Thought delay with Aspergers

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In conversation I can go from little delay to fairly extreme (I think my therapist let me suffer for about 30 seconds once before she changed the parameters of the question she asked me that prompted my inability to respond).

When I'm in a totally unexpected unscripted social situation I might run off scripts to pretend to be involved while I try to process what I am hearing, but I may say things I do not agree with while doing so because I am not fully aware of the context of what I'm responding to. Sometimes I just don't say anything.

For any cognitive task, it takes me approximately twice as long as it takes the average NT. This is true for almost anything, whether it's something simple, such as identifying the color of a fruit shown in a picture, something memory related, like recalling the names of the first 5 presidents, or something like finding the derivative of f(x) = 3x^2 + 4x + 7. It is obvious that this applies to social interactions too, because I often fail to respond quickly. I have also noticed it to be a problem when I'm driving; I sometimes come up to an intersection and have to think for a few seconds before I know what's going on.

There are a few things that I'm not actually slower at, such as word problems in math classes. I can take a real life situation, such as calculating gas mileage, and almost intuitively know what I need to do to the numbers to get the desired result. With these sort of problems, I'm actually faster than the average person. Other things, like designing floor plans in CAD, are about equal.

Sometimes I suspect that this delay really doesn't exist at all. Perhaps I'm not slower, but I just can't multitask. Because any distraction is extremely detrimental to my train of thought, it makes it seem as if I think slower, when I actually do not. In order to compensate for this, only things that I can do extremely well as compared to the rest of the population can I actually do at the same speed.

This is interesting. I'd never thought about it before but people have even said this to me before. Example: I hurt myself...five...four....three....two....one...."Ouch." I've got weird looks for that one.

I hate games like rounders because if I end up having to get the ball, it takes me so long to figure out where I'm meant to throw it- everybody is screaming at me to throw it to a certain place but I don't realise what they're saying- and by the time I throw the ball kind of pathetically, once I've figured out the right place...well, it's not the right place anymore and everybody's glaring at me. To add to this it doesn't help when you can't see where the posts are and can't remember who's at which post, and when the teacher tells you to only hold the bat in one hand but you don't realise what he's said until you're out, and you can't work out quickly enough where to run to and where the ball is and where the other batters are and remember the exact rules....

^^ Sorry for the little rant up there, just something that gets on my nerves

I usually have great responses to questions and conversations.



Unfortunately, they usually occur hours or days later...

I was actually hoping for more information on the subject.

Yeah I have that issue...lol my sister seems to have the opposite she processes really fast and if things slow down too much she seems to get anxious, not sure what it is but its like she always has to be doing something, her and my brother both tend to talk fast. But yeah it kind of takes me a minute to figure out what to say or process if someone is talking to me or whatever......I get it, it just takes a minute.

Interesting.

Question--->think--->think--->silently formulate a response---->respond.
This pattern, is, I believe, common to introverts of all brands. NT and Aspie alike.

However, I suspect, the visual,/ emotional AS version continues something like this:
During the conversation my right hemisphere registers emotional duress/discomfort.
Increased adrenaline causes the unpleasant event to register in full in my memory.
Later, in private, I run the video, and feel the pain, over and over again. And because I don't know where the pain is coming from:
I review words, facial expressions, movements, check everything for multiple possible meanings, consider obsevable outcomes......and eventually,
My left hemisphere catches up, and explains to me, (or perhaps, confabulates), that I'm in pain, because the person I was talking to, saw me as substandard, or some how wrong as a human.
Then I do it again..... everything. Over, and over again, and again, and again and.....
THEN....., at some point, early or late, I have a very delayed, very emotional, unstoppable, meltdown.

Ruminatious OCD/Perseveration/Internal Visual Hyperfocus....call it what you will: what it amounts to, for me anyway, is compulsive desire to understand.
Probably, just a common survival mechanism that bites one unendingly in the as*.
But without the ability to do it in the moment----We, or rather, some of us, end up avoiding the people/painful situations in the first place.
These are the Aspies, or some of them, who end up sliding under the quilt in early adulthood, and reading for years. Escaping yes, but also trying to understand.

Visual rumination will tear you up. Day after day after day...after......before......after.......before....after.....today.
And they wonder why we retreat.

Your results may vary.

I have epiphanies like this, hours, days, months even years later.

Something then clicks and I realise what I'd missed at the time.

Like jokes...my mind must keep processing until I get them,( if ever)

I am a slow thinker as well as a slow talker! That's probably why, in the past, I have been called ret*d as well as weird, etc....

_________________
An Asperger's man who has Autism Spectrum Disorder level 1- mild, with a sprinkling of Synesthesia.

It's more a processing delay than a thought delay. Well, in my case it is. When I'm talking to somebody I am still thinking subconsciously, even though I might not be having actual thoughts. I don't really know how to explain it but my eyes will focus on something the person is wearing and then one conscious thought escapes, and I have to redirect my attention back to the person.

Sometimes I really struggle to reply when someone asks me something that I don't expect. It's like a have this list of possible things they might say in my mind but then it gets a big strike through it after they say something completely different. I really hate that.

The pressure of real time social situations, multi-processing and emotional responses not triggering until later.

I have often been accused of ignoring people when in fact I haven't yet replied because I'm still trying to digest what's been said to me. Whilst most people seem to have an immediate response, opinion or gut feeling it takes me some considerable time to understand what was said and how I feel about it. Even when I know how I feel then is then another delay whilst I formulate a satisfactory sentence structure.