Moments When One Is Mentally Stuck. (Mental Walls).

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It has occurred to me that this happens often and I have over many, many years assumed that it is part of normal life. Let me try to put words to my thoughts to see if I can explain things.
Lets say I have a task to do, like filling out forms or it may have been school work. Let me assume it is schoolwork from when I was in school. I could be working fine and then hit a stage that is similar to mindblank (Which I sometimes get) but it is slightly different in that I kinda know what I must do and I know the answer, but somehow I just sit there and do nothing? And then when a teacher would see me doing this (Or my Mum if it was homework) they would look at my work and where I had progressed to, and then said something which was like some sort of trigger or switch, and I would snap out of the sitting there and doing nothing and get back to work.
I don't get this so much with mechanical tasks. It is more with either paperwork type tasks or sometimes computer/internet type tasks. If I was on my own I could just sit there for hours, take a break for lunch, go back and it is like I go back to sitting there. It is like I know the answers but somehow I need something to act like a switch just to click my mind into motion to follow the specific task that I had in mind...
Yet other times, when I'm in the right mood I can keep going and going and going!
Others have said it is lazyness, but I can have weeks or months like this. And lets say I have suddenly been switched on past a daze like moment of just sitting there.... I then can go forward a while and then hit another type of invisible wall and get back to how I was. I could keep going like this if I was in this stage.
It is a type of mind blank, but in mind blank. But I find that if I get like this, I can back up a little, and decide to do something else instead and have no problem. But as soon as I try to go back to the said task, I go back to just sitting there.
It feels to me or rather, my experience is like having a old Playstation 1 game with a small fault. One can be playing the game fine and allmis going well until one gets the a certain point and one presses a certain button and all just feeezes. One just sits there. The only think one can do is restart the whole game... And if one gets to the same point but presses a different button it carries on and works, but the game takes on a totally different direction to the one intended. Now I am like that in real life in the same way. It is only doing certain tasks I get it. And istead of doing more form filling, I am here online distracting myself as writing this means I am not just sitting there doing nothing.
I have to go back to the point in the form and think of a different answer just to click my mind back in motion if that makes sense? Oh yes, I can do the forms. But, I may have to rephraze my answers to avoid hitting this invisible wall.

Am I imagining this? And why is it that if I hit this wall, that if someone else prompts me I can continue without any problems... But if I don't have this I have to come away and take a different approach. It is like being on a skateboard slowly moving and one hits a stone. The skateboard does not have the momentum to bump over it so it just stops. If someone comes along and moves the stone, I am back to moving again. If not, I have to back up a little and shift the skateboard sideways and go around the stone to proceed. It is like I get this mentally somehow? Does it make sense? No, I am not mental. I have a good mind. I am intelligent. And it does not happen often. But when it does happen, I can just sit there for ages and make no progress?

It could just be lazyness kicking in. But it does not feel like lazyness. Ok. I am just sitting there when I should have done something. Uhmmm.

Maybe I'm just lazy in doing certain tasks I don't want to do?

It sounds like executive function stuff to me (EFD), so I goggled Autism and EF along with "mind blank". I came upon this link. EFD is associated with AS and ADHD, and being human in general.

Putting ADHD aside (or not), does this sound similar?
https://blogs.psychcentral.com/adhd-mil ... -and-adhd/

I like this description. "People with EFD often experience time blindness, or an inability to plan for and keep in mind future events. They also have difficulty stringing together actions to meet long-term goals. This is not an attention problem in the present tense, but rather a sustained attention problem."

However, I found the article overwhelming, so I'd say that ironically the article on EFD is not EFD friendly. (and it's child oriented) In any case, source: https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/ ... functions/

If you do something when someone else says so, but not of your own volition: sounds EF to me. Remind me, did you take that online test? I was 67% EFD.

Which online test do you mean?

Here's a completely unofficial one. Personally EFD reads like an aspect of ASD to me, but I have to remember that I have AS-like friends and family who have good EF (or so they think).

https://www.additudemag.com/executive-f ... or-adults/

That seemed a little hokey, so I looked at this website, and the symptoms list might as well be subtitled "Sharon B".
https://www.healthline.com/health/executive-dysfunction

Back to topic: I mind blank during conversations. There's so much I could say and yet what to say, but then my mind is blank. If I were asked, "What do you do for breakfast? What do you do around 3:00 pm? Do you exercise?" I can answer. But no, when asked "What do you do in a day, or what kind of things do you do..." ---- it's like a 100-page fill-in-the-blank form dropped in front of me. My mind goes blank.

