Anyone else have "quiet moods"?

Post Reply New Topic

And I don't mean times when you would especially enjoy laying in a hammock and napping/reading.

After a stressful day at work (I work at a country club as a pool waiter; one of the demon children was having a birthday party), I tried to reply to something my mother had just said, and nothing happened. I had to really focus to make anything come out, and even then it was a stilted, short sentence. She had to get on her computer so we could talk over Gmail chat. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, but I couldn't make myself actually say it.

Has anyone else experienced what I'm talking about? It's happened to me many times; this is just the time I paid the most attention to (as it was the only one that occurred post-diagnosis).

Now that you mention it, I think I have.

I'm not sure where to draw the line between "can't" and "really don't feel like it."

I am aware of one time (and only one), early this year, when I had an episode where I could not talk. I was trying really hard to say something like, "I need to be at the school to pick up my son in a few minutes," and all I could get out was, "Son...son...at school.......Not be late." It was a huge struggle, and lasted for half and hour. I think that was a moment of Broca's aphasia, and I assumed it was some kind of temporal lobe seizure. (By the time I was given an appointment for an EEG, it was 3 weeks later, and they didn't find anything unusual.)

But it doesn't sound like that's what you were talking about.

There are many times when I have a strong need to be silent, and if someone tries to talk to me, I really don't want to. It's different from a feeling of wanting to be left alone. I just don't want to have to make words come out of my mouth. But if I really need to, I can.

Other times I feel like just babbling away.

My son has two friends (brothers) who would be waiting for us when we got home from work and after school care and would immediately start in with the video games and the arguing about who's turn it was. After a few episodes of mommy freakout I realized I cannot function unless I have some down time before we have company. Things are better for everybody once I started setting some boundaries.

I'd draw the line at the point at which anything you say will be so biased by the difficulty that it won't be what it was supposed to be... if that makes sense.

I think I have to use an analogy, and maybe it won't make sense, but I'm going to try.
When people try to be "nice" by never saying no to anything, there comes a point where they're so miserable from the overload of never saying no to anything they're asked to do that they're not capable of saying anything nice. They're grouchy and miserable, so their effort to be nice has backfired, and now they're being nasty to everyone.

So the line between "can't" and "don't feel like it" is the point at which the effort backfires.

Happens to me all the time.. I want to say something but I can't..

Mostly when people ask me things.. and I just stand there looking like an idiot..

Yeah. Often.

Yes, I do. My mum tries to talk to me and I just go quiet or say very little. It's happens when I've had a hard day or I've been alone most of the day and can't deal with another person.

Yes. This has happened to me a couple of different ways - one way is when I was in an extremely stressful/emotional situation, talking (or trying to), and my mouth/throat/tongue physically froze up... it felt kinda like the talking mechanism ground to a halt, sorta paralyzed, and I'd have to wait and try to get it going again, at which time the words would come out sounding very forced and weird, almost like talking while someone's strangling me. The other way it has happened is a full mutism... it's like I knew I could physically talk, but my brain couldn't make my voice activate. This has happened when I was extremely stressed in a social encounter... it happened more when I was younger, but still happens sometimes at social gatherings, though not nearly as bad as when I was a kid/teenager. (I once dated a guy, back in high school, to whom I never uttered a single syllable. There were a few other silent encounters with guys back then too, lol.)

Yes, I totally clam up when my wife asks me about WrongPlanet. Or if I want to talk about AS, I have a real difficulty bringing it up. I've found it's much easier to use an alternate form of communication. GTalk is wonderful. I know it seems incredibly silly to do that to someone who is in the same room as you, but for us... hey, she knows it's hard for me, and she figures that to have it out in some form is better than not having it out at all... which is very true.

Yes.

All the time. when im not in a good mood I don't even feel like bringing up a conversation or continuing one.

I sometimes need to warm up my voice to say something. I can have problems speaking loudly enough to the cashier at the grocery store. It could have to do with being nervous or that I've been deep in my own thoughts for so long as well.

Try switching it around.

I have the occasional 'social mood' but in general default to a 'quiet mood' my entire life. Trying to get more than half a dozen word response out of me is difficult for most people.