Rehershal of heated discussions usually takes precedence over fun or neutral ones. Which means, when I have a heated discussion in recent memory, or know I’m about to enter one, they’re the ones my brain picks to reherse. I reherse them more obsessively than the others too.
I can sometimes push them away though by thinking of things I’m going to write instead. (Including posts like these.)
Argument rehershals take up a lot of mental space, take attention away from aesthetic experience, and sometimes from necessary tasks. They provide a lot of mental noise, and a lot of emotional strain. And in the end, they don't work.
You see... when I’m under strain or stress, my communicative abilities become... less than they normally are. I’m... not sure if this is similar or not to when other autistic people say they lose language, and if it's not, I'm sorry for touching on an experience that I haven't actually shared. In my case I still have language, it's just harder to think trough what I’m actually saying, and it's hard bordering on painful to take in what [i]other people[/i] are saying and adjust my next response. It's painful in the way looking at sharp lights is painful. My emotional response to this is anger, which, of course, strains both me and the conversation further.
My cognitive response is to go into auto-pilot. (Or should I say auto-cue, like news readers are using?) Cling to the few scraps of thought I can find.
And I think the purpose of my rehershals is to feed my auto-pilot-auto-cue with lines for those moments. Only it doesn't work. Or rarely works. Because... ehm... people out in the real world tend to have other things to say than my mental models of them do when I reherse. And in my mind, they tend to nod and get it, when I finally manage to find the right wording. In real life people don’t do that, because they have, you know, their own points of view, not mine. And then most of the time, I don't really remember what I’ve rehersed anyway.
So I go over it in my head, try to cover every base, try to remember everything, everyhing, every expletive eventuality, every line I might know, all the time knowing that I won't, I’ll remember little and make use of even less. Much like... much like... when I have an exam and try to memorize the entire contents (if not the wording) of the textbook but know that I can't, but hopefully enough will stick that I’ll be able to reconstruct the rest, because I don't know how to take notes or plan study session in advance, and I have this number of pages still to read and this many hours left to study, and THANKS SWEARWORD I don't have to deal with exams anymore.
They're both exhausting, for many of the same reasons.
So, uhm, does anyone know any practical ways to train my brain out of this habit – teach it not to spend all this effort rehersing arguments it won't have any use for anyway? Or as a temporary solution, ways to get out of heated discussions before they end up on the schedule for rehersal? Perhaps an easier way to bring across the things I've just said in this post?
I sometimes wish I didn't have to have opinions at all.
