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@Adam_Cadmon1 so it’s NOT just my observations! I wonder what it is about this venue in particular that makes people feel so comfortable doing that…

@pippa @Adam_Cadmon1 It's possible it's the people and not the venue, I suppose. Some of it might just be cultural.

I'm probably guilty of this pretty often. I know that it's a thing for neurodivergent folks like myself to make less common connections between things. In our mutual discussions, it's very normal to take an abrupt turn in the conversation, and no one blinks.

I am only just now starting to realize that that bothers some people, rather than being a pleasant surprise. While I do care and want to do right by people who have different preferences, it can be difficult to know which side of that fence people sit in advance. It's also difficult to understand why it's upsetting, esp. when someone works differently from yourself. And then there's the difficulty in knowing what counts as the same topic vs a subject change, as people will often disagree about where that line falls.

Do you have suggestions on how to track these things, for someone who is trying to do better?

@pippa @Adam_Cadmon1 In retrospect, I probably should have read the rest of the conversation before I replied, and not just the couple of posts in the direct chain leading up to the one I replied to. That's probably a start.

@hosford42 @pippa @Adam_Cadmon1@mastodon.online
A thought in case it’s helpful:

In my experience, autistic folks (less so other types of ND) wildly overestimate the extent to which NT people magically understand each other’s social behaviors, and the extent to which they don’t make the same mistakes. More often (again, in my observation), what helps most is not foreknowledge but a quick recovery: leaving room for and observing reaction, willingness to adjust course or drop a topic without perseverating. And…

@hosford42 @pippa @Adam_Cadmon1@mastodon.online …I’ve tried to get better when talking to autistic folks about simply stating my preferences in plain language, without anger, instead of using oblique hints: e.g. “Thanks, though I’m not really interested in [topic]” or “Right now I’m trying to keep this discussion i started focused on [topic].”

@inthehands @pippa @Adam_Cadmon1 The directness of those "hints" is *extremely* helpful to people like me. Thank you for explaining it so clearly. Like, I'm going to bookmark it because I might need it again.

Paul Cantrell

@hosford42
I’m really happy that it was helpful. Please feel free to ask clarifying questions; I don’t mind!

And please do know that all of us with all types of brains make social mistakes •all the time•. We are all muddling through being human together.