Aspies who are verbal but can't talk

Post Reply New Topic

Any of those aspies in here? Like when you are asked to tell a story you start with the details from the middle, continue with beginning, and end with something that makes people ask "and so what? what happened? what's your point". Or if you are asked to explain something, you go on and on and the more you talk the more the listener gets confused.

Yeah I am a bit like this I guess. I just open my mouth and a whole lot of stuff comes out. I tell a lot of stories though veer in all directions with the theme, as parts of the story may lead to other stories.

i bet the parts of your stories are all over the place like the ears in your avatar..

Your title is confusing. I thought you meant have aspergers but literally cannot talk.

Hi, Learning2Survive. You may sometimes confuse people verbally, but I've noticed that your advice here on WP often goes straight to the point and shows a lot of insight and kindness.

Man, that is me exactly. I often have people stare blankly at me after I tell stories and go "I have no idea what you just said."

Story of my life. This is why I hate talking to my sister. She gives me a look like I'm some kind of idiot.

I can't verbally express a complicated thought very well. If I write it out on paper, I can actually see the words in front of me and then I can see if what I wrote is coherent. Perhaps that is why Tommy Jefferson(suspected of AS,) preferred to write political letters instead of give speeches. First of all, when I try and speak, I feel like I have a large wooden block in my tongue that prevents speech from coming out at all.

Once I get going, I noticed that if I have to describe something with more than a few sentences, I instantly dash for some profound detail and I tend to skip over some important points leading up to the climax. The listener is thus somewhat baffled and I have to backtrack and explain important information to help the listener make sense of what I said. I guess that I'm not sure sometimes what to tell people and what to leave out. I have a hard time bringing stories to a conclusion and I feel like I have to keep going and going and I can never really end it; after all, our lives don't just stop at the end of a poignant moment.

For example, If I was going to give someone a base, succinct overview of World War I, I would not just be able to give them 9 pithy sentences. I would spend 90 minutes discussing the campaigns and home-fronts and what not, but I would also digress and explain how the Franco-Prussian War and ethnic conflicts and other things built up to the war, and I would carry on and describe the Inter-War years up to WWII until my listener was thoroughly exasperated. At previous jobs, I would have to describe a simple situation and I would include details like a weather report and what everyone was wearing.

Sometimes, I have so much information to unload that the story I am trying to tell literally takes two hours and I just overwhelm the listener. I sidetrack onto unrelated tangents that tangle the basic plot. I just lose them in massive detail.

OP: what you describe is talking, and how you describe it is common amongst people with AS.

Not being able to talk is...you know, not actually being able to talk.

a better description would be 'aspies who can talk but can't get words out' if that many words fit.

People with Asperger's aren't that good talking, really, unless it's over an interest, and then they can speak quite well [in a lecturing manner].

Throw in some [to many] stock phrases learnt by trial and error, and the above, and there's not much else in regards to communication for someone with AS.

It's advanced echolalia, really.

I don't speak any clearer when speaking about an interest, though I do talk faster and with more enthusiasm. Words will still come out in the wrong order and are usually mispronounced.

Yeah, that can happen. As can something that's similar to Selective Mutism, but it's really not; it's speculated that it's due to change, i.e., talking to people you aren't familiar with will equate to such.

Most of the time, I don't have anything to say if the topic at hand does not arouse me. If the topic stimulates me, than I can pour forth volumes. However, when people make small talk conversation with me, I have a hard time producing even simple answers to simple questions such as, "How do you feel today." I am not really interested in most conversations except if it is a forum to dump information or display intelligence. It seems to me that NTs have conversations primarily to have a social experience in order to quench a need to interact with others. I tend to regard others the same way I feel about inorganic objects as just moving parts in a pre-constructed environment. Most of my conversations tend to be one-sided and end quickly.

I have some selective-mutism when it comes to topics that my brain does not process. I really don't begin to get involved or speak unless the milieu switches to a certain channel. Unfortunately, since I have little in common with those around me, I don't get to have many real conversations that are stimulating for me. Even in my college classes, I tend(ed) to present and want to discuss information relatively off-topic or over the head of the consensus. Ideas I would bring forth would not be understood or would be perceived as a waste of time because they were typically relatively abstruse. Most of my classmates are/were only interested in learning the bare minimum or basic criterion of what they needed to know to pass the class, and anything above that was excessive and would block out the necessary information. Prosaic and repetitive topics, especailly small talk, is agitiating to me

I have the same problem. That comes along with Asperger's. But because of this I have to write what I need to discuss in letters, rather than actually have a conversation, when I need to discuss important things. I can talk for hours about my interests, but when it comes to getting out something important, like any concerns I have with anything, I am a lot better at writing it. When I write it is always factual, where I write all complete facts, rather than writing through feeling, which I think is part of Asperger's also. Through this, I have developed a talent for writing, since my life is so hectic that I am constantly needing to bring forth "issues" in this fashion.