During a job interview someone had the audacity to ask me "Tell me all that you know about..." Mind blank!! ! How can I organize that many thoughts? I know a lot. I did manage to talk about one aspect, but I think they were expecting a strategic summary. I probably came across as knowing very little. Turkeys.

EF related - just the past four hours: I once again didn't complete 2 work tasks I was supposed to complete yesterday latest. I still can't find the personal flight itinerary that I am certain I printed two weeks ago. I forgot the house key when I left for a bike ride with the kids (I lucked out and found a way back in). During the bike ride the kids had no less than 6 upsets (and I had 3). I gave us all high-fives (once we got in the house) for making it through happily at the end. I did manage to prepare pizza, but not veggies. I shoved enough papers aside to make room on the table to eat. I'm really thirsty right now, because I've forgotten three times to prepare my tea --- I'm going for it now --- I'm going to do it this time! (if I put a timer on and it beeps at me, I've got over a 50% of succeeding! (There are 100s of times I've looked all over the house for my tea mug and it's sitting in the kitchen with now-cooled water.)

Right this minute: I've got my tea. Life is Good.

I should totally go over to the Successful Aspie post and say: I am a SUCCESS! I am sitting with my tea, my children are still in one piece (each) - we are fed, we are hydrated, we have air and shelter ---and we're IN the shelter--- we even still like each other ---- This is SUCCESS!

Oh no. This is another test I've failed at. I scored 50 out of 60. Uhmm. Well. I usually try to keep to routines like always carrying my keys in my trousers pocket on the right and my wallet on the left. The keys have to be covered with plenty of toilet paper so they don't fall out. My bedroom is always messy. However, when I have been in work, I try to keep things clean and tidy because if I don't I can never find things like spanners, so I learned to always put things in the proper places so I can work. BUT, at home I am the complete opposite. I try to get organized but... Put it this way. I have not worked on my trains for about 8 or 10 months now because I don't seem to organize myself enough to tidy my bedroom to make space to work on. Ok, I try to always give myself space to walk, and I never let food or things like that get in the untidyness, as I would absolutely hate any rotting food or things like that to be in the mess. It is more that I have semi organized piles of things which I have roughly organized into piles but then come to a stop to know where to go from there.
Yet occasionally... Maybe once a year or once every couple of years, all will click into place, and I can do it and get things done. It is wierd. I may go for a month like this... And get lots done, and then I lose it and slowly everything goes back to being all over the place in semi organized piles cluttering up my bedroom!
I must get organized, but I can't yet. I have the forms to fill in and three bicycles to do I promised people where I have not been able to do them for about 8 months or so (For two bikes) and on top of this my brother keeps giving me tasks to fix his things and he is going to be angry and dissapointed again because it is not done. (He doesn't have time and is abroad at the moment. He keeps delegating... Actually how two of these bicycles need to be done because I think he told the owners that I would do them. I am a bicycle mechanic by trade and normally my own bikes are in tip top conditoon as I am very fussy in a mechanical way... But even my bicycles need work! I am soo far behind because every time I have tried I get mind blank and partial shutdowns and have to come away and leave them to avoid myself totally shutting down... It is soo frustrating as I could do the three bikes in a day if I am organized, but I just can't seem to do tasks at the moment. I have to do little bits every other month and hope I can get them finished.
I am waiting for a good day where I can blitz them and get the stress of the backlog done. It stresses me to have things backing up. If they were my own things it would not stress, but these are tasks I found myself promising to do for others as I can't say no. If I say no people think I am being mean to them personally.

I think the score is high because I hit burnout. I think if I am back to normal as I used to be it may be about 5 points lower. Prehaps 8 points lower.

Might be worth you asking or looking up about managing Executive Function Disorder. There are books of course.

For perspective, my AS-like mom and I scored 39 (65%), my NT husband scored 19 (32%), and my NT father scored 9 (15%).

