Slow mental processing

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Does anyone here with AS have times when they think slowly, and can't get their head around much?
My thoughts get scrambled sometimes, and I don't think so well then. Often when something's on my mind or the situation is chaotic. I've been feeling like that for most of today for some reason.

I take these as two different items.

My mind is oft slower than anyone else's, BUT when it does arrive at an answer that will be the best answer in the room.

When my mind is online, it is awesome. However;
1. It works well within the confines of lpgic. In the nonlogical realm it sucks.

2. It can go offline. F'rinstance, once I was installing electrical in a friend's house. Several days. The people who pulled wires had made not noted alterations. I was looking at a can with more wires than should have been there. No bloody idea. My mind went offline. I might have as well been looking at spaghetti!

I had an idebtity crisis.

Mines usually offline, and comes online once in a while (I really have to be interested)

-I think I am suffering from mild depression - about 5 years now.

"Processsing" is a word which is a metaphor. It is not about brains, but computers. Brains don't process and they don't compute. But they do handle scads of information: sights, sounds, tempratures, touch--and even words.

In people, information comes in and information goes out. When we describe those things, it is difficult not to use the word "process". But we forget that using words is a learned ability, much like riding a bike. So we forget that it is made up of individual steps, which began as writing letters, etc. etc. Do we say riding a bike is a "process"?

OK, so now you know I *hate* the word "process". At an rate...

I am Asperger's and severe ADHD. I take this to mean that a huge amount of information is always going in, and, depending on the day, very little of it may get out. And depending on a lot of things, I may get so caught up in monitoring and editing what goes out--when I'm speaking/writing, for instance--that even less goes out.

Thus "self-reports" can be difficult if one gets caught up in the stuff we use words for. I sometimes wake up and I can point to the toaster, but I can't say the name. Doesn't mean the information isn't in there, or coming into my brain. I sometimes am in groups of people and can't even respond to what they're saying. Right then. But ask me six months from now, and sometimes I can completely reproduce the conversations others were having--and even describe my own fog.

My information intake is a lot bigger than neurotypicals, exponentially so, according to their reports. My information output, when not in a fog, can be overwhelming--from their self-reports. But on some days I can't even turn a corner in my own house without hitting it with some part of my body.

For me, ADHD medicine has helped this tremendously. But even then, not always or regularly. If I have a cold, for instance, I'm right back in the fog. But we are mistaken when we think the "fog" is a coma--and especially when we judge ourselves based on being in the fog. Why?

Because those judgments can make us not understand the breadth of information coming in, even when we don't know it.

-jmv

i think my As has left me and not a moment too soon. i think a glutin free diet has cured me, now im pretty shure alls i have is just mild depression.

Mine at times will seemingly go off-line but most times I feel like I can't stop thinking.

in the part of my brain I spend my time in stuff moves very deliberatly, in the back of my brain, where I push stuff that I don't want to work on, well, it's the back room, I don't know what happens back there, but when I put something back there so long as I have all the information I need the anwer WILL come back eventually, and it will be right

I arrive at answers more quickly usually in part because of this almost dual core structure <you'd have to be in here to get it, it really does feel like the other room is a seperate processor core sometimes> and also in part because I don't have to go through all the steps, I can use associations to skip steps that other people have to muddle through

so it's like compoaring equiv amd/intel processors, intels have higher clock speeds, but the amd can do just as well <if not better in tasks it is suited for>

I do seem to think slower than most, but I think a lot of it comes from sounds. I hear people say things to me, but they are just sounds for what seems to be an eternity then finally they coalesce into something I can understand. Meanwhile, there looking at me like I have three heads, until I finally answer.
damocles