Perseveration (To describe the impossible)

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For so long now ages 8 - 21, I've been eating away at my mind. I've been trying to ask a question that I didn't know the words to. I searched high and low but I finally found the word "Perseveration".


I tried talking to a therapist, my GP, and psychiatrist... I told them "I have some kind of mental disorder that feels like something I cannot hope to describe.". I told them "Something is seriously wrong with my head, but it's not autism or anything you've proposed." The more I tried to describe it the less detail I could come up with, and what was worse I hyperfocused on it at least 12 hours a week.

Slowly, I ran out of ways to describe it. "Insanity" seemed like an accurate symptom, but it wasn't the cause. I had about 20 wiki tabs open once I realized I should be looking in language disabilities that are related to psychological ones... Yeah something that simple took me over 10 years of "research" to find. If you think that's too long, how about you try to solve a murder with no evidence? It's essentially the same thing, except I guess I'm the dead guy in this metaphor?

I would try to compile a list of symptoms or a few paragraphs in order to better ascertain the answer I am looking for. If that didn't work I'd probably have just published it myself. (Yeah, I was obsessed with figuring this out.) No matter how long I tried, I eventually just came back to a blank text file... sometimes with the sentence "I don't know"

I haven't ever used the poll here, or attached a link. Hopefully I didn't screw that up.


If you aren't interested in personal facts just read below.

The word is called Perseveration. I'll put a wiki link below for anyone who may have suffered this same fate. Nobody will be able to help you, trust me I tried asking everyone I have ever met if they ever felt like this. Not even experts seem to understand why I couldn't describe it.

They describe it with a real world connotation rather than a metaphysical one, but I'm certain this is it!

TL;DR This ruined my life. It's my worst symptom. I'll never recover from the amount of time I lost looking for it.
Perseveration

Can you give any examples? I have wondered if it applies to me for a while, but have never fully understood the descriptions of perseveration. And they never give examples.

_________________
31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

Sometimes in my life I have exhibited echolalia , if that counts.

I am not sure if this conversation is germane to just schizophrenia, bipolar and other mental disorders.

I was given a video recently of my late friend giving a talk at the church we both attended. He had a schizophrenia diagnosis, but also acted very autistic in nature (I know, positive/negative symptoms). It was an hour and a half interview regarding his spiritual journey as part of a project that the church did. While I seemed to not notice this when he was alive, my perception was that he had issues with perservation just like a person with autism would. His perservation/special interest seemed to be centered on environmental issues/climate change and Eastern thought. I have looked on the internet and haven't been able to find much material as to whether a person with schizophrenia has special interests or perservation like an autistic person would.

I quite often display echolalia, constantly repeating my cat's name or my best friend's name, or fantasy's relating to Lego aloud or in my head. I have long realized this is not what my peer's were doing, that this isn't normal, but I now know it is related to my Asperger's. I often found this really difficult to share with any psychiatrist as I found it embarrassing, I would only describe my behavior as childish, but up until the point where I realized I was on the autism spectrum, I did not understand why I had these repetitive thoughts and speech. I knew it was more than just OCD, because it wasn't deliberately done to avoid some anxiety provoking situation even though it was calming, it was all automatic. All my OCD rituals were conscious and deliberate actions that I chose to do to avoid anxiety.