Unsure of When to Interject

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I'm not sure if this would be considered an Aspie thing or not so I guess I'll see if there are others here as 'guilty' as I am.

Ever since I was a young child I was told how rude it is to interrupt someone in a conversation. I guess I've taken it as a hard rule to never do so. As a result, I find it very hard to interject or know when it's appropriate to do so.

As an example, I work in a pharmacy as a delivery driver. Often if I have some question for the pharmacist or a tech I'll kinda hang back and almost wait for them to notice me before I'd ask my question. Whether true or not it's as if I take what they're doing to be more important.

This behavior also makes conversations with more than one person at a time difficult as if I have something to say I'll still kinda remain at the periphery not knowing when to speak and often the conversation progresses past the point where my comment would have been relevant.

So, is this an Aspie thing? A self-esteem thing? Or just more general social awkwardness?

Thanks for your thoughts!

Yes, I remember this exact thing from a previous topic. Same thing happens to me. The other person will pause and I will accidentally pause at the same time so there's silence. Then the other person will resume speaking and I'll begin speaking at the same time so we're both speaking at once. Awkward. And it makes conversations with two or more other people difficult to impossible until I'm standing there like I'm mute. At this point they sometimes mention that I'm "being very quiet" which adds to the embarrassment.

Not intuitively knowing the rules of social communication is an aspie thing, in fact it's a diagnostic criteria.

Your description fits me very well, I'm the "odd" type that hangs back and waits for a signal. E.g people say I creep up on them, I'm just waiting until they notice me and are ready to initiate contact, far more reliable and less imposing than me having to work out when to do it. I don't do well with more than one person either, I tend to stop talking.

Last edited by thewheel on 08 Apr 2015, 6:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

This happens to me a lot. Though, if I'm talking with people that are close to me, family members for example, I feel a bit more relaxed and can interject if I have something to add.

With people I'm not close too, people in general and even classmates, I find it hard to know when to interject. Often I just end up keeping quiet.


I think it's a mixture of all three. For some people it might be a self-esteem issue, whilst others just find it socially awkward. But autism is probably one of the bigger culprits when it comes to these kinds of issues.

Last edited by SerOrange on 08 Apr 2015, 6:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I know this exactly. I felt like that as a child, a teen and a young adult, but it stopped during the years of teaching and university.
In my opinion it is a self-esteem thing. Surely.
It wears off as you gain confidence and stop seeing other people as you "adults" and bosses.

I remember being taught in school when I was like 7 or 8 that if I had to interrupt a conversation between adults, I should start speaking once there was a short pause in the actual talking. I have basically stuck to that rule ever since and its worked for me.