Does anyone here almost not speak at all?

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Mostly, there's no-one here to talk to except me.
When others are around it's a mix of choosing not to speak and difficulties with speaking, and it's the difficulties which helped form the choice to not speak.
Sometimes I'd like to say something but I usually get an avalanche of stuff to say and none of it survives the conversion into speech; I just seize up and splutter to a halt.
Other times judging when it's right to chime in mostly backfires, or I end up in 'broadcast mode' and piss people off.
I don't start conversations. I'll request and/or report, but that's about the extent of it.

Just now I stopped to tell my nephew about an insert ad in Dragon Age 2, and I found the experience painful because he appeared to listen but didn't actually, and took an entirely different meaning than I gave him, and then I had to speak loudly ti rephrase because others were making noise, and this was also frustrating. This is actually how I nearly always feel on the phone, come to think of it. Sometimes speaking hurts my brain and takes far too much effort for too little outcome.

This is one of many problems I've previously described as anxiety, but they continue when I have no anxiety.



I've had short periods of no speech at all, selective mutism with some people that lasts longer, and I don't really have ways to deal with this. Sometimes when my expressive speech is shutting down, I really intensely want to not speak. Once it does, I start worrying about whether it'll come back.

You can count me in too.

I do not like to talk, but I do. I feel like I force myself to; if I had it my way, I'd barely do it.

I talk a lot with adults, but no so much with peers. Not because I don't like my peers, I just feel more comfortable with adults.

I used to have selective mutism until I was 17, so I barely spoke a word except to my family. Even when people would talk directly to me, there were times I wouldnt even respond. By the time I became a teen, when people spoke directly to me, Id would reply in as few words as possible. Yeah I do remember it being very hard to talk when I actually tried.

I hardly ever talk. I only speak when spoken to, unless I'm at home. Then sometimes I talk quite a lot. But usually I hate talking and it seems like too much of an effort to do so, and I can never express myself as perfectly as I'd like to, which is why I vastly prefer writing.

If it was not for the fact I live with my parents I would not talk to anyone with the exception of supermarket check out cashiers about three times a week and that is your basic hello or simple yes or no repleys.

This is a perfect summation of the troubles I experience.


In Junior High I was an angry little boy and would sometimes see if I could go through entire days without speaking to a single person. I was often successful.

Now when I'm at work I really only talk to people if they start talking to me first.

Both, I have considerable difficulty speaking to people I don't know, and, with people I do know, I often choose to not speak. I think the second is partly due to my hatred of small talk, so if I don't have something important to say, I keep my month shut.

I not only talk to myself, I will argue with myself if I'm trying to work through to an answer on something of a technical nature. In fact, yesterday my laptop suddenly stopped printing via the connection through my desktop. I finally figured out how to get it working again, though I still have no clue why it stopped, other than Vista being Vista....I suck at computers so I'm just happy it works now.

Anyway if somebody had tape recorded me it would've either sounded like two different people, somebody w/multiple-personality disorder or some kind of audition to star in the biography of Gollum. Maybe excepting the "My Precious" part.

Christ, upon reflection, it probably would've sounded downright scary. I was wearing steel-toe workboots (had been cleaning the basement) and was running from machine to machine. Something like STOMP, STOMP, STOMP, "no that didn't work," STOMP STOMP STOMP "but it did before" "f**k!" "You idiot!" etc....lather, rinse, repeat, for about 20 minutes, at least. Then I got the Admin account working but not the Standard User one, by which point I was ready to start chewing on the carpet. Don't even wanna think what that part would've sounded like.

This personality trait sucks, and really sucked when I was actually employed, since I can actually get pretty loud without realizing it. It might be due more to my ADHD than Aspergers, dunno, Have read somewhere that ADHDers can do stuff like this to compensate for Executive Function issues. But I'd cut off my left nut if it would make this habit go away, whatever the hell causes it. I really hate it.

And another weird thing: I don't mind public speaking, as long as I know the topic or can at least BS on it. I've got some issues w/face blindness, which I think makes it seem like I'm talking to an amorphous blob. And even if I'm asked questions, I'm probably not the fastest on my feet w/an answer but I don't get all that flustered, and when I've had to do this kind of thing did it at least tolerably well.