I've read ASD is an umbrella of a whole lot of issues. I get my report in one week(!) and either it's going to be ASD, or it's going to be all of GAD (anxiety), DPD (dependency), SPD (sensory), EFD (executive functioning), PTSD (trauma), Cyclothymia (moody) and mild dyslexia, agoraphobia, ADHD, SAD (seasonal), depression or passive-aggressiveness.

To me I seem normal enough. Wouldn't anyone else with my chemical makeup and life experiences be exactly like I am? My AS support group said if even my DX is not AS, I am welcome to stay b/c they feel "you are one of us". Joke: But when I asked why they thought so, everybody had a mind blank.

I was thinking about it and thinking how it doesn't effect me much because I am so used to automatically working around any minor issues through little routines like being strict with myself and others to keep things in certain places so they can always be found...

Yesterday I had a classic example of what happens when I multitask. I drove to town to sort out my mobile phone. Parked in the multistory car park. Went down the stairs (I don't do lifts). Went to the phone shop. They needed my phone so I had to go back to the car. My Mum said to take somw shopping to the car while I was going. I took the shopping to the car, locked rhe car, went through my routine of checking every door etc, and came back. My Mum said "You've got your phone?" No I hadn't. I had to go back again. The being told to take the shopping up to the car had completely thrown me off track of why I was going up to the car in the first place for.
Often if people give me extra tasks I tell them that I will do this one first, and come back and then do the next one and so on. It may mean multiple journeys, but I have to do them like that in the order that I was given them or I will forget.
If it is a task where I already have one thing in my hand and someone gives me another thing to go to the exact same place I am fine. It is the "While you are there" scinario where I forget the main reason why I was going in the first place, and then just get the extra thing while I was there and come back just with that extra thing.
I used to write things down, but would lose what I wrote the things down on.
When I was on the railway and had to remember all the request stops, I would write everything down on my hand. I can't forget my hand!

It's funny to me (now that I notice) that when my routine breaks down I'll try to adhere to it and make it work... to a ridiculous degree ("why isn't this WORKING?!") and then someone will say "hmm, well, it's not; how about this?" and their solution is so obvious and simple, and once I swallow my initial anxiety, I have a new routine that works great! Apparently it's really hard for me to make the leap from "this is not working well" to "how about this?". I can, but it's not my go to.

Yes, at our age we've compensated and so we sometimes take the underlying challenge for granted (we forget). But then when our routines breakdown, our tools are not available, or are otherwise challenged - whoops! I think it's good to do a refresh: bring the challenge back into Focus - see if there is any new tools that might help, then continue on.

I couldn't read your whole posts (sorry, Sunday evening, a bottle of wine and chill out) but getting mentally stuck was something very common when I was studying Physics. A lot of people experienced it every now and then.
Often asking someone for help really helped. Either the person could see a solution you couldn't notice yourself or simply the "rubber duck effect" worked - when trying to explain the problem to someone else, you realized how things work.
It's quite a common thing, at least among people around me.

I never knew I did routines as I never thought of them as routines. I had heard that many on the autistic spectrum had routines. I didn't understand it. I assumed it was writing down a list and needing to follow the list exactly... I just thought "I don't do that" so I assumed I don't do routines. But then one day my youngest brother said something. I had told him off for not leaving the barn door padlock in the door (I am always having to look for it after he opens the doors) and he decided to reply and started saying a whole list of many of my routines I did... And though it was him arguing back it was a real lightbulb moment for me, as I suddenly realized that yes, I have routines! I just never associated the many little quirks and things I did were routines. I was shocked!

I don't call it routines, I call them procedures.
Doing things always the same way helps me with poor executive functioning and absent-mindedness.
So, my procedure of going out includes locking the door. My procedure of undressing (like, removing a jacket) not at home includes putting everything into my bag - that way I don't forget to take it back home with me. If I ride bike to work always the same way, I don't get lost.
It's just useful.

I don't have issues with getting lost as long as I know where I am. Just temporarily between reference points. As long as I stay in Wales...

Perfect!
Unfortunately, I can also confuse directions.

Uhmm. I got confused giving a certain person from WP a guided tour of an area of Wales and went in a loop on one of my "Famous shortcuts" and ended up back in the place we started from! Haha!

I am fine with directions.