Verbalizing thoughts

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Why is it so difficult for a verbal autistic person to properly verbalize what seems so eloquant in their mind? I was a late talker with a regression after that, but I am verbal today. Still, I can only speak in scripts, and I can never say what is going through my head. I know this is a common problem but WHY is it so hard to say what I can easily think?

Well... do you think in the same words you write in.... or the same words you speak in?

I don't know about you, but I think in at least four dimensions and audio of frequency well beyond human hearing. I don't even have the external senses to detect such as my mind synthesizes... So how in all hells could any of us be expected to communicate such things?


I believe neurotypicals just have vastly lower standards in that regard (also their minds are dull).

Maybe you (the op) are a visual thinker,and not a verbal thinker.

So you have to translate the pictures in your mind to words- hense have to script it out.

I was having a discussion with the psych who does my meds management and I was expressing frustration with my inability to verbalize my thoughts in a cohesive manner. He said that (if I can remember correctly) that parts of my brain were interfering with other parts when I tried to communicate. I think maybe he was talking about anxiety causing us to self edit as we tried to speak. I am not diagnosed with AS but I am with Inattentive ADD and Depression. My son is diagnosed with AS and my childhood was very similar to how he is. One particular aspect is garbled speech. I had a big problem with it and only overcame it after age 30. I can speak clearly now but I often choose to remain quiet because I can't complete a thought before I go off on a tangent. My son has been in speech therapy and they said he was doing great but I was still seeing trouble at home where his speech was so garbled I couldn't understand him. I asked if they were asking him to read a prepared paragraph or if they were asking him to spontaneously generate speech of more than one or two sentences. They seemed surprised that I asked and said no. They would find very different results if they did.

I don't know. I can't think it either. I don't have any eloquent verbalizations in my head. I don't have any verbalizations in my head, so I have to make them as I go. It's hard to make them, so I don't speak well. Speaking makes me tired. It's hard to keep it up. I was a late talker with no regression, and my problem was that I had no verbalizations in my head, didn't know how to make them, didn't try to make them, and didn't know that I could try to make them.

I have difficulty verbalizing too and even when trying to express myself through writing.
I think it might be because thoughts and ideas are like vast networks of connections and they're not linear. Trying to express those thoughts with words and sentences, which are linear, is really difficult. You have to find the right words and the right way to say it and for me it takes so much time and it's so hard.

Thanks for helping me attempt to figure this out. I guess everyone is confused by me because, as a graduate student, I have to write a lot of papers. My papers always come out very well written, but if I try to SPEAK about it (without having it scripted), then it turns out to be nonsense and I sound completely stupid (which I'm not). I think part of it the visual thinking, which I hadn't really thought about. But even then, it doesn't take long for me to arrange my thoughts to type them out on here or in my papers. Just to say them out loud.

On a neurological level maybe it's a consequence of the fewer long-range connections in the brain. (though I don't know how far apart the "thinking" and "speaking" parts are).

[not dx'ed, so take the following however you please]

In high school and college I had a lot of "wow, I didn't know you could write like that" comments. It was like I was a different person on paper than IRL (though it actually took me years to realize that that I must come off as kind of stupid, verbally). Nowadays, it's obvious even to me how bad my verbal ability to explain anything is.

To me, it's like that speaking is like streaming data -- you can't back up and change anything (without making a mess, anyway). And, the filing system in my brain seems to order things into a cloud rather than a one-dimensional structure that's easy to stream into speech. OTOH, maybe NT's also have brain-clouds but just have awesome speech pre-processing.

I didn't really notice this problem until I was in college; the job I had while I was a college student required me to have to explain issues customers were having to coworkers. I just could not figure out why I couldn't get my thoughts out clearly. I think it was something that was already there, but it didn't fully manifest itself until I got older.

I also have problems with translating my thoughts into words. In my head, my thoughts are very organized and clear. I can easily translate them into writing as they appears in my head, but for some reason it doesn't work very well when I try and express them verbally.
Sometimes it very frustrating when I want to join in a conversation, and by the time I figure out how to express my thoughts in words, the conversation has moved on to a new subject.

That's why I prefer texting and IM.

I can't do it either. I open my mouth and my mind goes blank.

I saw a new therapist today, and he did a great job of summing up how I'm feeling...which was good because I certainly can't.

I sometimes find it helpful to pause, compose the sentence then "read off" what I just composed in my head.

I went to a public speaking organisation for a little while to try to work on this skill, as I am very bad at it!!

I was progressing ok as a beginner, while using my cue cards (with every word written on it!!), until I got to the point where I was meant to able to start trying to use dot point cue cards, and even further - impromptu speeches! I bombed out, then never returned. I just couldn't formulate what to say in my head without it all written down already, it was a disaster!

I'm not good at writing my thoughts either. Writing is almost as tiring as speaking.

Like some others here, I am very clear and intelligent-sounding in text but when I try to talk verbally about things I stammer, hesitate, have trouble keeping up with a conversation and generally run into a brick wall when I am trying to put things into words. I have huge problems expressing myself verbally and often get frustrated trying to explain things and give up.

I am a visual thinker, but I don't think it is translating the images into words which is the problem, as I can send things straight from my brain to my fingers and type them without problems (though I suppose even fast typing is a little slower than speaking, so perhaps that helps). There just seems to be something about sending thoughts through my verbal equipment which is problematic for me.

It has got to the point where I have considered asking someone I am talking to to get on an instant messenger so I can explain to them what I am trying to say!