Ever Freeze in a Social Situation?

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This happened to me recently. I was at a party and pouring coffee. One recipient asked for cream and sugar. I froze. I don't normally pour coffee, nor have I worked as a waiter. What did that person want? Was I to add the cream and sugar myself? How much? Or was I to pass them? My wife saved me by passing them. Was the recipient presumptuous to begin with?

Another occasion at a party. NT: "How are you?" Me: (after asking for repeat due to noise) OK. NT: "Just OK?" Me: silence. I had no idea how to respond to that question.

i'm pretty sure you were supposed to pass them.

as for the "how are you?" bit i think he was just trying to initiate a conversation with you probably out of boredom and you just totally cold-cocked his attempt with a dead-end generic answer on which no interesting comment could be made or no further conversation based.

Ever Freeze in a Social Situation?

Yes...Most of them.

All the time. I recently froze when shaking the president of my parent company's hand recently. I shook his hand and said nothing. He looked embarrassed for me. Happens all the time.

Happens to me a lot as well. Someone will approach me and say something and it either takes me a few seconds before I process what they said or else I can miss it altogether depending on the ambient noise and distraction level. After this comes the really fun part, trying to sustain a conversation or knowing when to disengage, both excruciating processes.

On top of this we can add the way many aspies have trouble filtering out the background noise and keeping up with the gist of the conversation.


No wonder I don't go out much anymore, it's an exhausting process and often soul-destroying when I refelct and lament on my inability to be a social creature.


john

Oh, yeah, all the time.

I'm another who has trouble filtering background noise, so if there is more than one conversation going on in a room, I'm pretty much unable to contribute just because I have so much trouble singling out the voice of the person I'm talking to. Every now and then, I'll find someone with a normal speaking voice that just cuts right through everything else, but they're usually on the other side of the room.

I also have trouble with suddenly becoming confused about what I'm supposed to do or say. It's like I've been thrown off my internal script and I just draw a blank for a while.

A lot. I once went on a work-related trip and had to mingle in a roomful of people with their food and drink upon arrival. I found a chair to comfortably freeze in. However, I needed some food and had to abandon it. When I returned, I found the organiser standing on it to address the room, giving a pointless speech. I froze again, not knowing where to go, so simply sank to the floor with my plate of food and remained there until he'd left.

Someone later got me to stand beside them in a group of people getting to know one another. By now I was highly stressed. One asked my name and I could not speak. He also asked what I do; again I could not speak.

The following day, I had to follow others to find my way around and froze multiple times, being unable to move much or speak or eat. I decided to abandon the trip and hide in my room. Once there, I froze and could not answer anyone's inquiries about my state or open the door, wishing they would leave me alone. I was, however, able to call home and have someone travel up to help me feed myself and get home.

Count me in as another person who has trouble filtering background noise. if there's noise going on and I'm trying to have a conversation, I hit total lockup pretty fast. Or if I'm having a conversation and noise starts, I stop. And then I lose my momentum, and then I'm stuck.

if people say things / do things that I don't expect, it really stops me. I can identify with the person who talked about the handshake from the boss. uh blub blub err um uh hmm. I'd probably say something like that.

The other thing I do is give the wrong response to the early-morning questions at work. I've learned that I can't just walk up to someone and continue the conversation we were having the previous afternoon or on Friday afternoon late.

(I learned this because once when I did it, the person I started in on said, "Good morning to you, too. My weekend was great, thanks. I went to the park and enjoyed the beach for awhile, then I came home and took a nap." This stopped me. Then he told me what he was getting at: the social niceties of "good morning" or "how was your weekend?" are expected for standard workplace well-being and politeness.)

Anyway, I've learned to go through this little greeting routine. I'm fine when I start it; a co-worker will walk in and I'll say, "Good morning, Justin." Or maybe "how was your weekend?" I've learned that this isn't too scary; what follows next is pretty predictable: "Good morning, blastoff" or "Fine thanks, how was yours?" The follow-up to the last is easy, too: "Fine, thanks for asking."

The problems start when the other person initiates. It's not that I don't know what to say, it's that it comes out wrong. The person will say "Good morning!" and I'll say "Fine, thank you!" or they'll say "How was your weekend?" and I'll reply with "Good morn- thank fine" or something equally scrambled and idiotic. I don't know why this happens. Maybe it's because I'm expecting them to say one thing and my response pops out before I've actually "heard" what they said. (My auditory processing ain't very swift.) Sigh.

I think I just dislike small talk. If someone asks how I am I just want to say, "peachy," and move along. Of course, many times they want to further inquire about the context of "peachy" by assuming that it must be sarcasm as a cover for me not doing so great. Nooo, I just don't feel inclined to make any kind of conversation on insignificant questions or elaborate on the goings-on of my life which may or may not lead to more pointless banter.

The exact wording was, "Cream and sugar" right after I poured the coffee. No verb and no "please". And they say we Aspies are rude.


This person actually wanted to start a conversation, I assume, to follow up on our Facebook discussions. I was having trouble understanding her in the first place because of the noise. If she really wanted to continue, she could have said lots of things. I think maybe she wanted me to say something like, "I'm thrilled to see you after 30 years, even though I have absolutely no recollection of you!"

Last edited by WoodenNickel on 23 Aug 2009, 10:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

Definitely. Not so much these days (then again, I don't socialise much) but this can be one of my main problems in small talk.

lol, idk, maybe you should've said that

All the time. I'm worse the more people there are in the room. I really hate events where there's loads of people present in one place; I usually spend most the time standing around feeling like a complete idiot while trying to monitor five different conversations at once in the hope of finding one I can join in with, and being overwhelmed by the information overload to the point of paralysis.