being zoned out constantly

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Another weird thing about me. When it comes to solving problems that require heavy thought I'm quite gifted. Yet when it comes to simpler tasks that merely require mental quickness I feel like a complete ret*d. I think deep and slow while others think shallow and quick. It's almost like my brain is a heavy boulder that takes a long time to get moving and doesn't turn on a dime, yet with effort it can power through most problems. NT's seem to have lighter more nimble brains that can deal more easily with quick decisions and processing multiple sources of information efficiently.

I was tested for absence seizures when I was 4 years old. The EEG was negative. I was simply filtering people out. I imagine that absence seizures would have a different subjective feel.

I have a problem where I am busy doing something else and then I am brought to read an article and I just can't keep my attention to it. That's why I hardly finish articles. Also I also can't keep my concentration on something I am reading when I was doing something else because it's so hard to get my mind focused on something else to understand what I am reading.
That's why I hate interruptions and would rather do things in my own time frame.
Also I can't get my attention to something sometimes when I am bored or anxious or upset. I'd rather pace or have thoughts circling around in my brain.
Sometimes I don't even have the patients to figure something out.

I always do that.

I zone out too. I remember being in a pub and my friends were all chatting to each other. I couldn't hear them and I kept staring at a EXIT sign.

Yep. Lost in my own little world...

what are absence seizures?

I had to chuckle reading the original post - I relate to it entirely. I think that it's a serious problem for me because it affects all areas of my life. I think I can say that I'm reasonably intelligent, and creative, but because of this zoning out/mind focus problem, I have so much difficulty doing anything. Even when I am passionate about something, I'll sit down to do something, then all of a sudden become aware that my mind's been elsewhere - either blank, or on random thoughts or worries - and several minutes or even hours have gone by. I've sat down and read 500 page novels in one day, yet other times I realise that I've spent 30 minutes 'reading' the same sentence/paragraph, over and over, and it refuses to 'enter' my brain. lol.

Other times, I've been driving, and 100kms later down the road woke up/realised I'd been thinking about ants, and panicked and wondered what had happened the last 80kms or so. I don't drive anymore.



Just wanted to add: I find that sometimes stimming in various ways, helps prevent me from falling into these lapses. But it doesn't really help that much I guess, because instead of lapsing for several hours, I just stim for several hours. Equal waste of time.

I relate substantially to the original post and when I was making my failed attempt to get an AS diagnosis a few years ago, one of the medics picked up on what I was saying about low concentration and short-term memory along with daydreaming, trances, blank mind etc and sent me for an EEG. I was told that on the basis of the EEG, I had partial epilepsy but there was no neurologist involved in that diagnosis. When I later made my own arrangements to see a neurologist, he didn't believe that I was epileptic and said that the EEG clinic where I had been tested was notorious for over-reporting. He sent me for another EEG elsewhere and said that whilst there were certainly some spikes on the graph, there was insufficient evidence for a diagnosis of epilepsy. Now I'm wondering if I was describing AS symptoms all along. When I mentioned this on a thread a few weeks ago, someone said that the trance-like state described was called the theta state.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

I know it isn't seizures, though it most probably is poor attention and working memory. As for AS, then I am no too sure either, that is having Asperger's, think I'm just very introverted:

http://www.kitschmag.com/index.php?opti ... &Itemid=27

So I am a very intense thinker or better put an obsessive and intensive thinker, which makes me forget my surroundings. So it is a bad condition of being introverted in my own thoughts, or sometimes just stressed with a lack of sleep, then it pushes it towards a kind of brain shut down, where I can't take in that much, if anything. My brother mentioned pseudo-dementia, which is often linked to depression.

http://web4health.info/en/answers/bipol ... dement.htm

Sounds plausible, but I don't know. It's all a riddle to me.

ditto. it is also often accompanied by a wicked headache

I feel pretty much the same.



I sometimes experiance the same thing, just that I call it "temporal-expanse", it happens to me at home and outside, when I walk through the streets ( I sometimes stop in the middle of pavement and stare into the ground wthout even noticing other people or I block when waitng for the gren light - I mean, when the green light is on, I don't pass across the street, I don't even move)



It's like - I'm too focused on my inside, on my thoughts and emotions; or I'm not thinking at all - just having a blank mind and not understanding other people's words...



I have problems with my short term memory. I can't remember what I've been doing fifteen minutes ago; I can't remember the date and hour... I sometimes can't focus, I feel so distracted by the tumult of my thoughts in my brain; the thoughts which I can't sometimes understand.

I've literally forgotten something within receiving the information in seconds. Like writing down a phone message. I have to repeat the message until it's all down on paper.

Oh, yeah, this one just sux. Especially when it decides to dredge up things from 20 or 30 years ago!

Reminds me of a thing, do you know that thing when you read. Suddenly you realise you haven't been reading, like just scanning the page without taking anything in??...
Then you'll have to read it again, and even this time it's not sure you toke anything in. Then you'll try again, and this time you will understand everything the text reads...

Everyone dissociates especially when driving but those who do it more to the extent of re-reading sentences over and over may want to check out auditory processing disorder, - sentences heard but meaning does not sink in sounds familiar and may be related. Rocking of course induces the trance states to some extent. I believe there might be an association with transcendental meditation and the physiological changes experienced by practitioners are likely similar.

I always thought this was ADHD....I have it a lot while reading or listening to music and especially when Im in the car listening to music.

Could be daydreams or absence seizures. I didn't know that zoning out was common in AS, only ADHD. It's the core inattentive symptom. I used to do it a lot as a child, not so much anymore. I daydream more.

Shutdowns for me are triggered by stress because of too much sensory stimuli or people making me angry. Sometimes they happen directly after a meltdown or in place of one.