I am preferred nonverbal.

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I have been struggling more and more with speech so I am using text to speech software to communicate. Although I can say single words, I cannot form sentences coherently and it comes out like crap / gibberish.

Can anyone else share their ways of communicating nonverbally?

How do I get it across to ignorant people (like my so-called carers or people who are narrow-minded) that I genuinely find speech extremely hard and it is much less agonising to use text to speech software? I've had people say "come on O, you have the power of speech! Stop being silly!"

True. Thanks.

I am also perferred nonverbal i wrote a blog post on why, not sure if it is the same for you but i will give you the link. if so it might help them understand better, I perdominantly use AAC apps for communication


http://autismdoggirl.blogspot.com/2014/ ... erbal.html

do you have any perfered AAC app?

Thanks for the interesting post. I read your blog post and I can understand it well.

Today I took a Pharmacology exam and it went well. I was really happy and temporarily I could speak about it.

But once I got home I lost communication.

It seems that being overjoyed gives me temporary verbal moments. Even if I make no sense when I speak.

I have a text to speech app on my phone.

Tbh I am preferred nonverbal because people cannot understand what I say when I speak. At least with the app I can construct meaningful sentences. People were staring at me when I was talking to my friend about my exam. It was because my communication sounded like jargon. I wasn't speaking English, I was speaking my own language it seemed.

So when I'm overjoyed and verbal, I don't really make sense.

Only problem is, I feel extremely embarrassed to use my app to speak for me in public so I either end up saying nothing or attempting to speak and messing it up.

Speech for me is like speaking in a different language that I have a very hard time with the grammar and word choice.

I just get so embarrassed. I would love to use my app more often but I feel so embarrassed. So most of the time I cannot communicate at all.

It seems I'll have to force myself to speak. Too many circumstances are making it impossible to use AAC.

I've read in your signature you also have Schizophrenia? Sometimes jumbled speech can be attributed to that as well. I can speak perfectly fine, when I want to, but I know others with it who can't. Not saying it's not because of your Asperger's as well, I'm not you, or a doctor, so I wouldn't know. Try to take some time before speaking, and organize your thoughts. Maybe that might help? Sorry if you didn't want my opinion, just trying to help. I know of a support site for Schizophrenics (well, for all areas of mental health) if you'd like the link. They may have more ways to help with jumbled speech, especially if you feel the jumbled speech comes from jumbled thought. I really hope I'm not offending you in any way, just trying to help.

Its a recent thing.

Minionkitty - thanks. I've tried 7 different antipsychotics and now my psychiatrist is considering to put me on above the maximum dose of olanzapine (in the UK the maximum dose is 20mg and she would put me on 25mg if my ECG is ok). Schizophrenia has taken 2.5 years in total of hospital stays from me. Sorry to hear you suffer too.

Although I am really high functioning Aspergers, I have a horrible time being verbal when I am overwhelmed. These past 2 semesters I took American Sign Language and now I sign to myself a lot. When I get overwhelmed I can still sign no problem, but the trouble is that no one else outside of my ASL class knows how to sign.

Sometimes when I can't get words out, I pretend like I'm writing them and reading them out loud, or typing them and reading what I'm typing. That seems to be easier. I'm much more fluent in writing.

A person shouldn't have to communicate verbally if they don't want to, if it's difficult and tiring. There are more important things in life than communicating in a certain way. For that matter, non-disabled neurotypicals ought to be allowed to use AAC if they want to, just for fun; it's as valid a way of talking as any other, even if it does take a little longer. But I suppose they never will think of it as fun or interesting... even though they've embraced text-messages instead of talking on the phone.

Labeling something as "for people with disabilities" seems to have made people think that it ought only to be used as a last resort instead of by preference. It's silly that we can text instead of phoning people, but can't use AAC without getting funny looks.

The world is crazy sometimes. And they say we're the crazy ones.

As I say to people: I'm normal. Everyone else is weird. Lol.

I don't know if this is something alot of Aspies have had occur, but there was a significant period of stress where I zoned out into Autism world as I call it. I sat and got so engrossed in studying my special interest on the computer that I literally didn't realize that everyone had been trying to communicate with me for 6 days. I blocked everything in my surroundings out, had no need to sleep, very little need to drink, no need to eat, and I'm not sure I could have spoken had I wanted to at this point. It could have been an acute stress reaction, but it was so natural to just exist there in my head without others interfering. Other than the fact that I wasn't sleeping or eating as I should have been, I often wish I could have just stayed in that place of solitude.