why is communicating so hard for us?

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i know its because of the brain wiring sort of but like why cant we ever think of anything to say while most people can?

why do we go blank?

I can think of lots of things to say. I can talk and talk. I just can't think of appropriate things to say.

If I didn't have to think about what was socially appropriate in various situations, and what the "right" response or action was to take, I wouldn't go blank. I'd just say what's on my mind. But that typically doesn't work out so well.

Perhaps you just really don't have a lot to say. Some people are like that.

I always feel like no matter what I say, even if it is the most innocent of things, it will be mistaken as something hostile and I will get unwanted negative attention and probably hide myself. Basically, I fear the worst reaction.

I find that I just filter out basically everything I would like to say. I used to talk a lot and say more things, and was perhaps a bit overbearing, but when I realized people used what I said against me, I learned to shut up. Now, unless I am interested in really getting to know someone or am being forced to contribute or am talking about a special interest- I basically say nothing.
I do say my scripts though, but that's not real talking for me anyway, just auto-pilot. Sometimes yeah, I do just go blank lol. But I'm not concerned about it. "If you don't say anything they can't misquote you"<- except NTs don't quite function that way either, because if you say nothing then they color-in meaning where you didn't mean any....
Annoys the s**t out of me. Like why can't what I say actually simply be EXACTLY WHAT I JUST f*****g SAID!! !! !! !! ! No, it always has to have 50 other damn meanings that I somehow secretly meant and was secretly saying at the same damned time
I hate that...

NT's are much better at using facial expressions and tone of voice to communicate meaning such that it's possible to say the same words and have it mean something different, and that is definitely a contributing factor. On the other hand, us aspies generally have to be more dependent on the words themselves and we are a bit slower to understand the whole social structure in general, instead of relying on instinct we must spend more mental energy editing everything in our minds so it's apropriate. That does explain why we generally have to use a larger vocabulary. There are probobly more contributing factors, but that is probobly the main reason behind it.

For me, it's not that I can't think of what to say in response to the question. It's that I'm often outside of my comfort zone or expertise, because I do not have many. When I'm outside of my expertise, I'm more of a shut up and listen type of guy, as I feel I have nothing to add.

So, being forced into a situation, I'm simply incapable of talking about something I know very little about, which I admit is most subjects most people (NTs) are interested in. I'm incapable of giving a fulfilling conversation with someone like that, so I attempt to avoid it at all costs.
Also, I'm very self aware and try not to let myself prattle on, even when I share an interest with someone, as to not overwhelm them. I'm not so good at regulating this, so I tend to try and say as little as possible, or don't at all.

And the last thing is simply that I need more time to formulate a response than is socially acceptable and that's without outside (or internal) distractions to throw my train of thought off its tracks.

I don't think NTs think too much about what to say. They're connecting with one another.
They're making the eye contact and reading each other and the important thing is making a connection.
Not so much sharing information.
I think that's why it's more easy to have a sharing information conversation with one person but when other people join in they're all doing the connection thing and the autistic person is left out.

I agree with the posts above; there are plenty of thoughts going on and I could say so many things, join so many conversations - but instead I am busy in my head trying to figure out what is appropriate to say and busy filtering it all out.

In my opinion the social confusion is largely to blame on the fact that normal people lie and use multiple meanings, subtle sub meanings - but rarely are straightforward. When you think about this, people lie to each other all the time and when they listen to another person they first expect the lie not honesty. This is why we don't fit it into that scheme of communication.

When a communication turns out to be a surprise and a shock, a big unknown - it is normal to condition some sort of distance and minimise the negative impact of it.

I will never understand why people are not straightforward most of the time; if I want to communicate A why would I say B and expect others to read: C?

If you're NT, there's a mechanism in conversation that keeps you in tune. If you're like us, you're always a second or two behind. Eyes and facial muscles are what does it, I think.

We just think on a completely different level. But it's weird because as you all know communication is a two way kind of traffic. It's not just that we have trouble understanding NT's, they have it difficult to communicate with us as well. You'd think that in this line of thinking autistic people would have it easier to communicate with other people on the spectrum, but this is strangely not the case. We find it hard to communicate with all humans.

In fact, NT people have it much easier connecting to animals (lets say a cat or a dog or even a horse) than to people with ASD. At least from my perspective. And the same goes for autistic people, in fact it's infinitely easier than connecting to humans. So I think it's really just a defect in the part of our brain that handles communication with humans specifically. Because NT people for the most part don't see talking as something particularly difficult, even though it is quite complex and their brains are meticulously wired to make everything run smoothly so to speak.

Like Marybird said, really, but down in the neurological structures…

I find conversation difficult because I'm utterly disinterested in typical 'small talk' subjects, and no one else wants to hear about my special interests either. I just smile and nod and pretend to be fascinated, but I'm actually bored to tears.

bro I ask myself this a lot. I also agree with what has been said above about a millions of different things running through my mind on what I should say and what would be appropriate for the conversation. Never works out though and I usually end up replying or answering with simple sentences like " Yeah I agree" or " Oh thats cool" even though I had a s**t storm of ideas in my head haha.

It feels like a wall is in the way when people are talking to me. Just don't know what to say 99% of the time unless I have some bit of useless information to share that no one cares about.

I came up with an interesting analogy for this a while ago.

Communicating with people when you have autism is like living in a world where the only socially acceptable way to communicate is rapping and 98.5% of the population consists of expert freestyle rappers. Anyone who is not good at freestyle rap in such a society would have to often repeat lines of rap that they heard (echolalia) because it's hard to come up with rhymes on the fly, and they would have to come up with lines to use in anticipated encounters so they can be prepared (scripting). When two people who are bad at freestyle rap communicate with each other they can throw away some of the complex rules and make it easier on each other, but communication between them is still harder then communication between two expert freestyle rappers.

It's not a perfect analogy, but I think that it's a pretty good one.

Depends on what I am communicating. I come alive when in special interest land.

I'm a freakin' moron when it comes to any other type of conversing. Just totally brain dead most times. Bad timing, tangential, having to reference outside things to have some framework to express any type of thought and it's worse when I have to explain internal workings. Always losing interest or not being able to tell if others are not interested, always losing track of things due to lack of my own interest and fixating on something that catches my eye because I'm a complete visual thinker and giving off false signals because I don't seem to always display the proper body language or facial expressions many times.

Edit: Or how about all the meet and greets that begin with people invading my space with the hugs, strong perfumes and even that kissing thing on the cheeks. All of that puts me off and defensive. That's a great way to start any social situation.