Difficulty understanding long sentences

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It is municipal election soon here. Yesterday, one of the candidate showed up at home. I opened the door and he starts telling me his name, his title, his role in this election etc... I think he gave me something like 10 informations in one sentence. I could not remember anything he said. All the informations went in and jammed and they all became just a blur in my head. Since i just stood there saying nothing, he continued with more info. It was too much.

This little incident reminds me i can't follow if a sentence is too long. I need time to process every bit of info so i cannot follow a conversation in real time.

Do you have the same kind of problem ?

This happens to me alot. I find myself becoming annoyed and stopping the person just to make sure i got what they said.... This is not always possible, and alot of the time it does begin to sound like a blur. I find myself going huh? and getting frustrated because the person must keeps throwing info my way!!

I have difficulty understanding some long sentences, but not if I have an interest in the subject matter.

Why, of course!

Uhh...

This mostly happens to me when I'm reading textbooks - they'll have sentences that are like 35 or 40 words long that run on, go through like 3 or 4 commas, and are so sprawled that I can read them 3 or 4 times and realize I have no idea what the heck I just read. At least when a book is a little better written I don't have too many problems but still, I have more than enough classes where I take notes and that's pretty much it.

Is that appropriate or what?

Reminds me of the breakdown in the infamous Picard song. (Trekkies should know what I'm talking about) It goes like this:

Just kept talking in one incredibly unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic so that no one had the chance to interrupt; it was really quite hypnotic.

I do not always process everything I hear. Sometimes it takes a couple seconds until I replay it in my head and THEN I listen (this is not good when I agree to something and then replay the question that I've just agreed to and have to correct myself by admiting that I wasn't listening and changing my answer ). Or sometimes I just don't get it at all.

This occurs more often when I am not in a talking mood (or listening mood I should say) or when I am distracted and really have little interest in what the other person is saying. So while I'm pretending to listen, nodding, uh-huhing and all, I'm thinking of something else entirely.

I also have troubles listening to more than one thing at a time. I notice I miss things people say to me if I am watching television and then I only can make out that they said something to me and I must ask them to repeat it once my attention has shifted back to them. I think this is a bit of a hyperfocus/auditory processing problem.

One thing at a time, please.

My chemistry teacher tends to talk in long sentences and very quickly, so I've gotten used to him doing it. I can now normally pick up on what he's trying to tell us, so that's a good thing. With other people (that I'm not used to), it takes a while and sometimes I have to ask them to repeat what they've just said.

I also have a hard time when talking to people while there's a chaotic background noise, but I think that's pretty normal.

When I'm at work, I usually have to ask my supervisor/boss to repeat instructions if she gives me more than three seperate things to do. I probably seem extremely dense by doing this but it's better than seeming lazy. She's usually pretty good though good about giving me about three tasks at a time, then having me come back for more (she has the luxury of being able to do that, though I don't know if she just does it for me or she actually does it for everyone).

Yeah, I'm like Sophist. I don't hear what they say the first time around, either. Its just noise.