CaleidoscopingEin sehr interessanter Artikel [English] von Lovette Jallow über den Schaden, den Small Talk bei neurodivergenten Menschen anrichtet:
"I wrote an essay this sunday about why small talk feels unsafe for autistic and ADHD people, how vagueness functions as power, and why clarity is care, not cruelty. Because if your aim is honest, you will be direct. Vagueness often protects comfort and systems, not people."
#LovetteJallow #actuallyADHD #actuallyAutistic #neurodivergence
Small Talk, Neurodivergence, and Workplace Misreads | Lovette Jallow | 109 comments
Small talk is not harmless. It is a social test built for neurotypical performance and weaponized against autistic and ADHD people. We’ve been told small talk is the price of connection. But for many of us, it is a quiet system of extraction, not care. “How are you?” only wants the performance of fine. “Where are you from?” demands a palatable origin story. “What do you do?” is not neutral. It’s a value assessment. This also happens on linkedin when a LinkedIn contact sends “Would love to pick your brain.” No details. No agenda. Just a friendly script that opens the door to unpaid labor. While others gather information and measure usefulness, a neurodivergent brain is working overtime calculating what to mask, how much truth is safe, and how silence might be read as rudeness. And in workplaces, the cost is even higher. Some of us maintain clear boundaries because colleagues are not what I call friend-shaped, they are work-shaped. Yet moving with that clarity is often punished. Black neurodivergent women are told to smile, share, and soothe, even while vagueness is used as a form of control. Directness gets framed as rude, when in reality, it is respect. The truth is, most systems expect the most marginalized to do the most adapting. That is why nearly 80% of autistic people experience trauma, not from autism itself, but from the forced performance of normalcy in environments that refuse to meet us halfway and be Neurodiverse. I wrote an essay this sunday about why small talk feels unsafe for autistic and ADHD people, how vagueness functions as power, and why clarity is care, not cruelty. Because if your aim is honest, you will be direct. Vagueness often protects comfort and systems, not people. And because recognition is not enough, I’m hosting a public webinar on September 6th: 🎙 Neurodivergent Strategies – Small Talk Without Masking You’ll leave with scripts, strategies, and protective communication tools that honor clarity, not performance. 📖 Read the essay: Link in comments 🎟️ Register for the webinar: Link in comments 📄 PDF: Why Small Talk Exhausts Autistic + ADHD People is attached above. #NeurodivergentWorkplace #AutisticCommunication #BlackNeurodivergentWomen #ConsentCulture #WorkplaceInclusion #EmotionalLabor #LovetteJallow #InclusiveLeadership | 109 comments on LinkedIn
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