Supposedly 80% of communication is non-verbal.
I know that, without a doubt, when you remove seeing the person who is talking from the equation, I struggle.
Don’t get me wrong – I get less information non-verbally, socially, than neuro-typical folk. But I get less information in general, and less of what is already less makes things worse.
The reason I know this… in my 20s I travelled a lot. I was in foreign lands more than NZ. I phoned my parents as frequently as I could (it was very expensive back then, pay phones).
And I had to be drunk to call them. These are the people I knew the most in my life, by far, obviously. I could picture them saying something easily. They are the people I had conversed with the most, by far. And yet, with only a voice to get social clues from, I found it immensely difficult, almost impossible, to call them.
Yet another example of how for me personally, alcohol was a saviour. It took the edge off an overwhelming environment.