Trouble with verbal communication

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I have started to notice that I have a lot of trouble processing verbal instructions. I'm not sure if this is an attribute of AS, but I often have to ask people to repeat themselves or elaborate. Unfortunately, some people will literally write you off as dumb/slow because of this. If I read about something or see it, I can easily absorb the information. I am often ridiculed for this handicap. Being called stupid is a touchy issue for me because I was teased a lot in school. I knew I wasn't stupid, but it still got to me.

I am starting to notice that this is starting to inhibit my career as well as my social life. I work in IT and a lot of my work involves communicating with people verbally. I fortunately can sometimes correspond through email which is my preferred method. Besides communicating through email at work, I also tend to prefer to communicate with friends through email as well. I can't remember the last time I even called a friend, Thankfully all of my friends are tech savvy, so it isn't outside their comfort zone.

I was interested in what some of you think? Is verbal communication tough for you too? Maybe what I am speaking of is something else like ADD or Social Anxiety combined with AS?

Although I have autism not Aspergers, I save "speech points" for work and other places it is unavoidable, like the "spoons theory" and use text to speech websites as much as possible. I also use email as much as possible as well.

Verbal communication is tough for me too; I can't remember long strings of information or instructions, but every now and then I'll be in a meeting where I have a list of tasks given to me. So I started writing things down; that might help you as well.