Rambling and Associative Thinking

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Anyone else here guilty of these things? I know i tend to ramble a lot (going on and on about a subject) and I also have associative thinking, which means that I do associations that may be totally relatable to me but most listeners find random if not flat out rude and inconsequential.

For example my friends will be talking about using a certain juice while cooking with fruit and I will add suggestions that we could do for cooking for the juice and it being wrong (which always surprises me!) because it was "off topic". The topic was using the fruit juice for a drink, not cooking, even though the possibility of using it for cooking was present, it was "off topic".

I am not sure how else to explain this.

Lets say that my friends see a sign on the road that is an advertisement for friend chicken and one of them says I like their chicken. and I continue the conversation by relating not only my experiences with this place, but how they compare to other chicken restaurants and I get looked weird or told I have gone on "a tangent".

I feel completely unaware until it gets pointed out to me and when I apologize I usually get told I have done this and it has been pointed out to me before, why do I do it again?

I think well you told me that that time about THAT subject how was I supposed to know that saying this or that about another subject was also considered a tangent. Which last time I said this it turned into an argument about me acting simple.

I do want to state this is not a rant or a complaint or anything of the sort, The goal of this thread is to explore associative thinking and how it relates to rambling conversation.

The examples you describe, it sounds to me like you were not going "on a tangent" just adding more to the conversation. With the juice example, I don't know how it could be off topic to suggest other possible uses for the same juice that is being used. With the chicken example, I honestly don't know how comparing the chicken of that restaurant with other restaurants can be "on a tangent".

I know exactly what you are talking about and have thought extensively about the subject.

It's also the thing that makes me hate the world more than anything.

People have extremely rigid, almost prerecorded responses to things or situations. I'm sure you have noticed this elsewhere.

For example: I can get get my dad to say the phrase "you'd be surprised" by stating doubt about any popular subject.

Me - "There can't possibly be that many people listening to Lady Gaga"
My Dad - "oh I think you'd be surprised"

It's works nearly every time. Ask any person at work how they are doing and they will say "tired" 70% of the time. Even if they are not.

Pretty girls are trained to say "creepy" whenever anyone looks at them. Or does anything for that matter.

If you tell someone something like "I tried to find that guy we met at the party on facebook" they will imminently say something about you being a "stalker".

And most of the general public are trained to say you're "ranting" or "well that was random" or you're "over analysing" whenever they hear any auxiliary information added to a conversation at all. Usually they don't even think you are ranting and would be interested in what you have to say if they just turned their f**king mind off autopilot. It makes talking to people unbelievably horrible. It's the entire reason I looked for and joined a site like this.

With the chicken restaurant example and similar situations, the issue may be more in 'how' you say things and your timing rather than that the information is irrelevant. Maybe you are spilling out all the information without giving a proper "introduction" or maybe you are saying too much in one breath so that the others feel you are just lecturing them or excluding them from the conversation.
Your outburst of information may seem to them too sudden. It's probably best to ease into something by trying to relate it more to what was already said. That way it seems less awkward and abrupt to those who are listening to you. Also, try to talk TO them rather than AT them.
I can't really give examples without knowing exactly what you're saying in a conversation that is going wrong.

I know all of this may already be obvious to you..
And of course, since your brain is wired differently, you're more likely to notice and find interest in things that other people may not notice or find interesting. But, there are people out there that will appreciate the things you have to share. So, it's good to work on communication but I'd focus on looking for friends that like your tangents and such.

And to answer your question,
I ramble a lot, but I don't get accused of going off subject. Though, I'm not in contact with very many people in-person. I do know someone with AS that goes "off subject" very often and to a greater extent than what you described here. When he does this, we can't really see where he is coming or going with what he is saying, it's completely off of our trains of thought, and we often don't know anything about the subject he brings up, so it is a bit awkward.
Hmm.. In these situations, he could have probably made it less awkward by explaining what led to this thought. Though, if we were in a really worked-up discussion and didn't want to change subjects, it would have been mildly annoying.


Oh, and Brock, I agree that those prerecorded responses can be annoying, though I've done it to avoid getting into conversations with people or just because I know they expect a throw-away response.
*shrugs*
Just a partial demonstration on my ability to ramble here.

I agree with Alonso that the examples in the OP dont sound particularly off tangent to me.

However, to add to this topic, I feel I have a tendency to think thoughts a bit irrelevant to current discussions. For example, a group might be discussing whether Lady Gaga's latest fashion is cool or gross, I would be wondering something along the lines of what she's like at home when she's not wearing her costumes.

I don't usually vocalize my alterbate thoughts because I have killed conversations with my questions before and people just stare at me and have no response, so nowadays i either just not join conversations because they bore me or I have no idea what everyone is talking about, or I just say socially accepted things whenever I can just so people i have no choice but to be around with don't think I'm a weirdo.

I do associative thinking a lot. I won't say I have a problem with it, because it's actually a great skill to have. Like almost everything AS, it's ignorance that is the problem, not so much AS itself.

But it does get me in trouble sometimes. My mind will make half a dozen or more associative leaps from the actual topic and find a concept or memory that is amusing, and I chuckle. If the conversation topic was not funny, I might get a weird look. But sometimes the conversation is very not funny. I've accidentally laughed after someone announced their father died. I was laughing at something totally unrelated, but explaining that doesn't work very well. Awkward.


Again, with the chicken example though, what you're saying doesn't seem awkwardly unrelated to me. Perhaps a_floating_moon is on to something. If you hijack the conversation and dump a lot of info on them, it could seem tangential to the purpose of the conversation if not the topic of the conversation. Talking about the chicken in the first place may have been to facilitate group bonding or something, not to start a conversation about the merits of different fried chicken institutions.

I definitely ramble. I tend mostly to repeat the same thing over again in a different way because people often don't understand me when I phrase things the way it feels natural to phrase them. Also a large part of this is because of my associative thinking. I tend to use metaphors and similies in conversation, but often it will turn out that although I thought it was the clearest way to express .what I wanted to say, other people won't get what I mean at all, which is super frustrating. Also, sometimes, I will make associations more quickly than other people, and then have to explain the chain of six or so associations I made to get there and everyone looks a me like I'm an alien.

I do that too. It's really embarrassing.

And also, my associative thinking makes me lose track of someone's story or whatever they're saying and when I snap myself back, I'm thinking, omg what is she talking about now? It's really stressful because then I have to concentrate like hell to try and figure out what's going on without letting on that my mind had wandered off.

Sometimes I ask clarifying questions and the speaker gives me weird looks like, "I just told you it a second ago!"

OMGosh. When I saw the title of this thread, my initial thought was that you were talking about me.

This definitely happens to me and I find it embarrassing. Sometimes I am not even consciously aware of the associations that some part of my brain is making, and I will say something "random" and I can't even reasonably explain why I said it.

It also causes me to miss parts of conversations because I get side tracked "playing" with something in my brain.

Although I see nothing wrong with the specific examples you cited. For me it would be like someone seeing a billboard about chicken and then I share a story about a trip I took to Mexico, because I thought of it because I liked the chicken there.