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==
Don't lie then, just go "Eh." and shrug.
I'm not neurodivergent, but I loathe small talk just the same. Giving an "eh" type answer is indeed best as it tends to end the conversation. Concocting a lie or even giving a more involved honest answer only encourages the conversation to continue. For me the goal is to make it stop.
I've started doing this. My mental health is in such a state I simply no longer have the energy to outright lie (masking, which I can't help, is already exhausting enough) so I just say "not great", and depending on who the person is and how sincerely I think they're asking will or will not go in to any detail beyond that...
Then I spend the next days or weeks or more analysing every word I told them and wonder if I said too much or went too personal, but stopping myself in the moment is just too much when there's so much else going on. :/
This is basically how I handle this, shrug and say, "Ah, y'know..."