mode of thinking

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I'm curious how common it is for people to change their mode of thinking when stressed. I ask because when I am stressed, my thinking mode becomes increasingly visual. I'm talking about to the point that I am unable to form my thoughts into words and only think in equivalency pictures and video clips. Essentially, I become nonverbal if I am stressed enough.

Any ways, how common is this?

I can't think so great if I get stressed/overwhelmed and have, on numerous occasions, gone mute. I struggle to find and or form words. I think more in concepts or feelings. General ideas. Makes for some communication difficulties, that's for sure. My thinking gets sped up too. It makes it harder to grab onto one of those concepts and figure out what it is and means. If that makes any sense If I don't get to go decompress that turns into a full blown shut down or meltdown on me.

I'm not sure how common it is for people. But yeah, the way I think does change when I'm stressed.

I'm not sure if I become more visual, but I do experience what you described with becoming nonverbal or struggling to form words during shutdowns or meltdowns. So when that happens it can be easier for me to communicate with a picture (unless I'm in a really bad state).

In a very deep panic attack, a person can go non-verbal. It is referred to as "tonic immobility". It is also common in animals.

When a person is in a traumatized state, they physically lose their ability to talk. One of the things that Bessel van der Kolk showed when he first started to do trauma research with functional MRIs is that when people are in the trauma state, they actually shut down the frontal parts of their brain and particularly the area on the left cortex called Broca's area, which is responsible for speech. When the person is in the traumatic state, those brain regions are literally shut down; they're taken offline. Some Aspies report that during a meltdown, they have difficulty processing speech. It is like hearing white noise. Others indicate they lose their ability to think in words. [When the brain collapses down into the core brain, it is becoming a preverbal brain like that of an infant that hasn’t learned to speak.] Rather their brains revert back to thinking in terms of pictures and video clips and when they try and communicate, their words come out as gibberish. Others indicate they lose their ability to process all sensory inputs. Sometimes during a panic attack, the whole body goes limp and the person will collapse on the floor.

^ That's very interesting! Thank you for sharing Jimmy .

I don't notice a change of mode, but I definitely lose the nuances, thinking mostly in black and white, and sometimes unable to form sentences.

The human brain consists of many components, which are layered like an onion. There is the core, which is similar to the brain of an infant. It resides in the Vagus Nerve and Dorsal Vagal systems and is responsible for “Immobilization” or “Freeze” response. There is the middle layer within the Sympathetic Nervous system that controls the “fight or flight response”. And there is the outer layer, within the Myelinated Ventral Vagal system, the social brain.

We tend to think of stress in terms of emotion. But it is really a chemical response in our bodies - a cascade of hormones are released under stress. These chemicals are stored in our muscles and nerves unless they are vented. Stress is cumulative in nature. It just builds and builds until it explodes into distress. Stress energy is stored in 6 areas of the body. These are the core, the two legs, the two arms and the neck.

In my humble opinion (IMHO), what you are describing is excessive stress in the core. There is a form of exercise that can vent this type of stress at the core. It was developed by David Berceli and the exercise is called “TRE - Trauma Releasing Exercises”. It teaches individuals how to generate “neurogenic tremors” to vent stored stress energy.

The following YouTube video provides a glimpse of this process.