words lose their meaning..

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anyone here have the problem that when you get tired and your mind is all mushy words seem to loose their meaning and you cant fully communicate with people or understand them?

if so, any good tips?

its quite scary...

Somewhat. My boyfriend has used words like "I love you" and "honey" to me so much, I could honestly just care less. I'm always like "Yeah..." because they've lost their meaning. I don't mean to come across rude or anything, but it's been a constant thing for two years and the last thing I am is mushy and lovey-dovey.

I work in a science institute, so we have people from all around the world.
So, some times I hear people talking, and I'll ask a friend "Is that Spanish?", and he'll look at me shocked and say "No! that's Hebrew..." - the language I speak...

If I don't know in advance if a person is talking in Hebrew or English, I probably woun't get the first sentence...

When my mind is tired and overstimulated, if I'm in a GROUP discussion where 3 or more people are discussing something, I am completely lost and can follow none of it.

sounds like what i am struggling with... i also notice that other parts of my body loose the control i have over them when i get tired and so i tend to be clumsy and not so detailed oriented....

Mashalomer?

yes, i can see how that would be a problem...haha

I have a friend who tells me she can see when I stop hearing. If I'm sick or exhausted, I can't put the work into comprehending any more.

Getting tired does make it more difficult to follow conversations. In a noisy place just listening to one person talking can sometimes be hard to do.
The reality TV type shows seem to always have several people talking over each other at once, each trying to make their own points heard. It is stressful for me to listen to that when I am alert. When I get tired it seems impossible. I like to watch the cooking, history, discovery, learning type channels in the evening because usually only one person is talking at a time on the show.

Last edited by Mudboy on 24 Feb 2009, 4:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think I get excatly what you are saying.

It feels for me like some sort of confusion (Sorry I'm not good writing about emotions/feelings)...
If I'm tired enough I can't understand a word!. Not like not knowing the word, no, really not understading the meaning of spoken language.
It's like when you are reading and don't get the meaning, you read it again and still don't get the meaning. Then you read it VERY slow and carefully, and then you understands.
It can get to the point where I become non-verbal, and become aggresive instead, because of others not understading me.

I don't know if that's what you mean, or if anyone even understands this.

EDIT:
That smiley is there because I found the way that i wrote the sentence funny.
I have to remember telling this stuff to people...

Last edited by TheSpecialKid on 24 Feb 2009, 3:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

yes, often. what's kind of frightening for me is that i'm a heavily text-based person. my primary source of input is the written word. sometimes, when i'm just racked, i can look at the words and they make no sense, they are unfamiliar, like i've never seen the word before.

all i know is it is time to retreat when this happens. it actually happens for me with most social exchanges. halfway through the second sentence i lost the capacity to comprehend what the person is saying to me. I also have a movie screen of pics in my - so trying to latch onto comprehending another's words and simultaneously keep up with the visuals is just exhausting. (the visuals are more fun, so i tend to retreat into them!)
At home my ex and son know to keep things really simple for me and not to get too longwinded. they leave the monologues to me....

When I am tired, I can still understand what people are saying and my brain continues to work hard at that, I will have a hard time speaking fluently.

I also have something more similar to what you are saying: Very often I hear the sounds people are making, but they don't make any sense to me. I have to ask them to repeat a couple of times, or there will just be a delay of a fraction of a second before I "hear" it again in my brain and I can understand it.

I get weird looks when I say "What did you say?... Never mind, I understand you after i thought about it". Mostly I just look at the person like they are crazy for speaking a foreign language to me and not say anything. It feels like I am being less strange that way.

it seems you have the same problem....i also notice that my language output has the same problem and when i get tired i tend to cut out words and make the sentences as short as possible. another problem is that my mind thinks in pictures and it is not always easy to convert the pictures into a comprehensive words...

but on the flip side if i am really relaxed it seems i can understand quite alot of languages.. i was sitting in a pub in England a few years ago and i was just day dreaming when all of a sudden all the people seem to be speaking in Norwegian, and i could understand them all as they were speaking without translating...although this is quite cool, i have only had it twice or so that iknow about....

i fear though that the older i get the more non-verbal i will become....that is the trend any ways... as when i was younger i used to be quite skilled at talking, these days i am not so good.....but this may be down to "placebo", if i feel like i wont be able to speak well i might not while if i do i might...ect...

maybe i should learn sign language? i wonder what that is like for someone with ASD? anyone know...maybe its the thing for me....or i could try to create a device which would show my feelings in pictures on a hand held pad?

Oh yeah... I have no other words than exactly.
It seems like the problem is the same kind as I have with social situations.

I also do the "What did you say?"...[person 2 starts explaining], "Never mind..." thing...

I relate to this topic very strongly.

My mind will isolate certain words that I hear and scrutinize them, break them down, dissolve their meaning, until they are just simple combinations of sounds. It undercuts the total message of whatever it was I was listening to. There seems to be a predisposition in my brain to analyze language, structurally more than semantically. The meaning seems secondary to the acoustics and architecture of the words.

The bottom line of all this is that I frequently miss the meaning in conversation because I am hung up on deconstructing one particular word that I heard the person say. And that's not good.