Image text: @agnieszkasshoes: "Part of what makes small talk so utterly debilitating for many of us who are neurodivergent is that having to smile and lie in answer to questions like, "how are you?" is exhausting to do even once, and society makes us do it countless times a day."
@LuckyHarmsGG: "It's not just the lie, it's the energy it takes to suppress the impulse to answer honestly, analyze whether the other person wants the truth, realize they almost certainly don't, and then have to make the DECISION to lie, every single time. Over and over. Decision fatigue is real"
@agnieszkasshoes: "Yes! The constant calculations are utterly exhausting - and all under the pressure of knowing that if you get it "wrong" you will be judged for it!"
My addition: For me, in addition to this, more specifically it's the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don't know the answer to that question and that's why it's so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that's appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvPSP-2xU4h/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Most of us neurodivergent people consider ourselves smart and observant. Observe those who you consider small talk comes naturally, and see how they fall into patterns. They're more elaborate that a non-answer catalogue, but they're still crutches to ease the friction.
An acquaintance of mine, for example, tells jokes. Some times they bomb, but he doesn't sweat it, they're still ice breakers. Another acquaintance immediately gets the attention of nearby females by retelling once more how he went randomly backpacking across Europe as a poor, young musician. If that doesn't work, he has other, equally entertaining tales, which we have few ways of fact checking, ha ha.
But for us small-talk-stunted people, clever non-answers are a perfect crutch to fend off the awkwardness until we acquire this skill, and we can always refuse small talk if we're not in the mood.