articulate and struggling

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I wrote this as a blog post, but I also think it's a good conversation starter on here.

http://turtleisaverb.blogspot.com/2014/ ... ulate.html

I'm assuming others feel like this, like they are told repetitively that they are articulate, that they know that they are, and that they know that the words that are coming out are only a small portion of the thoughts in their head.

Yet, because they are articulate, they can speak, that's what matters. The struggles don't. The struggles are overlooked, not understood, and told that they either don't exist or don't matter.

I feel like I should have a question but I don't have one.

Only recently have I noticed that being verbal interrupts my train of thought, the act of speaking can put the very idea that I was thinking of out of my mind. I've only noticed this recently not only because I've never been introspective about this stuff in particular, but I also seem to have a failing short term memory. I forget what I'm talking about far too often, and this is a new phenomenon to me.

Your description of seeing your doctor speaks to me...I have a hard time conveying what I want to. This is not helpful when talking to a counsellor of some sort either, not at all. What do I say? I have to get to the right mindspace first, such that I'm even thinking about the right things, and then I have to convey them. I'm bad at doing this on demand.

One of the forums I've posted on for years, people have commented how my posts don't make any sense whatsoever, they can't follow them. This happened just recently, and this time I actually went back to read it and I didn't understand it very well myself; odd phrasing, word choice, using 'it' but should have probably used the word that 'it' is representing, etc. But if I read it and know what I mean to say, I get it no problem, so I usually don't notice when I'm not being clear.

I don't lose sleep or cry over it though. I cry over plenty of my other faults. I probably don't have this problem nearly as badly as you. I don't get it for simple questions and simple answers I don't think, although I give too much information to simple questions sometimes.

Your blog post sounds so familiar. Words require a lot of mental energy for me too. Sometimes to the same point you describe where the words simply disappear. Then, just as you describe the doctors visit, thoughts, ideas and details get skipped, leaving the listener with only partial information.

The only time I managed to have a fulfilling doctor's visit in memory (as in, I mentioned all my concerns and they were all addressed satisfactorily) the doctor thought I thought he was an idiot. (As per comments made when I was drugged and should not have been able to remember them.)
I did not think the doctor was an idiot. I thought and know that he's not uptodate with all the specific research regarding my disease since he's a gastroenterologist and my disease is autoimmune in nature, plus I have no idea how any doctor would be able to keep up with all the most recent knowledge.

I like your blog post quite a bit (very insightful and articulate). I was actually going to ask my therapist about this today because I've been wondering if I'm misdiagnosed with Aspergers instead of just being a nerdy-nerd who really likes information and has a tough time interacting with people because they don't have interest or understand my preferred topics.

I don't get to the point where I become emotionally overwhelmed because of communication difficulties, but I do have a very difficult time debating an articulate person. I know they're wrong but am unable to prove my point without quite a bit of thought to form a succinct argument/proof. It's difficult to state the "why's" in many of my thoughts because they feel so instinctual and intuitive that it's difficult to bridge the logical conclusion in my mind to the level of understanding with the person I'm talking to.

I think my thoughts are fireworks in my mind with so many points being covered at once that it's difficult to capture and code the most important points into a coherent/succinct line of communication.

I wonder about a few things
(1) is this the inability to anticipate which information and how much the other person needs?
(2) is this a difficulty with prioritizing the most relevant data to share?
(3) does intellectual giftedness allow strengths to overshadow weakness (ex. being only able to articulate 10% of my thoughts on a topic exceeds another's person's ability to express 90% of their thoughts on a topic and therefore masks my frustration with inability to express myself?

I definitely have this as part of why its such a problem.

The act of speaking puts the ideas out of mind. Typing doesn't. Typing bypasses whatever makes them go lost.

It takes effort to keep track of it all, converting it all into words, and then speaking makes it all deal with this on top of that? Not just sending the words out through my fingers, but actually speaking?

Of my doctors appointments; my Occupational Therapy appointments; my first one when I saw each of them, I was told things like "But those are my words". They couldn't figure out how I understood so much about the topic. But EVEN STILL, I left out parts of my symptoms.

My neurology appointments; it took me multiple appointments to get my neurologist to take my migraines seriously enough to give me a migraine abortive. Some people I know consider me disabled by them. I can't explain the idea of "well I don't have a lot of them, because instead of having a lot of them I hide in my room all day, because being in public I'm triggered constantly" and have this in words a doctor understands. At least, not at an appointment.

I think my primary care doctor has figured out by this point I have this issue, we go over things multiple appointments in a row. Usually it takes about 3 appointments to get an issue across to her. It takes time, but she's good about it.

It is super hard for someone who has no problem verbalizing to understand why someone else has problems verbalizing.

I'm used to this now, and I've lowered my standards for what percent of the stuff in my head I can communicate. I find that this helps, since I am satisfied with communicating a little bit of info at a time through speaking. I'm even learning to be vague and general by holding back the details in my head, which seems to help communication with NTs. Most of the details, I communicate through email, and the focus of that is numbers and pictures.

