Today's session at Flexible Routeways was one of the worst for me. They said they were "easing us back in" after the break for Christmas and New Year. Started with a role play exercise where they set us scenarios of us being survivors of a plane which has fallen into the sea and co-ordinate our survival discussing the objects supposedly available to us. I just couldn't contribute at all, everyone else had plenty to say. Then there was the one about the nuclear bunker that's only big enough for 6 people but 12 of us to compete to be allowed to shelter in it. I pretty much sat this one out, they made me play the "god" who decides who can go in, but I couldn't decide anyway. They claimed this was to make the point about making people sell themselves as more deserving to be saved than the others, on a par with selling themselves in an interview as better than other potential applicants for the job.
I've always hated role plays. In the Flexible Routeways leaflet it says "the programme involves personal coaching and confidence building." Many people do think of these role plays as a way of confidence building, but if anything mine has dropped from being given this to do and not doing it well, it isn't the sort of thing that practice is going to make me any better at. Aspergers people often "lack imagination", the very quality most required to contribute to an exercise like that.
