Autism and the Art of Small Talk – How to avoid small talk and still make a connection

The art of small talk for us is typically a draining activity. However, someone teaching traditional social skills would probably tell you that small talk is just what you do. It’s basically how you initiate a light conversation with someone you don’t know well or when you’re just trying to be polite. What if it is not always a question of “Do I like small talk?” or “Do I not like small talk”? What if it is more about “How much small talk am I happy to tolerate in order to get to the real, interesting, connecting part of the conversation?” In this video, I will share how to avoid small talk by transforming the conversation into something we truly enjoy.

🎞️Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
0:47 Autistic Social Skills
1:14 What is “small talk”?
1:41 The meaning of “I don’t like small talk!”
4:03 How to transform the conversation
4:14 What are my options?
5:48 Avoid Small Talk and use it as an advantage
5:56 Progression of a conversation

-----------------------------------------------

👋Welcome to Autism From The Inside!!!

If you're autistic or think you or someone you love might be on the autism spectrum, this channel is for you!
I'm Paul Micallef, and I discovered my own autism at age 30.

Yes, I know, I don't look autistic. That's exactly why I started this channel in the first place because if I didn't show you, you would never know.

Autism affects many (if not all!) aspects of our lives, so on this channel, I want to show you what Autism looks like in real people and give you some insight into what's happening for us on the inside. We'll break down myths and misconceptions, discuss how to embrace autism and live well, and share what it's like to be an autistic person.

Join me as I share what I've found along my journey, so you don't have to learn it the hard way.

Make sure to subscribe so you won’t miss my new video every Friday and some bonus content thrown in mid-week too.

👋Connect with me:

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy my channel!

Peace,

~ Paul

#autism #asd #autismawareness

[ChameleonClouds]

“Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words.” ― Carl Gustav Jung

[c.e.medford]

I love a conversation plan with a diagram, but I was dying to know what you actually said. Like, WORD FOR WORD. It’s the impromptu nature of these things that stumps me as much as anything else. It always helps to add a few lines of pre-prep dialogue to my life kit. :-)

[TinyCatSpoons]

Nurse taking my BP: “How’s the weather out there? Doing anything fun this weekend?”
Me: “Sorry, I can’t do small talk.”
Nurse: “Thank you for telling me. Most people are just rude when they don’t feel like chatting.”
Me: I’d much rather hear about something you’re interested in or something nice that happened to you recently.”
Nurse: (genuinely smiles and tells me about her nephew’s birthday party)

I like asking people to talk about things that they like or are interested in because then I don’t have to talk and they get to relive a happy moment. Everybody wins 😊

[elainelee]

When I expressed my distain of small talk to my husband and asked him why on earth NTs engage in such time wasting boring activity. He told me actually there are plenty of “meaningful” info coming out of small talks, such as “friends/foe, what the state of the other person is in”, “what potential topics can be explored with this person”, “ to what extent”, ect. I asked him, how to extrapolate all these information from small talks, he said it is hard to explain, body language is part of, and also a vague general feel. And to my surprise, NTs generally feel energized just by engaging in this type of activity, there is emotional hit for them.

[radar]

I love the title of the video. Yes, please tell us how to avoid the most horrible human interaction ever imagined. The never ending torrent of banalities and the torture of silence in the long breaks.🤣🤣🤣

[JeffMeadowsOutdoors]

All day long at work I feel like I have the same conversation over and over. It goes pretty much like this: Hi, how are you? I’m good how are you? I’m good.

[linden]

Authenticity is so important to me. Knowing that now, I can do small talk more comfortably because I find ways to bring authenticity in - either my humour or perspective or steering to topics I'm interested in or asking questions I'm genuinely curious about. It feels way better.

Also being less self conscious and anxious now it flows better. When I was younger I had so much fear of getting it wrong that I got in my own way.

[Mandrake_root]

I love that I work at an art supply store because its so easy to chat with people in a comfortable way that blurs the line of meaningful conversation and small talk. Since I love talking about art and art supplies, and so does the customer, we have a common interest, and value each other's input. I like hearing their advice on products I don't know so much about, and I love giving advice on the stuff I do know a lot about. Hearing customers tell me their opinions on a product they're buying/looking at makes me better at my job. If a customer is talking about how they really hate a certain product, I'm going to research it later to see if it's just their personal preference or if it actually is pretty bad and we shouldn't carry it anymore.

[robscovell]

I have come to realise recently that there is a whole layer of communication, the social layer, that I have been completely oblivious to my whole life as an autist. Previously, I thought that people were actually interested in the surface level things they talk about in 'small talk' but it's not about the content, it's about establishing social connections. For many people it seems to be the only level at which they communicate. I once had to watch 5 minutes of the Kardashians as part of a phonetics course (examples of vocal fry) and the inane chitchat was incomprehensible to me, yet millions of people lap it up. I've only just realised that for many people (perhaps the majority?) this social plane of existence is the plane they mostly live on, most of the time, whereas for me this plane might as well not exist.

