If life or people go off script...

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or if it's a new situation, how do you handle it?

Speaking has always been very taxing on me, because it feels so "unnatural" to me. Unexpected situations always throw me for a loop, because I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So I, like a lot of those on the spectrum, use memorized scripts and a step-by-step plan or routine for a lot of relatively predictable situations. But if I suddenly end-up in a situation where I haven't prepared a script, or that I didn't think speaking would be expected of me( and it could be considered day-to-day stuff for other people), then I'm just painfully lost and I end up taking long pauses, saying the wrong thing(ridiculously so sometimes), giving one word answers and other awkward outcomes( which my Aspie husband finds quite funny), and people think I'm being rude or ignoring/avoiding them, or that I'm slow mentally or something. This happens more often than you might think .

I often, ask my family members, what I should say in a certain situation, and they respond "oh you know just say this that general thing", and they often don't realize or understand that I need a literal nearly word for word script, as I have trouble with generalizing an answer for "similar" questions. And it doesn't help that my brains(after a bit of a lag) drops quite a bit of what people are saying as irrelevant data or something, so that I know they've said something, but I don't know what at least some of it actually was so I have to do some guesswork on spontaneous conversations.

I wanted to know, if others here face similar issues, what personal solutions do they have for dealing with it(if any) and if they know of a good resource or book, for expanding one's scripts or for alternative methods.

You could come up with several "patch" phrases to use as fillers in such situations. Here are several, but you should be able to come up with more of them:

"I'd like more time to think that over."

"I'll have to get back to you on that."

"I don't know."

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

"What do you think?"

Hope I've been able to help, and remember, see if you can think of some other "patch" phrases.

There's a script? Why didn't I get mine in the mail yet?

I usually just smile and nod.
My brother teases me though and says I am smiling cuz I have no clue what is going on.
he's right, usually I dont

I'm working on creating something based on my physical self-defense class, but it's still in an infant stage. In self-defense, I have no idea what kind of attack the other person is going to do. We train for certain common situations, but we also train for uncommon situations by looking at certain commonalities that all attacks have. We have a mantra of "cover, crash, counter-attack" to apply in all situations. So while I may not know the exact attack someone may do, I can still have default cover and crash actions that I can take as I work my way to the counter-attack.

So maybe come up with a way to stall ("cover") at first when you arrive at a new situation, then repeat back what they say or ask questions to get more information ("crash" into the subject being brought up), and just repeat that until you can get to a point that you can give a good conversational response. Over time, you might not need to "cover" and "crash" as often, and you'll be able to go straight into the conversation more smoothly.

Mostly I just try to stick with groups of friends rather than be one on one, and only speak when I've got something I feel is important or thought out enough. Though, I guess you could say that I "practice" sometimes, in my head, trying to imagine how some conversations might go or evolve with different people.

Have you seen the movie Memento? The character Sammie Jenkins in that movie does the same thing when he meets people, because he can't remember if he knows them or not.

Thanks! now why can't I come up with these things?! I mean, sometime I do say things similar to " I'm sorry, could you repeat that?", but if you're doing that 3-4 times during like one phone conversation, they would still think it weird, wouldn't they? But at least that's better than your mind just going blank, and having to mentally force yourself into saying something, I guess.

I do that too! It usually works in that at least people don't think you're not nice or friendly, but the downside is that I often end up smiling at inappropriate situations too, or they just keep prodding me to not just smile and say something too. Plus it doesn't work on the phone .

That sounds very interesting. Could you give a concrete example of that too? Like an example for each of those stages?

Thanks, how do you handle it when they do ask you about your opinion, or a question that you weren't prepared for?

Oh, I've done the smiling at inappropriate things many times; because I usually have no idea what people are saying or talking about, and don't have the energy to figure it out, so I just offer a smile, which is usually appeasing enough. I do it a lot with the older people who come into my workplace, because they always seem to be talking, but never say anything interesting, so I just smile, and sometimes laugh and nod...this usually works, but sometimes they look at me odd, like maybe that asked a question that I was meant to answer?