Small Talk

There is no good reason to hate or be afraid of small talk. Small talk is just an entryway to "deep-talk" (or whatever you want to call the opposite of small talk). That woman opened herself up to you because she wants to build a relationship with you as a customer and a friend. If you were to go back there often enough, I am sure your conversations would get deeper eventually.

If you want to get to deep personal things in the first conversation, then you have every right to do so. Just don't expect the other person to feel comfortable getting that deep about themselves. They may go there, they may not. But don't think they'd be angry or upset at you for wanting to go deep right away. Like, if the first thing you want to say to her is, "Hi I'm [Skater-boy] and I am autistic, which makes it difficult for me to engage in small-talk and make friends sometimes". Then go for it. If you don't want to say that right away, then don't feel like you have to.

The point is, small talk is a good thing to be able to do. All we need to do is take the time to understand how it is used and why it is used.

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We autistics have more rigid thinking structures when compared to non-autistics. This is what makes understanding things like small-talk difficult, because small talk is itself loosely defined. Something completely unimportant to one person could be very important to another. So how is a rigid thinking structure supposed to deal with flexible things? Just because your thinking structure is rigid, does not mean that it needs to be narrow. Work on making your rigid thinking robust. That is, find a way to deal with complex, fluid, loose, flexible scenarios in a structured way. This is entirely possible, as long as you work at it.

There is no good reason to hate or be afraid of small talk. Small talk is just an entryway to "deep-talk" (or whatever you want to call the opposite of small talk). That woman opened herself up to you because she wants to build a relationship with you as a customer and a friend. If you were to go back there often enough, I am sure your conversations would get deeper eventually.

If you want to get to deep personal things in the first conversation, then you have every right to do so. Just don't expect the other person to feel comfortable getting that deep about themselves. They may go there, they may not. But don't think they'd be angry or upset at you for wanting to go deep right away. Like, if the first thing you want to say to her is, "Hi I'm [Skater-boy] and I am autistic, which makes it difficult for me to engage in small-talk and make friends sometimes". Then go for it. If you don't want to say that right away, then don't feel like you have to.

The point is, small talk is a good thing to be able to do. All we need to do is take the time to understand how it is used and why it is used.

***

We autistics have more rigid thinking structures when compared to non-autistics. This is what makes understanding things like small-talk difficult, because small talk is itself loosely defined. Something completely unimportant to one person could be very important to another. So how is a rigid thinking structure supposed to deal with flexible things? Just because your thinking structure is rigid, does not mean that it needs to be narrow. Work on making your rigid thinking robust. That is, find a way to deal with complex, fluid, loose, flexible scenarios in a structured way. This is entirely possible, as long as you work at it.