I've also lowered my standards for my own articulateness when speaking. It is ok to be rather inarticulate and even language bumbler/stutterer, as long as others pick up few main points of substance. It helps that there are a lot of foreign people around, and they are not that articulate in english, so I don't really stand out for my inarticulateness in my english that is still bester than theirs.

Part of my problem is that I have multiple states.

State 1: Articulate. Words aren't a challenge. Speech just flows. It's easy.

State 2: I can speak, but it takes effort to. Everything I say is an active translation.

State 3: I can speak, it takes a lot of effort to. Everything I say is an active translation. I can't pull off more than single words or short phrases at a time because its too hard. What words I have are limited. I might say "not fridge" to mean the microwave.

State 4: I can't speak, I've been pushed into so much overload that speech isn't an option.



State 2 is my default. I spend most of my time in state 2. It's comfortable here. I feel like speaking is unnatural, but if I think about it I remember that I can do it and if anyone talks to me, I am delayed at answering but can do it. I'm slow at processing, and can't come up with answers always, but its comfortable to stay in. I don't need lots of speech.

Flip a mental switch and I'm in state 1, I don't know what the switch is, but its there. In these situations its always data-dumping, except in conversation form. It's not monologuing, but its all data. It's all there. I don't need to think about decisions, or feelings, or complicated things. I just have information about an interesting book that I'm sharing with someone while we discuss it. Or, even information about my autism. But again its all organized into data-form.

Ask me a thing about my feelings, or make me make a decision instead of having a discussion about a book and I'm out of it immediately. There are fast ways out, even if it takes something to get into.

These are where most people interact with me. Is when I'm in state 1. Because when I'm in state 2, I'm not talking. In state 1 I am. When I'm actually in long communication I am frequently articulate. And its all things that are easy to be articulate about.

When I get into situations that matter to communicate in? Then I'm stuck in my default state 2 that people don't see. Except I'm still called articulate there. And its partially because they're comparing me to state 1, and seeing that I am then, and partially that they're saying that what I'm saying in state 2, is "articulate", despite being 10% of what I wanted to say.

Or to continue, get me too overloaded, and I go to state 3 or 4. I might go through 3 to 4 or directly to 4. Hopefully that doesn't happen in a doctors office, but it might. It has happened in a restaurant and I've ordered by typing on my laptop before.

So, I have this "I actually am articulate when people see me".

But, how they see me isn't how I usually am. It's more like going into the monologing than how I am. How I am is actually just being here not really remembering that I can speak unless I think about it or unless prompted. Because speech isn't important. It's unnatural, and not relevant to communicate or to do things that need to be done. It's just expected.

I prefer my typing. It's easier. This way doesn't clog my brain.

I'm similar to Tuttle. If it's special interest technical talk..usually with another geek, the words and technical descriptions flow no problem. I think it's when I'm startled, put on the spot or confronted with questions all of a sudden, it becomes very difficult to organize thoughts, facts and formulate a proper articulated response. It can sometimes come out as a jumbled mumble, like I was hit in the head with a brick or something. The higher the stress or upset..the worse it gets.

That's interesting about the states and the switching between them. So is it the outside stimuli that causes the problem, like if you are in state 1 talking about one topic, then someone asks something unrelated to the topic, then you fall out of state 1 into state 2 or worse?

I think that I am in state 2 most of the time, and I don't have a state 1. Even on topics that I am familiar with and good at, I don't have state 1 in speaking or writing. It's always active translation into words, never flowing, and I don't know what easy flowing speaking or writing would be like. I can only communicate <10% of what is in my head by default, and I don't try to communicate more by speaking. Even writing, maybe 20%? But this amount, I find it good enough for daily life purposes.

It's very similar for me. My default state is something in between the way you described 2 and 3 and that's usually the state I am in when I wake up in the morning. And it's the state I default to when I am alone. I can speak but I mix words up or forget words or find it easier to just point to things instead of speaking. It takes effort to find the right words and put them in the right order.

I have days when I can be very articulate, when I need to be, but I'm very aware that I have to switch it "on" manually to be able to do that. It doesn't just happen for me naturally.

Most of the time, while I am around other people, I am somewhere between "articulate" and my default state. I can talk but I really have to think about what I'm saying.

What you've described sounds like 2 and 3. This doesn't mean you don't have 1 though. If you're bad at communicating and anticipating someone else's needs, then you're also bad at seeing when you've missed something to even know that you're bad at it.

I definitely don't have any sort of noticeable state differences. Or rather, I'll have it but only when I'm drowsy and/or tired, I don't think that counts as the same thing.

Speaking of differences between typing and speaking, do mute autists who use sign language as their primary language of communication notice this issue too? Like, they can type but they can't sign? Most issues I've learned in regards to language applies to all language, written, spoken, signed, etc, and as such is a language problem. But this issue already doesn't fit into a language problem category.

