Okay, so this happened to me yesterday at work, was wondering if anyone else has experienced this.
I was diagnosed with mild AS last summer. One thing I've done for years (but didn't know why until recently, I guess it' a subconscious coping mechanism) is, if I know I'll be having a conversation with someone later, I'll often rehearse what I'm going to say many times so that it sounds "natural". I know my mode of speech, especially when under stress, can be a bit weird (way too fast, tightly controlled tangents, and I forget to make a point of making eye contact if I'm speaking very extemporaneously), so if I've worked out what I'm going to say and how it sounds it's not as off-putting. Anyway, a situation at work came up (far too boring and involving too much setup to detail here) which I needed to discuss with one of my managers and I was playing it over in my mind, trying to find le mot juste, as it were. The woman who sits at the desk across from mine looked at me strangely and said "You know, you're talking to yourself." I was very embarassed and had to explain why I was rehearsing. She knows about my diagnosis...very few of my co-workers do, just the ones I work with most closely; management doesn't, but I'm very highly regarded by them partly for the behaviours I suspect are AS-related like my meticulous attention to detail and near-obsessive follow-up to resolve situations. Anyway, now I'm even more self-conscious, and can't help but wonder how much of my "rehearsing" I've been doing out loud where people can hear me.
So...is this common? Do other people do this and what happens when people catch you doing it? Thanks in advance to anyone who answers.
Last edited by max_renn on 20 Mar 2010, 8:00 am, edited 1 time in total.