| > none of them have issues understanding when someone is speaking This isn't it at all. It's the first part that's the issue. It's not that I can't understand speech, it's I can't focus on having a conversation increasingly as the number of chaotic elements increase. There's loud(ish) background noise, there's people moving around, there's the uncomfortable feeling of strangers nearer to me than I would optimally like. And so I've realized in my younger attempts to fit in that I couldn't relax and have a good time and talk to people because of some of those things, because they felt to me like immediate urgent things and the conversation while I would like to have it is not getting priority. A similar thing happens in larger group contexts, more people is more mental overhead, and additionally there's an element of not knowing how to take a turn in group conversation because I either lack an appropriate referent to relate or I don't know when my turn is. By the time I have both something to say and can pay attention to turn taking the conversation has already moved on and I have to start over. But neurotype is definitely a strong element in it, both in interests and somehow in things like conversational turn-taking as well. It also helps that a lot of conversations end up happening in text for me, turn-taking isn't an issue when you can both type at the same time. |