i have been feeling especially low blood volume lately so an infusion nurse came out to give me fluids + magnesium+ b vitamins today and it was our favorite nurse. the very buff firefighter nurse who is also a gamer with encyclopedic knowledge of every Geeky Thing. some days he does not speak to us at all. some days we have pretty equitable conversations. today it was His Turn On The Talking
we got an hour long infodunp about dungeon crawler carl, the author, the story, all of the adaptations and which are the best, the voice actor who reads the audiobooks, how much the kickstarters raised, I mean EVERYTHING
gentle attempts to widen the scope of the conversation into things like "the phenomenon of lit rpg in general" were very strongly resisted so after a while we just stopped trying and just nodded and Reacted to what he told/showed us. and then after he left we absolutely lost our shit about the Unskippable Dungeon Crawler Carl Nurse Cut Scene
i feel like when I talk about social skills I have learned I often focus on, like, things that are perceived as autistic deficits and how I compensate for them. that's true, I have worked a lot on those things. but also VERY IMPORTANTLY, along with the skill "remember to take turns in a conversation and ask the other person questions back," there is a parallel skill of "understand that incidents of failing to do this in a conversation are not malicious"
I try to think of being patient and friendly during an hour long infodump about something I'm not particularly interested in as a gift that I can give someone. it's annoying but it isn't hurting me. sometimes people have weird communication days just like they have weird hair days.
I understand that it is important to try to have reciprocal conversations where I show interest in other people and actively listen and ask questions about them. I also have a few friends who don't have that skill. they'll just talk about themselves. so a skill that *I* have learned is to pretend they have asked me about myself and respond as though they have. they'll say some things about them and their lives, and then I will take the initiative to share stuff about my life. this was difficult for me for a while because I felt like if I wasn't explicitly invited to say something or asked about myself that indicated a lack of interest. it usually doesn't. my friends who don't have that particular conversational skill respond to my spontaneously listing all the stuff that's going on in my life/stuff about my interests/etc very positively. they like that I do this so they don't have to feel self conscious about having trouble remembering to ask me about myself.
i think that understanding different communication methods that may not be the extremely basic rote "take turns in a conversation and invite people to talk about themselves!" type stuff is a VERY important social skill. and tbh? goes along with trying to give people grace and the benefit of the doubt/good faith/whatever.
i think that outlining what "usual" conversational expectations are is helpful bc people may not understand why they get the reactions that they often get from others during or after social interactions.
i also think it's not great to frame it like "if you don't do this you're Rude and Bad and it is correct that people do not like you"
something can be broadly understood and experienced as inconsiderate and ALSO be something someone can't help. we can learn to compensate for some things to the degree that we are able and I think it is important to try and learn as much as we can about social interactions and expectations. and also, like... sometimes that doesn't look like "I simply know now that interrupting people is rude and elect not to do it"
Interrupting people is the conversational issue I still struggle with the most. i know ! its bad! to interrupt! and also sometimes i just do. so part of "compensating" for me is knowing when I do it (something it sometimes takes effort to spot in the moment) and making dure to say "I'm so sorry, I interrupted you, what were you saying?" when I do
if "knowing most people find it more Socially Correct to ask questions -> get asked questions in return" is information that someone can possess about socialization, then "some people's brains don't really work in a way that makes doing that intuitive. they may not do this in conversations and it is not malicious" IS ALSO information you can know and SHOULD APPLY to your interactions
i have been seeing an increasing number of like "y'all don't know how to act/manners are important actually" posts and like... i agree... they are. and also it's important to not end up just sounding like we are ABA practitioners because I will be so real, some of these posts are pretty much an ABA hand out 😬
anyway.
I will say that we were both intermittently glancing at the IV bag throughout the infodump to see how much fluid was left. which is very funny and would make a good comic. i think that all slightly uncomfortable interactions should come with an built in hourglass this way.
