Need help explaining socializing issues to an NT

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I've been trying to explain to a couple people that I'm not able to strike up a conversation with a random person in a bar. I've been getting met with the response "Well, anybody can learn" and it is getting really frustrating. Now I don't believe that phrase is true in all situations. I believe I can become proficient in quite a few things but there will always be some thing I struggle with and perform below average in. I'm fine with that nobody's perfect. Socializing will always be one the things I struggle with. Even though I've gotten WAY better at it since I was a kid I still struggle, and probably always will.

I have an NT friend right now that's trying to get me to go to a bar with her and try to start a conversation with someone. I'm having a very hard time trying to explain that this is not the best way for me to get better, it is quite a big step. First of all I hate bars, the music is usually way too loud and the people seem so uninteresting. Second It is very hard for me to talk to someone I don't know because I never have anything to say and so often when I try to force it my mind goes completely blank. I then sort of freeze and stiffen up and sometimes I start to stammer. It's very stressful and tiring. It's not something that has gotten better over the years either, I can respond to people okay, but I can't initiate. I need someone else to be the main driver of the conversation for me to participate actively. I'm having a hard time explaining to my friend that this idea of going to a bar like and striking up a conversation is not something I'm comfortable with or even really able to do. I'm trying to explain that I need to find a different approach to making friends or getting a girlfriend. Can anybody give me some ideas on how to better explain this and maybe some compromises I can make? Or just your thoughts on the situation.

NTs have the ability to listen to what they look at. Like a directional microphone. They read lips, facial expressions and have the luxury of half truthing or plain out lying about any subject they do or don't know about.

AS have surround sound microphones. They pic up everything. The music, the laughter, the improper use of language across the bar, the obnoxious laughter of a guy trying to pic up a girl. AS do not half truth about a subject. They either know or don't know. Usually not interested and the AS will want to talk about their subject more. All of this happening at the same time takes an AS into over load. The AS will sit stay quite and just compute the data coming in.

That's a really good point. They say that when people memorize thing the tend to generalize, distort and delete information as it come in as to not be overloaded with all the sensory input. The AS tends to have issues with the generalize potion of that. You just described exactly what I do when I'm in that situation. I stay quiet and sit in a corner or stand against a wall.

One aspect you could raise in your explanation is that you have difficulty feeling comfortable or happy in noisy, chaotic settings such as the typical bar. Perhaps explain briefly about sensory overload, in that your brain literally takes in and notices too much input from everything around you -- sights, sounds, everyone else's conversations -- and you can't filter it out in the same way that other people do. Therefore you get overwhelmed and can't focus on what you want to say or what the other person might be saying.

If you tell your friend it's quite literally a brain issue that overwhelms your senses, thus your concentration is ruined for the task of talking to the stranger, she surely has to understand that and back off a little. I think sometimes people don't realize how this stuff is actually brain-based, therefore real, not just the person not trying hard enough, or being shy, etc.

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I would just explain it like you have said. That you don't want to do it because you'd find it really stressful. If she is pushy about it then she's not being a very good friend.
Would you feel comfortable enough with your friend to practise in a role-play sort of situation? So she could be a girl in a bar that you like and you talk to her or she could initiate the conversation at first?

Talk to your friend about how she would help you if you had been in bed for a year and didn't feel able to walk. Would she encourage you to start a careful program of physio, first massaging and moving your legs, then progressing to a few steps of supported walk, and gradually increasing your stamina until you are ready to walk unaided? Or would she sign you up for a marathon this weekend?

For any person with social difficulties or anxieties (spectrum or not), chatting with a stranger in a bar is the equivalent of the Boston marathon! It is not the place to start increasing your social confidence. Heck, plenty of NT people find bars uncomfortably crowded, noisy and overstimulating.

If your friend really wants to help, she needs to help you choose a social challenge that is achievable and just at the edge of your current tolerance level, so that you can extend yourself with minimal stress. That might be going to her house for coffee and she invites one other friend to introduce to you. If even that feels too unpredictable or risky, you could try scheduling an activity (watch a movie, go for a bike ride, anything really as long as you don't mind doing it) with half an hour extra to have drinks and chat at the end. (Often we socially-challenged folk find that planning a specific activity makes things easier, because there is always that thing to talk about if you can't think of anything else you feel like discussing.) The key is to find something just a little bit challenging or uncomfortable, and build from there.

Wow, this is a tough one.

First, there might be less than desirable outcomes if the NT friend attempts to teach social skills. I suffer from really terrible social exhaustion, because I learned from NT people. Essentially, I learned the art of mimicry. But, coordinating my attention between someone's words and body language while focusing on my own to ensure that I am being appropriate is just plain exhausting. Then, I have to wrack my brain with appropriate responses. Then, there's the anxiety. Am I saying too much or too little? What kind of vibe am I putting off? Do I seem engaged? Is what I'm saying relevant to the topic, or have I gone on a tangent again? Do they get the jokes that I'm making? Do they even understand the difference between my joking and my being serious? Am I too outrageous?

dilanger was right. NT's have this ability to filter out what they consider to be irrelevant information, such as the song that's playing loudly, or the conversation occurring near them, but having nothing to do with them. I have a bad habit of interrupting conversations that don't include me, only because I find the topic interesting, or I feel like I have information to discuss. NT's find this rude and intrusive, while I would welcome someone into a conversation.

