How best to describe social difficulties in words

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I've rarely ever spoken about autism to NTs before. I need help putting my social difficulties into words.
Partially because it's kind of embarrassing, partially because I don't actually know what's typical. I'm hoping people can comment, discuss, tell me how they do it, share links to videos or blog posts where this is done well, etc.

I'm a girl, so I don't generally have any difficulty understanding tone of voice.
I understand figures of speech and non-literal language.
I don't go on and on about my own interests. (So many NTs do that anyway!)

For me, it's more like, I don't know what to say in what circumstance. There is one time I can think of when a friend said "I don't know why, but I feel like I'm going to cry." I felt sorry for her, I wanted to help, but I didn't know what to say. but I just kind of changed the subject.
I also suffer from social anxiety, where I'm really really nervous before speaking to somebody
Okay, that was the best description I could do. Can anybody add to it or share their own experience?

It's pretty difficult for me to explain as well. My biggest difficulty in socializing is all the analysis I do. I have to understand the meaning of the words the person is saying, understand what they're actually trying to say (people never seem to say what they mean), notice anything they're trying not to say, and understand their motivation behind all of it (how they feel, how they want to feel, etc). To do that, it's kind of like analyzing a chess move. You have to consider every possibility along with how to respond to each possibility and then try to pick the most likely one based on very limited evidence. And you have to do it all very quickly while making meaningless facial gestures to show the person you care and are interested.

I can't say for certain, but I think NT's do this stuff subconsciously. They get a "gut feeling" that the person means such and such, or that they're being honest when they say whatever. Doing it consciously can be very difficult and there's a high likelihood that I'll get it wrong, so that fear just gets added on top of the rest.

That's the best I can do, and I have no evidence to back any of it up, just my opinion. Take care.

I'm a NT sociologist who studies autistic adults and also something called symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism is the study of tiny social actions and what they mean.

Let's say two heterosexual neurotypical women who are friends meet each other in a hallway at the community college where they both go to school. They go to the same class but are not friends. One is crying.

The other would automatically go up to the crying one, touch her (hug her probably), and ask her what's wrong. Let's assume the crying girl is too upset to answer, or just shakes her head. The other girl would then attempt to guess what was wrong. She would probably ask, "Is it your boyfriend?" "Did someone die?" "Is someone hurt?" Then she would attempt to move the girl someplace private to calm her down and try to get the crying girl to talk about it.

Let's move to a different scenario. Maybe easy to imagine due to the state of the world. Let's say there is a crowd of people in a city. Different races, genders, clothing, some NT, some ND. Some of them start running in a particular direction with an expression of fear on their faces, screaming. ALL of the people will run in the same direction, even without knowing the reason. Some people will not be able to move fast enough or will get run over, but others will help them. It would not matter if some of the people were autistic. ALL of the people would react the same way.

A third situation. A group of teenagers stand outside a 7-11. We don't know if they are NT or ND. They are mixed gender, mixed races, mixed sexual orientations. One teenager starts smiling. Another briefly looks at the smiling teenager, smiles, then looks away. A third looks at each smiling teenager in turn, smiles, then looks away. The other teenagers continue on with their conversations, looking at their phones, etc.

Okay so in the first situation this is something where neurotypicals can easily decipher this situation (maybe not know what is wrong but know what to do) but, like MadeinHisimage said, other people may not know what to do and end up feeling awkward. It does go like how PP99 was saying. A flowchart that happens so quickly that NTs are not aware of it. But anyone can make an artificial flowchart by simply memorizing all possible responses and outcomes. Many people do this and end up feeling pretty confident about their social skills, which can end up superior to those of NTs. That may seem crazy, but I have seen it myself.

In the second scenario, this is a primal, animal situation. Humans do behave as a pack in some extreme situations and all of us do get it. We forget about it because we rarely have cause to use TRUE pack behavior. Such as running from a natural disaster or common enemy en masse.

In the last situation, this is the kind of scene that happens to people all the time, not just autistic people. You don't have all the information, so anything could be going on. The three people could have seen a man in a bra on a bicycle and the others didn't see it. The three people could be playing a trick on the others, or making fun of them. The three people could have had something terrible happen to them, and they were showing solidarity. We just don't and can't know. Don't always assume it's possible for you to interpret a situation that you don't understand. It could be that any neurotypical in your place also would not be able to understand.

Sorry for the long post. I thought these scenarios might be helpful.

I can definitely confirm this, a school shooting started maybe 10 feet from me in high school. I ran, although maybe it's not exactly what you mean, as I knew what I was running from, didn't have to guess.

As for apologizing, it was a better explanation than I could have come up with and it was helpful, so cut it out.

