I don´t know how many times, after conversations, I have asked myself “Why did I say that?”.
It relates to the stress and challenges explained in previous post, with all the steps to keep track of, all the effort made to have a conversation. It also relates to the fact that I, and many other autistic people, do both pre and post processing of conversations.
The PRE processing is to relief the stress and worry of an upcoming (known) conversation. We anticipate and make scripts of how the conversation may go, prepar for things to say etc. We often script for different scenarios, just like in the chess game, in planning for the other player´s potential moves. As long as the real life conversation more or less follows our script we may be able to mask our difficulties in the present conversation. If the conversation takes another path than the expected and we are in an environment where we feel a need to mask, it can become a stress/ anxiety trigger to be out of control. The same goes for conversations that are not anticipated, that are totally without script, which is like urgently starting a game of chess without any mental preparation (rapidly put up all the pieces on the board and kick the game off within a couple of seconds).
The POST processing is a kind of analyze of a conversation we have had. Since many of us cannot be in the present conversation and process/ structure everything it involves while being in it, we need to process it afterwards. My brain also easily associates wildly, which can make my thoughts quickly move from one subject to another, without them being connected to eachother from external perspective. This is where my “Why did I say that?” (or “Why did I NOT say that?”) often comes in… Until very recently I have been extremely hard on myself when this question comes up, from the realisation that I have said something that doesn´t make (normative) sense to say or that I have missed something that was (normatively) expected to be said. Now, as I understand better why this occurs, how it makes sense that I just cannot get everything normatively correct all the time, I am much kinder to myself. I still ask myself the question but I don´t beat myself up as much about it. This new way makes the post processing a bit shorter, less painful and it saves me some energy.
What if I will get to a point in life when I no longer ask myself this question at all!? Not because I mask better and get it all “right”, but because I fully accept my way of functioning and can be more in peace with myself.
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