Lukeda420 is right too. Generalization is not an AS strong suit. I can go on for hours about a particular subject, only because I'm interested and have an abundance of knowledge that I'm eager to share. If you're like me, there's a delicate balance of the give and take in a conversation. Plus, I don't have a radar for subtlety. I don't get the cues when someone has lost interest in the conversation, or has become offended or something. And even worse, I don't understand why they would take offense.

I'm not an expert, and not even close, because I'm having similar problems making new friends. But, I'd definitely explain to your friend that the bar scene is quite literally too overwhelming for your brain. Explain that you prefer to socialize in smaller groups in a less chaotic setting. Maybe some kind of activity would help ease the transition, something mutually enjoyable.

I think it would be difficult for many people AS, NT, whatever, to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger without some kind of reason to get their attention. Personally, if someone randomly came up to me, I would be suspicious of their motives. And I'm not even sure that is a sentiment that is exclusive to Aspies.

Let us know how it goes

Being on the AS is like missing a sense that's not recognized as a sense by culture at large. Just like hearing, taste, touching, smell, and vision (etc), social intuition is a sense that relies on sensory organs to give us information about the world surrounding us. If you can't see, it's tough to avoid running into a poll that might be right in front of you; if you can't hear, it's tough to pay attention to a horn behind you; if you don't have an automatic social decoder, it's tough to interpret and engage in social situations. Just like the other senses, this sense is not black/white. You can have it in degrees of effectiveness (partially blind, completely blind, perfect visions, needing glasses). Just like other senses, you learn to compensate in various ways, and people come up with very individualized coping mechanisms with various success. Unlike the more obvious senses, the AS difference is more difficult to locate as it an internal internal one which we haven't had the technology to observe until very, very recently (cover your eye, and you can't see. Cover your ears, and you can't hear. You can't, however, play with your connectome at will in order to get a glimpse of what it might be like to lack social intuition (though with advances in technologies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, maybe at some point some clever experimental designs might help with giving said glimpse)). Also unlike the big 5 (senses), social intuition deals with the invisible, fleeting "social world" instead of the concrete, easy to quantify material world.
Until our culture adapts a more contemporary picture of the mind-brain connection, most people don't have enough reason to care about these differences because culture already provides alternative explanations, such as moral inferiority, intellectual inferiority, being "weird", differences in personalities, etc. All these other explanations are plenty fine for those it doesn't damage, but not all that helpful for the rest of us (as well as being oppressive and marginalizing).

In comes Foucault

You know what helps me focus on the person i am talking to at the bar despite all the sounds around me? Being drunk.

You know what I don't really like doing anymore because I simply don't want to spend that kind of money? getting drunk at the bar.

A lot of people I know can't tolerate a bar or night club unless they are drunk or dancing. And they tend to want to go with good friends. Either your friend doesn't have anyone else to go with or noone else wants to go with her. That is just a thought, and doesn't mean it's true of the friend you are hanging out with.

I have this habit too, although when I do it, I don't give a crud how rude it may be (that's the narcissism in me). Like you though, I also would not consider that rude and would welcome the other person into the conversation. It makes me a little mad inside whenever someone says someone else is being rude when they are simply attempting to enter the conversation by sharing their interest in the topic or contributing a piece of relevant information, and even madder when that person is a motormouth. God forbid they should stop talking for 5 seconds to let someone else say something

Are you certain you know the reason she is pressing you to go to a club with her? It may actually have nothing to do with you; therefore, your answers to her request could be irrelevant to her agenda. She may even be unaware of her real motivations.

When I first became friends with my husband, he did not tell me about his hearing sensitivity, but I saw him wince when we went into a bar and asked him about it. He said the noise hurt his ears, and we left. A good friend will listen to your needs. She may be trying to be a good friend and thinks pressing you is good for your "growth," so you may need to educate her more, but if she doesn't get it, I suggest you protect yourself by being firm about pursuing different activities with her, ones that don't cause you such discomfort.

Ok, We've come to a compromise, I will still go to the bar (I don't like it but I can deal with it for the time being). Instead of trying to initiate conversations with strangers she'll just explain what other people are doing in conversations. I'm hoping that by having certain things pointed out it might help me realize what I've been missing and adjust accordingly.

I'm still not sure if she completely understands what I'm explaining to her but she has loosened her expectations. She's starting to accept that I'll have to do things differently even if she can't fully understand why. She doesn't quite get the intuitively learning vs. analytically. She is a good friend and has the best of intentions with the advice she is giving, even if it doesn't always hit the mark.

Have I taken too long to respond?

The explanation of the sensory issues were exactly the words I was looking for. In bars there is either way too much going on and I get overwhelmed and become very uncomfortable or the place is empty and I get bored out of my mind. Sometimes both. It is a good thing I have been friends with her boyfriend for a very long time because it almost felt like we were talking to each other in different languages. Even trying to paraphrase the advice given on this thread was a struggle but her boyfriend was kind of able to play a translator of sorts.

I feel this post is a little scattered but I think the point still comes across. Anyway thanks for the advice it was invaluable in helping them understand me. After talking with them I've been able to see what I have been doing differently. Apparently even the days I thought I did well, I was still awkward. Oh well, it's alright I've given up on trying to be typical a long time ago.