What's this inability to speak?

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When I get under a lot of stress I shut down. I literally can not look at a person, I have to turn away from them. I stim more and I try to speak but sounds come out and do not form words. I feel the same numbness I feel when I'm depressed.

I am not Wurzel, but I have this issue, myself. I will be chattering away and try to say a word but it's like I lost the shape of it in my mouth. Say I am trying to say the word 'guitar' and I can see the guitar in my mind but the word is forgotten, the shape of the word doesn't form in my mouth, my mind is puzzling why I can't say the damn word, I am aware of people starting to prepare to shine me on because I sound like I abruptly stopped speaking. . .
and then it pops into my head and I carry on, or it doesn't and like some sort of stutterer, I think of another word.

before I knew about autism and me, I couldn't find anyone that even vaguely knew what I was experiencing let alone could understand what I was talking about. Gawd, I love WP!

Merle

Speakhard topic

Exactly. For me it is like a verbal constipation.

This used to be a problem for me when I was younger, but it hasn't happened in a while.

I get the inability to speak when overloaded. For me, it's not at all like a panic attack, it is that my brain is attempting to process so much, that it doesn't have any power left over for talking.
My speech function takes a little while to kick in when I first wake up, too.

I have this, selective mutism when I am overcome with any strong emotion. The language gets caught in my throat and can't come out. My throat gets all tight and constricted and I can't open my mouth. If I try to speak all that will come out is weird sounding angry coughs or squeaks. It is very much like a panic attack. Except I feel that my panic is the result of loosing speech, not the cause. I hate it, it feels very out of control and scary.

Once I"m stuck in it, it can take a while to go back to normal. At least a few hours, even up to the next morning.

And a note for all the NTs who have contact with a person with AS or selective mutism, if you see that this person can't speak, STOP! Stop talking to them. Get OUT of their personal space. And leave them alone. There will be no recovery if another human being is nearby.

It's becoming an issue for me, if only because I find myself trying to talk more than I used to. The words don't form and my eyes go down and shut. Sometimes I am able to start up again, other times I just walk away.

This has happened to me a few times, once when i was waiting in line, bored out of my skull, and the cashier was telling me she was ready. Took a few seconds to register she was saying something, and saying it to me. If im not bored, this will also happen when im distracted (i lose my train of thought easily if something interrupts me). At times, however, you can train this. When i worked at a place and had a 1 hr lunch break, i trained myself to only hear for my watch alarm so i would clock in. I would then be able to fall asleep (or shut down) for a good 30-40 min and rest up for the rest of my shift. No one at work could figure out how i did it . . . neither did i until i got my dx. XD If you know what to you, you can train and focus certain aspects of the condition to your advantage.

I thought this was fairly common, though, Merle. My whole family does it from time to time. The words are there and then they're gone, right off the tip of the tongue. Other times, it's like they get stuck and it takes me a few seconds to get them out.

It feels like the connection between thought and speech is absent. When there has been too much stress, I will be unable to answer simple yes/no questions even if I know what I want to say. My body freezes in position; it becomes gradually looser over the next couple of hours as long as no one exacerbates things.

As a child, I sometimes had selective mutism symptoms. This was mostly distinct from the above: it felt just like social anxiety, not shutdown from overload.

Have the selective mutism thing to a certain degree. But more commonly have trouble with my speech when tired. Speaking takes a lot of energy. Both mentally (planning and finding the right words) and physically (making sound). When my energy levels are down my ability to speak is one of the first things to disappear.

wait so something perhaps similar has happened to me, but im not sure.
just now my mom came in with dinner, and i tried to ask her if she got this thing i had ordered, but the word WOULD NOT come to me, or come out. i knew what it was, it just wouldnt come out, and i sort of got a bit hot and flustered and kept trying to say it and stuttered a bit and jumbled my words. that's happened to me before....is that what selective mutism is?

It used to happen a lot to me when I was in high school. Now I usually just get word-finding problems, but may still lose the ability to speak completely. For me, it happens only for a short while when I am very stressed. I often feel a lot of anxiety when I'm in this state.

I do the thing where a word gets "stuck" like others mentioned. Usually when this happens to me I'll repeat the last sylable I said (usually "the", "a" or "uhm") until I remember the next one. Rather like an old record with a scratch

Used to annoy the crap out of my ex husband .. he would interrupt me with "Just say it already!!" and clearly that doesn't do anything except set back my processing time

I see you shiver with antici...

[SAY IT!]

...pation.

(Yeah, I saw Rocky Horror once. Okay, maybe more than once... )

Ah, but were you in garb? My late husband used to get dolled up for the RHPS at the Alabama Theater in Houston, before it was a Bookstop.