shouldn’t have strayed away from the script!
The question is if it’s important to be socially acceptable. I personally don’t think it is. I’ve stopped holding back anything or “lying” like mentioned in this post, and sure I rub some people the wrong way, but why would I care? I just don’t associate with them in that case.
I have the tendency to do the same, but that’s because my circumstances allow me to. Your capacity to choose whether or not you’re going to interact with someone in the workplace or at school is pretty constrained in a lot of places.
I’ve never had that happen to me. I’ll cheerfully say ‘feeling a bit rough, how are you? And I’ve never really had people take affront. … that I’ve noticed 🙂