But what is absolute torture to me is stuff like after-work happy hours, neighborhood barbeques, any situation where there's no structure, and where people are going to recognize me but I won't recognize them. I do everything I can to squirm out of those things. Just thinking about it roils my stomach. Or even actually throw up. I try to go to make my wife happy when its something that involves her, but I hate every second of it. And would NEVER go to something like that voluntarily.

Ah, the stuff of nightmares.
When it's really unavoidable (position held at work or family relationships) I'd show up and 'go through the motions', then quickly start lurking in the background and carefully watch for the first opportunity of sneaking out unnoticed.

I don't talk much either. I would say most days I speak less than 100 words. For some reason my brain just cant process conversation either: im zoning out when someone is talking to me or I'll catch a few words and try to think of something remotely pertaining to what is being talked about. Normally I'm too slow to respond and second guess what I'm about to say so everyone has moved on in the conversation. What i normally do is just smile or laugh when im having a conversation to look like im engaged. For some reason it makes them comfortable to keep going on and on.

Today my dislike for speech was renewed.

I tried to discuss AS with my mother, and she kept sidetracking into:

* Her abusive parents
* Her abusive husband/my abusive father
* Blaming my impairments and overall functioning on the fact that my grandmother assisted me with living expenses when I was living on my own. Never mind the fact that I needed the assistance because I could not get and keep a job and that I had tried repeatedly living on my own prior and failed to do so.
* Blaming my impairments on my abusive father, because he constantly told me how stupid and lazy he thought I was, even though the reason he told me this was because my impairments made it difficult for me to get things done unless I was really interested in them

Every time I started a sentence she'd just roll right over what I was saying and turn it around to something else, completely changing the subject, and after a point I just stopped trying to talk. Talking takes enough energy, but dealing with someone who refuses to cede enough ground to let me complete a thought is so draining. I'd rather not talk at all than deal with people like this, and it seems like everyone I try to talk to is like this. Doesn't listen, makes s**t up about me, constantly talks over me.

I seriously don't know how to navigate conversations like this. It's not a question of assertiveness - I can assert myself, but when someone talks over me and changes the subject, I just sort of go along my scripted way and I have to realign my train of thought to actually get back to the subject I want to talk about. I spend most of my time just saying stuff that fits the topic and not really conversing.

I hate talking and feel stupid doing it.
It is partially just a preference, and partially because I stutter and transpose syllables. But speaking is unavoidable sometimes. Before I went to college there were probably days when I didn't say anything. I only talked to my family and a few select friends, but I only saw the friends once or twice a week, max. Nowadays I have to speak to friends, and sometimes want to talk to one or two of them. They are the ones who wait for me to translate my thoughts into words. But if I am tired, or a lot of people are around, it is too much work and I'd rather just listen or sit in silence. The thought of talking then stresses me out. If I do talk when I'm tired I stutter a whole lot and transpose syllables, which in itself is stressful.

OMG, that reminds me of talking to my parents. The reward-to-effort ratio can get pretty dismal. Sometimes, I think if I got a mannequin and rigged it with a speech synthesizer & program that says, "uh huh," and "yeah" that they wouldn't notice a difference. It's as if they're really just talking to themselves.

It's often hard to feel like they're actually hearing what I'm saying (if I get to say anything, that is). I've seriously wondered if that's why I don't like speech very much (having grown up with that kind of 'conversation').



I get very frustrated when there is constant & rapid topic jumping (which seems standard). By the time I'm getting the 'flow' of the current topic there's a jump to something else. (Maybe a kind of cognitive inertia?) And then get tired and default into just going along without much connection to what I'm saying. I haven't figured out any real solutions to that, either.

My mother's comeback (to bringing up autism) is "well, I'm not like that, so how could that happen?" -- which is hilarious because she has a lot of traits (but is very oblivious to how she comes across). I don't know, maybe parental denial is to escape feeling like it's their 'fault' somehow, if it's genetic?