Are they friends or not friends? You just contradicted yourself right there.

In the second example, I can't say that following the pack is a natural instinct for me. When something like that happens, I consciously think that there must be a good reason for the people to run away, so I follow them to be safe. There's also the whole "safety in numbers" thing. In the third example, I'd be confused as to why the people are smiling, and try to do a fake smile (which barely even shows) to blend in with them and not bring attention to myself. In both of those cases, my behavior is a conscious effort that I've reasoned about, not something that's automatic. Do NTs have a subconscious group instinct which makes them behave the way they do in those situations, or do they consciously try to fit in with the group?

I also have trouble discussing my difficulties, because it's really hard to measure how a ND mind thinks and feels compared to a NT mind. Heck, I don't even know how I compare to others with Aspergers. I normally just tell them the symptoms of autism, and that's the reason why I'm so different.

It is important to remember that most of the communication between humans is not verbal but via your body language. If you have social anxiety it makes you nervous and it reflects in your body language. All people will spot this abnormality and most will understand it derives from nervousness. So that is normally not a problem, if you are not nervous for hours because then they will likely think: Is it something I do to make her nervous?

I can relate to the part where you talk about not knowing what to say. My problem (maybe your too?) is that I need to go through a conversation in my head before I go to an appointment. Then I will be prepared and know what to say. If I meet a childhood friend on the street I do not know what to say.

You will benefit from putting yourself into social situations. In my case I have agoraphobia. I am not nervous around public places or on the bus (maybe if there are many ppl on the bus) but when I am expected to participate in a discussion with several others (especially strangers) I get stuck in my mind and everything goes wrong. So I often end up sitting there quiet maybe adding a single word. I think social anxiety might be even more disabling because it is hard to talk to even one person with no-one else around?

When you have Asperger you need to prepare for what you want to say because if you say the first thing you come up with it often gets wrong. Understanding this can help you in social situations. Try to have a calm conversation and make the other person understand your need to reflect before you come with an answer.

the best way i could describe what i go through, is that most other folks seem to be operating at a higher level or a higher hierarchical level of complexity regarding behavior, than what i can readily comprehend in real time. give me enough time and i could probably approximate a flow chart, but such would be so complex that chances are good that it would be easier for me to learn a foreign language than it would be for me to learn all the ins and outs of this flow chart and how to memorize each social chess move, and above all to remember all this when immersed in the real-life situation.

I also have trouble discussing my difficulties

^^^^hiya Emanuel welcome to WP

So you agree to my post above about problems with real time communication? I mostly refer to the part about preparing for what to say has a better prognosis than just saying the first thing you come up with.

I can tell you and everyone else that it happens frequently that after a conversation with someone I realize; Why did I say that? I should have said this instead ...

such concerns have kept me up all night. until I just gave up and retreated to the wilderness.

Like being trapped in a hall of mirrors which have the sun fracturing within them but you only see the confusing clash of information bombarding you whenever you can punch and tear the treacle coated cobwebs away from you, it's like wrestling a bowl of eels. That's the kinda carnivalesque barrier I perceive anyhow

^^^ I like your quasi-psychedelic imagery

Thank you everyone for your posts. Here is what I eventually came up with;
One of the weaker areas of autistic brains is the one that we use everyday when we talk to people. Because this area of my brain is weaker, I don't always know what to do or what to say in certain situations
For example, I was chatting to two of my teachers last term. I said “I really like all my classes this term.” One of them said “Thank you, but you had to say that.” And inside my head I thought, “Did I have to say that?” I don't know when I have to say something to be nice, some autistic people say exactly the truth, all the time, so people think they are trying to be rude, but really, they don't know that what they're saying is rude. But the advantage is that if I say something that is nice, you can know that I usually mean it.

Here's another example, one day, my Hebrew language teacher was teaching me over Skype. Her two year old who had been sleeping woke up, and she left me doing an exorcize while she had to go and put him back to bed.
When she came back five minutes later, she apologized for taking up some of the lesson time, but I was happy that I had heard her speaking to her son in Hebrew and I felt sorry that she had to work in the nights and look after her children as well.

Even though I felt empathy for her, I couldn't think of the right way to show her how I felt, so I stifly said, “Oh, that's okay.” So I hope that she didn't think I was rude. I go back over these situations in my mind, and practice what I should have said, something like “Oh, no, that's okay, it's nice to hear you speak Hebrew to him.” In fact, I think everybody has some trouble with knowing what to say and when, but I just have more trouble.

Isolation.
I don't know how to relate to people so I am isolated.

I usually explain it in terms of a script or instruction manual; i.e., I don't have one and most people do.