To me, typing is...and I don't want to say easier because most of the time I don't think or perceive verbalizing as difficult...but rather, typing is much better at getting across what I want to convey properly. I think this is probably because I get to backtrack. I'm always writing then erasing what I want to say depending on how I want to finish saying it, when writing a post. Always. Even a 1 line post (yes, I'm capable of that :-p) will have been rewritten. I'm more inarticulate in real-time chat too because of this inability to alter what I say, and I don't get to do that in realtime verbal conversation either. And I also have the issue where my thoughts just aren't as...full...when I'm talking. I might not even consider large swaths of an idea when discussing it with someone. Like, an hour later when I'm alone and thinking about that topic, I'll have a million more thoughts about it than what I talked about earlier.

Tuttle: You could write down what you want to go over before you go to your appointment. Like, the morning of the appointment, send an email to the office with all the issues you've had in your mind (and you could write that down at any point in time, but only send it that morning), so that when you get privately into the office with the doctor, he'll read your blurb first and then take it from there. You'd need to convey to the receptionist/nurse/aid that you'd like to do that of course.

I do pre-write things and bring them to my appointment. I still have major issues with communicating with doctors and it takes multiple appointments to get something across to them. It's...interesting. It has to do with taking something written and taking actual "back and forth conversation" and having the former not meaning having the latter, and them expecting more information than the written information.

Also, having a lot to talk about.

My state 2, I feel like I might have not explained well. I don't mean just trying a little to speak. I mean it feels completely unnatural to speak. I'll go hours not speaking, even when it doesn't make sense to not speak (others speaking to me, me not speaking) in quick situations because I don't remember I can speak. When it comes to ordering something at a coffee shop, I won't mess up words, but I'll take a long time to say anything.

When it comes to more complicated ideas though, which is what is normal, then I lose most of my thoughts. I go through figuring out what I want to say, go to convert it to speech, and can only get about 10% of it out. And then I can't remember the rest of it usually. And I'm lost and confused and upset because I know its not what I wanted to say. And this is after I spent a huge amount of time, enough that people around me were upset at me, trying to come up with what I said.

Or sometimes even nothing comes out in this state. Because translating doesn't work.


What I mean by state 3 is "not only is it like this, its also take it down to don't have Language". Now, in state 2, I have language, I take time. I lose thoughts, but I have a wide variety of words to use. I might lose words at times (I do, sometimes hilariously forget really simple words). But overall, I have something that's approximating most of what I know for words. I also can use complex sentences. It might take a lot of effort, but I can.

In state 3 I don't have that. I am missing most of my language. I have only simple words, and not all simple words. I am missing a majority of my vocabulary. They're too complicated of words. I can't use a sentence as complicated as the ones I'm writing here. I use phrases 1-3 words at a time. That's all I can say. I cannot say more than that at a time.


State 2 is where I spent today, even while tutoring, until I was explaining dog training to my therapist.

What Tuttle writes resonates a lot for me. When she says that it takes her multiple appointments to get something across to her doctors, it reminds me of all the frustrations I've experienced with my therapists and doctors as well. A big problem I have with communicating is that I need to know what I want to say in advance, and that I can easily derail into multiple tangents that may or may not be relevant (I think they all are, but others disagree). Often when I try to explain something, my therapist will interrupt me and not let me finish, and her response will include something novel that I haven't really "prepared" myself to answer, which means I have to spend another week before I can properly respond to it.

And in that regard, many people have poor memories for interpersonal interactions like that. So if I bring up something the therapist said to me, she may not recall the exchange at all, which makes it harder to establish the context necessary to answer something she said that I could not answer prior.

I find there are topics I can talk about endlessly, although I do not know that I talk about them in typical ways. My interests, for example, are very easy for me to talk about at length, but they are often not necessarily appropriate topics for conversation.

Much of my verbal communication is based on memorization. I am more flexible about this than I used to be (say, as a child, when I would reenact movie scenes or pattern match quotations in response to particular phrases).

Something that frustrates me when I am failing to communicate and I know I am failing to communicate, I will say that I am failing to communicate and people (my attorney for one, both of my therapists for others) will reassure me that I sound like I am doing okay, but they are not hearing what I need them to hear, and are instead hearing whatever random things I am saying because I can't get what I want out or if I am saying what I intend to say and want to say, they may interpret them in ways that I do not expect. But I am not given the space to clarify because since they think they understood what I was saying, they don't want to hear a correction.

My verbal communication has almost resulted in me being held at a hospital for 48 hours because my attempt to state that I was not at that moment a danger to myself was interpreted to mean that I was a clear danger to myself.

I think a lot of the discontinuity between my thoughts and words is due to not thinking in words and not even being capable of thinking in words. I think in sensory impressions - primarily images, but textures, sounds, and smells as well - and have to translate these into words and translate words back into these things, which also makes it hard to interact in a conversation in real time.

But I write well, so - as I have been told - I don't have communication impairments.

Have you considered that a lot of this speaking problem is EF problem instead of language problem? The clue is articulateness and ease in talking about certain topics or in certain states or in writing, but problems integrating things to have back and forth conversation at the doctor's office, for eggsample. I went to a lecture about language, and the speaker showed multiple instances of EF instead of language being most important on a cognitive task, while previous thinking focused on language, but now, EF seems bester eggsplanation of results.