I have for a long time been puzzled when NTs accuse autists of "not understanding metaphorical language" or "being too literal". I have no problems appreciating poetry and I know perfectly well that at no point was Wordsworth ever an actual cloud. What they mean is that autists fail to appreciate the social aspect of language ... social meanings of words and phrases that are often divorced from their literal meaning.

I watched a video in which people chanting "From the River to the Sea" were asked, "Which river and which sea?"

Many didn't know, but with my new realisation about the social layer of meaning in language, I have come to understand that the literal meaning of the slogan is less important than the social meaning of "I am a member of this political movement."

Another autism YouTuber refers to the "hive mind" or "mind hive", and this social layer of communication signals membership of one's particular hive mind. His theory is that for NTs, being part of the mind hive is far more important personally than understanding the truth of what is said.

I am now keenly following small talk and other such social layer communication to build up a lexicon in my mind that I can make use of.

[cblaney]

I avoid small talk by avoiding people. I also have small cards that I can hand to people (eg market researchers and shop assistants) that say I don't do small talk because I am autistic. I might do a tiny amount if I feel capable, and don't want to appear rude, but outside of that I won't do it. As I said at the beginning, I avoid people, so thankfully these situations are few and far between. If your situation had happened to me, I'd have got up and walked out the moment the other person came in, but, I'm never going to use a sauna so I'm safe there lol. I think you got very lucky on the conversation moving on to a subject you both liked. In 60 plus years, I've never been that lucky. The moment anyone starts to talk to me, I am looking for an out STAT. For me it's not about it being meaningless chat, it's the fact that it is another person.

[relentlessrhythm]

Thank you for teaching REAL social skills in a way that actually makes sense to me.

[lauraluey]

Your story made me feel emotional, hearing about the connection you made

Simply pondering the question "What would I like to do in this situation, to make it pleasant and enjoyable for me?"

So often I'm focusing on what I think I should do, or what I think the other person wants

It seems so simple, yet profound, to actually focus on what I want

Thank you for this :)

[CRITTERBUSTERS]

Small talk I think is an unavoidable icebreaker. However, if it goes on and on I get irritatedly bored. I found this video very informative and strategic thanks Paul.

[shaynaformity]

I had a lovely experience a couple of weeks ago. I shared about my expertise with vision improvement on a facebook friend's post and mentioned that I love teaching it to people. One of my friend's friends asked for help, so we set up a video call. Once we got the sound and video working, I simply said, "I'm not good at small talk. Can we jump right into it?" and she said yes. We've met a couple more times online since then, and it's so delightful to just jump right in with "It's good to see you. How are your eyes since the last time we met?" I also have a dear friend who, like me, has difficulty with temperature regulation, so talking about the weather is actually relevant - "It's so cold, how are you doing with that? I think I should put on another sweater" or "The heat is killing me. Let's do that acupressure thing together today." But that's different from the usual small talk thing where you're expected to develop rapport by agreeing with the other person's helpless complaint about the weather. It's not about rapport or agreement - the purpose is to spur each other to do something about it if something is off kilter. Sometimes we spend a whole hour just figuring out what our bodies need and doing those things, and that can be more supportive than yakking about our problems. 🙂

[Michalos]

The example is something, that's hard to imagine.
You started a conversation and it ended well

[poisonouscarnage]

Yeah I had started to do this recently. Sometimes you just can't find common interest or the other person isn't interested or willing to say enough about themselves to allow you to have any in-depth conversation. It's partly luck and obviously requires the effort and social skills. I don't always have the energy for haha

[antewaso]

I confess that I tend to switch off during small talk, then it is harder to engage, or when I try to focus I find it boring and hard to understand too, or again I find myself spending so much energy smiling and nodding, I am exhausted. Very useful advice, thank you!

[TheMysticSaint]

That's a great way to use small talk and to think about it.

I'm usually far more direct which can make the regular folk uncomfortable.

[ellies]

On a confident day I use the same skill of initiating small talk and rapidly directing it (usually with humour) to something much more interesting. On other days I shrink inside myself and hope they won’t notice me. My nephew’s go to conversation starter is “just a quick question…..” and then following it with something he’s really interested in, as he doesn’t have the patience for the social dance NT’s require to get there. It’s amazing how many people respond because they’ve been told it’s only a quick question first, even though it’s clearly anything but 😂

[glenrisk]

Used to have a real problem with this but eventually I came to the realization that I really don't want to get any closer to most people than I absolutely have to.
After that small talk was a bit of a revelation and deeper probing statements became far more troubling. Realizing people used them to probe my defenses to see whether they would be able to exploit myself.
It's not always that way, obviously but far too often it is and with most people at some point they will be seeking advantage.
I have done similarly to what is explained in the video and have found it can be somewhat rewarding but personally find I have far less appetite for conflict than most people seem too.