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==
That’s how it should be. Unfortunately, there’s a fair amount of people who take your honesty as a direct affront to them. After all, how do I dare to say I’m not doing so well? At that point, the socially acceptable thing to do is to display some empathy for me, and they don’t like me enough to put that effort! I shouldn’t have strayed away from the script!
The question is if it’s important to be socially acceptable. I personally don’t think it is. I’ve stopped holding back anything or “lying” like mentioned in this post, and sure I rub some people the wrong way, but why would I care? I just don’t associate with them in that case.
I have the tendency to do the same, but that’s because my circumstances allow me to. Your capacity to choose whether or not you’re going to interact with someone in the workplace or at school is pretty constrained in a lot of places.
I’ve never had that happen to me. I’ll cheerfully say ‘feeling a bit rough, how are you? And I’ve never really had people take affront. … that I’ve noticed 🙂
For me, my problem with this approach is first of all I can’t cheerfully say feelings a bit rough. That does not compute. But also, in my experience, if I say anything remotely negative that creates social pressure for them to ask for more details. “Aw I’m sorry, what’s going on? 🥺”
But while I don’t like lying about how I am, I also am not comfortable talking about my personal problems with people I’m not close to. So I would really prefer to not be put in this position in the first place.
Maybe we should consider if it is appropriate for us to know about someone’s personal problems before we ask “how are you?”
If the answer is, ehh probably not appropriate, we should refrain from asking that because by doing so we are creating social pressure for the answer to only be positive, whether or not that’s true.
I have decided to try and practice saying “hi hope you’re having a nice day” instead of how are you to people I’m not close to. I think that reflects what we’re really trying to say with the “how are you” in reality - we are wishing the person well.
It’s like the Russian formal greeting Здравствуйте (zdrast-vyui’tye) literally translates to "Have health!
I’ve never felt so understood. I’ve contemplated telling people, “sorry that’s too personal of a question“ when asked. It’s painful.
Yeah and they might not directly respond to you negatively in that moment but they will ABSOLUTELY talk shit about you to their friends about how weird you are for “going off about something” or “going on and on about nothing, I was just like wrap it up lol! 🙄” And then you’re the weirdo who talks to much and people avoid you and even actively disrespect you
And they will do this in front of you about others so we learn very early on that you have to lie and not speak too much or too long or too passionately because some people are like this and will talk shit about you and you never know who is going to be a real person to you or who is going to be a fake person who will talk about you behind your back so you end up just playing the social protocol game like everyone else but inside you’re like “this fucking sucks I hate this stupid fucking Game, No one actually cares about the answer, I wish we could just not talk to anyone unless we actually wanted to”