Does it take you time to know what you need to say?

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Wow! Thanks for everyone that answered. Because everyone gets angry I just thought I was dumb, that I either said it wrong or left stuff out or had no idea what to say. I didn't actually think I was dumb but how people reacted to me made me angry and feel dumb. I also get when I am trying to figure out what to say everyone else just talks over me. I do notice they don't give me a chance and walk away. I notice I am not so good at arguments because I can't get the exact thing I want out and I get so frustrated that I am frustrated from the person arguing with me and that I can't get what I want to say out. It does feel like my mouth is disconnected from my brain and nothing my brain is sending my mouth is being received. This helps me so much.

Yes, and the time-delay required to trigger that kind of loss of patience is so short that I always wonder why they feel it would cost them so much to just wait for that couple of seconds. What I really liked about the alternativist movement was the way they would put energy into making sure everybody in a group had a chance to speak....they really had the political will to encourage democracy But out in the mainstream world, it's more a case of "me, me, me!" and if you're slow or shy, the chances are they'll happily ignore you....more airtime for them of course.

I sometimes have to rehearse outloud what I want to say and it takes me a while to write something out and even then it usually comes across wrong.

i never know what i "need" to say, but it takes almost no time at all for me to start my answer to a question (that i can reply to), and then they usually have to interrupt me when their patience runs out after about 3-4 minutes when they realize i am going to talk continuously until i am interrupted.

i think people are sorry they asked me a question after i start to answer.

an example that comes to mind is recently when i got a person to steam clean my carpets. he came into my office (a room in my house) to ask what rooms i wanted done, but he noticed that i was working on a program and i had code on my screen.

him: oh wow! what is that?

me: just a program i am writing for work.

him: really? what sort of programs do you write?
------------------------------------------------------------------------start verbose
me: this program is a system for analyzing supermarket scan data. what happens is that supermarkets provide their data in a flat file. each line of data has an item code, and a product description and a volume and a value. there about 50000 to 60000 lines of data in each file.
each supermarket has it's own system of item codes and it takes operators at work months to categorize the data into categories like "dairy", and sub categories like "milk" and classes like "flavor" and sub classes like "fat content" etc.
even after they categorize all 50,000 products, each new weeks data has about 1000 new products, and it takes 2 or 3 people to work full time to just categorize the products.
what this program does is separate all the words in each description and give weightings of likely hoods as to which category and sub category and family and class and subclass it fits into. it polls each word from a self built word database where each word has an instance count. if the instance count is too high, the word is ignored. for example, the word "and" and "australian" and "family" have high usage counts and therefore are ignored.
so it reads each word like for example "cheese" and then allocates a likely hood for a "dairy" allocation, but if it encounters a word in the same product description like "biscuits", then the weighting is significantly reduced for dairy and increased for biscuits due to the fact that the word "biscuit" is usually used with far more accompanying words than "cheese" is.
therefore it will likely be categorized as "biscuits" with a subcategory of "cheese".
after this declination of relations is established, the remaining words are weighted for allocation to families and classes and subclasses in the same way.
so if the product description is.....
----------------------------------------------------end verbose
him: yeah yeah it looks exciting errrmmm.... getting back to what i have to do....
me: i will come and show you the rooms which i want done.


i talk for a very long time when i am asked a question by someone who seems to be enthusiastic to hear my answer.

on the other hand, i never initiate conversation.
if no one asks me anything i do not talk.

also i do not say much if i do not know what to say.
eg:
person: god it must be awful for those people in haiti.
me: hmmm.

Yes is the answer to the OP's question. I will respond in a certain way to someone and then think of a much better, more coherent and more intelligent sounding response later on, it is really annoying and happens to me a lot. I think people must think I'm dim, shallow, uncaring or just plain stupid. It's even more difficult for me as I am mainly surrounded by academics i.e. lecturers and PhD students who, given the choice of talking to me or each other, will talk to each other and will only speak with me if no-one they actually want to talk to is around. They are not all like this, but most are. At my last place of work, people really didn't care if I stumbled or sounded daft as they actually took the time to get to know me as everyone was treated equally, so they knew that my brain was a functioning organ and understood my level of intelligence as opposed to one on snooze and a bit vacant like I suspect some of the people I work with at present think.

I have found that if someone says 'how are you?' to you, they don't actually give a toss about how you are, so don't waste your time on this question. The 'Fine' response you usually give, ursaminor, is the correct one so just leave it at that.

I was walking through a store yesterday when an employee walking past said the usual, "Hi, how are you". Feeling impish, I replied, "Just awful, and you". She replied with "Fine, thanks", without missing a beat!

Oh, big time. I usually pause for a long time while I'm trying to put my thoughts together. This annoys my wife to no end. This becomes even worse if we're having an argument. She'll say something, and while I'm trying to process what she's said and figure out my response, all she sees is a blank expression that's taking far too long to reply so she says "if it's going to take you that long, just forget it...."

YES. I hate being called on in class and sitting there like an idiot trying to form words to say, it takes me forever and most of the time I just say whatever (which usually doesn't even make sense). While having conversations with some people I will be thinking and worrying about what do I say next.

oh my god, all the time.

What's worse is I'm always under the impression that the person listening probably honestly doesn't give much of a sh*t what I actually have to say, so not only does it come out with me tripping over my words and interrupting....but I say it too fast for them in most cases, as well.

Yep.....why, oh why are a few measly seconds too long for them to wait?

because they honestly don't care what you have to say; it's just about talking.

They're all talk.

We want substance; they just want the feel-good momentary buzz.

The clock is ticking tocking topic

Being verbal is a lengthy process for me, and if someone does not allow me a few extra seconds to think, then I end up stuttering and saying something that does not express my intentions.

This is the reason I prefer to write.