Stream of Consciousness

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This would get labelled as 'I am very smart' on Reddit but bear with me. I promise I'm not trying to sound pretentious or better than other people!

When I think, especially when I first wake up, I can have long thoughts for ages. If I don't stop myself I can be in bed for hours with it. I have really intense deep thoughts which are almost like essays in my mind. When I go for walks on my own, it's the same. It means I'm easily startled by any sudden change in environment as I'm not focused on what's around me.

Is this an aspie thing? Does everyone have it?

It's not an anxiety thing as it runs through the full gamut of emotions incuding positive ones.

What's the point of it when I can't express it in writing without boring people and in speech it really would bore people and come across as 'monologuing'?

Most likely aspie thing, is my guess. I have the exact same situation (though it's not always a problem). Sometimes it actually can cause a weak depression because it causes dissatisfaction with all of the logical inconsistencies I become aware of in real life, and I cover a lot of ground in my head, but then realize I haven't even moved from my initial spot.

I have a very "creative" mode and a highly "technical" mode. The technical analyses data, so I often end up just doing math-like calculations in my head using different fields, reviewing any conclusions or just thinking about a specific topic, but for days at a time. Other times I have very abstract "streams", the content of which is too abstract for me to be able to convey it in words so I try to do so through art. Sometimes they are random shapes, but the significance of those random shapes to something else I cannot explain is still present.

It is not psychosis because it does not effect my sense of reality (but adjusts my perspective of it), and it is not anxiety because like you said, for me it can also be positive. It's like a disco in my head, with all the colors and music, etc.

Its a good skill - keep it.

I would recommend that you keep a small notepad and pen handy whenever you wake up and jot your thoughts down on paper. The first part of the sleep cycle produces Deep Sleep (stage 3 and 4) whose function is to repair the body from the stress from the day and from sicknesses. The second part of the sleep cycle puts you into REM sleep patterns. These are focused on repairing the mind and storing lessons learned. Once this data is stored it is wiped clean from short term memory. If it is not wiped it is similar to what happens in a computer in a buffer overload. So my recommendations is to train your brain to wake up when your buffer is about to be overloaded and write the info down. In that state you brain is disassociated, similar to daydreaming. You are in two states simultaneously. These are REM and Awake. Let your mind do the thinking and your awake side become a stenographer.

The ability to disassociate is a skill. It can be done in the daytime. You set your physical body on autopilot and let your mind solve a problem you are interested in solving.

I may not be as smart as you but I can write concisely to get my point across.

I can relate. When I was a kid, people were always trying to get me to sleep more, but I wouldn't be tired, so I'd make up stories to tell myself in my mind. They'd go on episodically for days, months even. Usually when I'd try to convey this habit, or the stories that I'd come up with to other people they wouldn't understand. Furthermore, I felt like people couldn't pay attention for the duration of what I was saying most of the time.

Ironically, this tendency for prolonged hyper focusing, I suspect, is what got me misdiagnosed as ADD as a kid. Because my parents couldn't get me to concentrate on what they wanted when I was in story-land, they assumed I was unable to focus in general. I tried to explain to them that I was just telling myself a really long story... and they didn't get it.

Bit mean considering I specifically took the mick out of myself so nobody else had to.

Aspies do tend to write long paragraphs, I'd get used to it if I were you.

This isn't Twitter.

In case you really didn't know, iamverysmart is a place for NTs to make fun of people for sounding 'pretentious' unintentionally, which is an aspie trait. I didn't realise other aspies did it too. It's bullying

Last edited by KT67 on 10 May 2019, 2:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks to everyone who left useful comments, it might be an aspie thing then.

That's a useful idea, Jimmy. That way it might translate into something like an article or story or poetry or just be useful to have as a diary.

Sometimes a point is so complex that it can't be covered concisely to be fair. To do that would mean that there isn't a full understanding of the topic.

No matter how concise I am with my interest to others (using only terms that apply to what I am explaining), it still would require a full semester to teach it. It's not harder than some math courses for example, but it's incredibly multi-dimensional. In our office-job culture we've associated success of the individual to being able to work with others and silence themselves when necessary, even though it took a lot of "words" to get where we are from what we were.

Yeah. I'm a poet and I've published tanka, so I know how to be concise. However, on here, I'd rather get my point across than be confused.

Especially like I said, I have that long running stream of consciousness thing going on in my head.

I know my default is to sound pretentious so I try not to but it's not like I'm trying to in the first place.

*I* don't try.



I often do this at night and I look forward to it.
Mull things over in depth.
Enjoy creating new (for me) intellectual constructs.
It's normal for really, really, really smart people like me. <beam>


I doubt every autie does it but since most of us have an intellectual bent through our neurological configuration, it might be an aspect of autism, shared at times by other species of humanity.



I find it enormously enjoyable.
Works for me.

WTF!