Selective Mutism?

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(from wikipedia)

This just happened to me today, at the store with my mom. Most of the time at home I use noises and gestures to indicate what I want. Today I could hardly gesture at all to what I wanted leading to my mom being frustrated because she didn't have anything she could give me for lunch that I liked. Then she keeps asking me if I want this or this or that and I just withdraw even more.

I had a friend at school who always told me I was shy even when I insisted that I wasn't.

I don't really understand selective mutism. Can you talk about how it feels internally? I have been in situations where because of shyness I really didn't know what to say so I felt paralyzed. Is it a processing thing, where you know what you want to say but can't? The closest thing I can relate to that in personal experience is if I'm woken up suddenly from a deep sleep and someones asks me a question about what I was dreaming. What I want to say makes sense in my head but doesn't make sense verbally and I know it wouldn't make sense to the person.

I would say my SM was at it's peak during childhood. It's still a bit of an issue now. People still tell me that I don't speak enough. Sometimes it's just easier to say nothing, then to speak and be all unnatural about it. Don't worry you are not alone in this.

I can't speak when I am very stressed. It used to be very bad when I was around 16/17, but is less of a problem now. I call this feeling "locked up inside", because this is how I feel: I want to connect to othe rpeople, but I just can't. I grabbed the term from a selective mutism mailing group I was on for a while.

By the way, slective mutism should n ot be formally diagnosed if the speech problems are due to autism or another PDD, but that does say that some of us have quite a few of these traits.

A lot of times when I don't know how to respond to something I get "like a deer in the headlights." I don't know if that's what this is referring to or not. I don't see how it's "selective" I certainly don't select it! Lots and lots of times, I just don't have anything to say. Sometimes people get offended by that, they think I'm ignoring them or something when I don't have anything to say.
I rarely pick up the phone, 'cause half the time I get all panicked and hang up.

Btw, this isn't a great thread name.. there's a repeat spammer/troll who uses a similar topic name. I clicked this topic fully expecting to report it.. so some people might be skipping the post altogether, thinking it's spam.

"deer in the headlights" is a great way to describe it. Although I feel that most of the time my mind is just blank and I can't get any words to form coherently. Like I have my own language and I can't translate it into English.

That's what it is for me. A lot of times, I'll know exactly what I want to say, but just can't get it to actually come out...maybe I can get my mouth to open, but no words will form. If I really, really want to say it, I have to concentrate really hard and force it out quickly, usually only getting about three words out.

Like another poster said, this usually only happens when I'm stressed.

There's also the "only talking to certain people, using monosyllabic answers for people I don't know very well" thing, but that seems like something different to me, because I can talk, I just don't know what to say, or how to say it.