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"But you're really good at communication!"
Yeah, because I tell everyone the same things all the time, over and over again.
What I am telling you is not new. It is not freshly out of my brain. It is phrases and paragraphs from things I've said at least 100 times before, that has been revised very slightly each time from any failures that I've had in those previous times.
Lets try a topic I've not practised a million times.
Alternate responses to "I'm sorry." than "It's fine."
Also has what the response means.
If you forgive them:
"It's okay since you apologized." shows that what they did isn't fine, but you appreciate the apology and accept it. If they hadn't apologized it wouldn't have been fine.
"I know you didn't mean to, so I forgive you." means: I know what you did was not on purpose, and I accept your apology because it wasn't on purpose.
To my autistic (and other neurodiverse) friends who script conversations, if you're spiraling n scripting a scenario where you're justifying your existence, I want to remind you you don't have to justify your existence in hypotheticals, and you shouldn't have to justify your existence in practice
Autistic scripting
An introductory short...
'Scripting' is where we borrow social dialogue to fill in the gaps in our social lexicon.
The dialogue is often from film, tv, books etc.
For me, personally, it is not so much self soothing, but rather it is so I don't get 'clocked' as being different.
(I masked full-time until my diagnosis at 30, I saved myself from a LOT of black eyes... yes geting physically attacked for 'being weird' was commonplace where I grew up. Even walking or sitting 'weirdly' attracted unwanted attention.)
Scripting often went with practicing. Like the woman in the video I have a full length mirror in my room where I spend actual hours 'practicing being human.' Watching how I stand, sit, and emote whilst talking.
(I got so good at this I became an actor.)
Scripting, for me, fills in for when I'm not doing very well in reciprocal conversation. Having key words and phrases to move a conversation along without having to come up with something on the fly is very useful.
Most of my 'scripting' originally came from stuff I was watching on tv. But I have refined it to stuff that prompts the other person to do more talking.
I am also learning to 'mask' less, doing it for 30 years has had serious consequences.
please humans. just do/say what we scripted..
yo hold on does constantly quoting memes/etc to each other count as echolalia? my friend and I do that so much sjdjahsj (both of us are autistic + adhd)(plus they have some other stuff that’s not rly relevant to this)
YUP! Echolalia generally refers to how we repeat words, phrases, and sounds, especially in response to something. But also it's a huge part of scripting, in which we just straight up use quotes and references in our everyday speech because sometimes it's just easier and less exhausting than coming up with our own thoughts.
Had a dream last night where I realized I was in the same class as a pair of fictional characters from a movie I'd just watched. I felt instant relief and enjoyment, because I thought I had been apart of whatever group had just gone on a crazy adventure - so I was intimately comfortable with an actual classmate for once.
I woke up, and as I realized it wasn't real - the sudden conclusion hit me that I've never felt relaxed in school. Not through elementary, or middle school, or high school, and now in college.
In my dream I was excited that I would finally have people I'd feel 100% confident asking about notes, or what was going on, or HW I missed from not paying attention, or hearing correctly, or missing a day. Because we'd been on a fantastical quest, sharing nightmares and victories, and the darker sides of ourselves - I felt giddy at the prospect of being myself around someone during school. Not having to worry if I was being too overbearing, or weird, or talking too much, or too little - scrambling for the right words, any words, to say like a contestant on a quiz show, constantly racing to fill silences with relevant topics that don't come off as desperate to keep anyone from realizing my mind was firing on a hundred cylinders at once just to keep up the appearance of casual ease, timing my pauses and their pauses, and watching my body from looking awkward or being unusual in anyone's space
Setting: Husband and I are both ADHD autistic in different ways and our sense of humor includes Monty Python meets Starfire from Teen Titans and the crew of Futurama but deliberate.
Husband had clicked on a Netflix title before I saw, so all I saw was that it was an anime.
"What's this called? I missed the title." I smiled, naive and full of auditory processing disorder.
"The Beginning," he said cheerfully if distractedly.
"Ah," I nodded. Then I saw the cat waking up on my chair and I got distracted.
I came back in and frowned. "Wait, I still haven't seen the title yet, you said it was at the beginning."
He gave me a look, one brow Vulcanly arched, and said, slowly, "The Beginning." And paused the video to show me.
"OH," said I. "Okay. Who's On First. Okay. The name of the band is The Who. No, Aunt Slappy, Yes isn't even at this concert. Got it." And I sat down to watch.
We've been speaking in memes since the 1990s, see. That's how I'm used to settling arguments, too.
