Sometimes emotional and psychological factors, and maybe sensory factors as well can affect our ability to speak in a given situation. I learned to talk early, so I am told. I have the physical and cognitive ability to speak normally in settings where I feel relaxed enough to. But a lot of the time, very severe social inhibition holds me back from being able to talk fluently and in a way that other people can understand. I feel very self-conscious about the way my speech sounds and about the way I come across, and this actually affects my physical ability to talk a lot of the time. So I am barely verbal in most social situations, even though I can talk. What I experience is Selective Mutism, I have suffered from it throughout my life and it disables me possibly more than my autism does. I often feel that I could no more open my mouth and make a noise than I could do something really dangerous to my life, like running through fire or jumping off a high building. If I do speak in these situations, I have little control over the way my voice sounds and I sound really weird. In these situations my voice is really tense, flat, expressionless and people have a hard time understanding me. This adds to the embarrassment of the whole situation for me. Yet I can talk very fluently, and quite animatedly in other situations where I feel more comfortable. Does anyone else experience this?
_________________
Sometimes it's the very people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things no one can imagine.
From The Imitation Game
03 Jun 2010, 11:31 pm
