I’ve been speaking some time with an obviously ND person. I’m not sure exactly what they struggle with, but it’s outwardly noticeable as such (kind of stumbling around, shaking, general social awkwardness, sometimes having outbursts). They also have explicit hearing problems.
We were in a larger group making small talk, and they asked me to repeat what I said, to which I reponded, “oh, nothing important”. They responded immediately “isn’t it the listener who should decide what’s important?” which I accepted and then did repeat what I said.
Their instant response signaled to me either that they often have the same situation where people don’t want to bother reprating themselves, and/or that they are much more mentally lucid than I prejudiciallly assumed.
Then I thought, isn’t one of the core aspects of social awkwardness that you don’t understand the situation you are in? That you can’t even hear what people are saying? And then if people don’t even bother repeating themselves upon request, wouldn’t you feel that people don’t value you, thus compounding alienation, anxiety, etc? This is obviously where I am part of the problem.
And all this because I don’t like repeating myself, to ND/hearing-impaired people or not. I don’t like having to raise my voice. The prospect of not being able to hear things is not something I ever have had to consider.
Anyone else have experiences like this? Know the view from the other side? Am I making sense?
I’m autistic and despite not really having hearing problems, I often can’t parse what people are saying. I can definitely say it feels really bad when someone says something, I don’t understand it, ask them to repeat and they brush it off. I understand that in the vast majority of cases, if they say it’s not important then it wasn’t, but I also don’t want to miss out on context. It makes it much harder to participate in a conversation actively.
It’s kind of unfortunate since my aversion to speaking (loudly) and repeating myself is ND related as well. We should be comrades but in this particular situation it just doesn’t work out cleanly.
Also, something not being important isn’t even a good criterion for dismissing it. Small talk is per definition unimportant, but it’s still… well… important… for social cohesion, even if only because it acts as the glue that binds together tangential topics. If you can’t hear the topic, you can’t use it as a jumping off point.
Right, exactly. It’s part of the reason why I do a lot better over text (especially because it gives me the opportunity to use images to convey meaning as well) than an in person conversation.