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==
All of my bitterness and cynicism in my previous post is actually, now that I sit down and think about it, motivated by concern. For you, for our community, for all of us. I've gotten to a point where I have nothing left to fight with; I can only use the privilege that comes with my specific level of social function and direction of hyperfocus to hide (as much as possible) and pass as a slightly-weird member of NT culture.
As worried as I am that you and others will come to the same fate, I'm also glad that there are still people with some fight in them, who love talking about the community and trying to spread their knowledge with those outside of it. You're doing a good thing. I just worry about you while you're doing it, and I'm not hopeful that it will help in the long run.
But I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong.
I resonate so much with that. I think this is the nature of social change. We fight however we are able until we cannot anymore and then others take up the torch. I struggle with bitterness about other fights I fought before that I burned out from. Maybe I'll learn from those lessons and definitely have learned more about myself so I'm working on recognizing burn out before it ruins me. If not, well I'll learn from that too. It's all we can do. I'm proud of you for recognizing your needs and prioritizing that for now, for however long you it takes.