painfully slow in processing experiences and life events?

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I was wondering whether someone can relate. I'm pretty fast in logical thinking and executing tasks and talking and everything, but I'm really painfully slow in processing or digesting life events and (social) experiences. By slow I mean really slow. not like slow slow but a matter of years and decades for simple stuff.

If this makes no sense let me give you some examples.

I moved to Germany as a 15 yo, yet I still haven't really realized that I'm living in Germany (WT*!). I still wake up disoriented about where the hell I am and have to readjust to the fact that I'm 35 yo and this is Germany. We are talking 20 years.

Still about living in Germany, I speak fluent German, but sometimes when I talk I wonder what kind of weird noises I'm making and that it doesn't make sense. I mean, I have learned German, but obviously, I still haven't realized fully (or AT ALL) that I'm extremely capable in using the German language.

And the death of a certain loved one, which was pretty tragic to me and everyone else. I still haven't fully realized it. and we are talking over a decade ago. I still sometimes forget he is dead on an emotional level. I mean I know it, all the time, with my logic, but my feelings haven't catched up yet.

And girls. Oh girls. I had the chance to have a relationship or at least a quickie with a number of girls. They were really REALLY into me and did everything to get me. Yet, I missed all the signs or even very VERY direct offers (of sex), to realize literally YEARS later what the poor girl(s) meant at that point (or rather directly offered or demanded). This makes me feel like a complete idiot.

There are more stuff to list. Many more.

The thing is, all these experiences are piled up in my head, to be processed, and I'm completely overloaded with them (like a truck that is overloaded) and it all makes me really confused and weird all the time. It's like the timing of my brain doesn't match real life's clock and it's all piling up like files in my brain. It's a very very bad and constant condition of agitation and confusion and derealization.

Can someone relate to these?

Hello, omid.

I think we can safely exclude from this discussion events such as the passing of a loved one and anything related altogether because not even NTs have the proper tools to deal with those experiences. If we're talking about processing experiences, we shouldn't take extreme ones into account as parameters. There are people who go on with their lives for decades before they realise something very important is missing.

It's important to point out that if there's someone who's that slow in this forum - and I really mean no offence - such a person may have problems trying to digest your question because after all, being a bit too slow, the person might not get it.

Jokes apart, I can relate because not unlike yourself, despite the many superlative qualities that I know that I have and that people never cease to point out, my mind lives inside itself all the time and misses the most important things. There are times when things are happening right in front of me but it's like I'm not really paying any attention to them. There are days when I could be dying in a fire and I'd notice the situation only when I found myself close to pass out. I've had scars, burns and fractures that I never knew how I got them. There were many situations when everyone else around me understood exactly what to do, knew exactly what to say while I just looked the other way clueless about the importance.

Sounds familiar to you or did I get you wrong?

It sounds kinda like what I said, but the point is, I DO get it eventually. That's the crux. I get it, but days/months/years later. Like in the case of the girls who were into me. Or the racist doctor who threw me out of his office. At first, I didn't get that I was mistreated and thrown out and thought "oh the doc was nice" but days/weeks later I got it and got really angry about his remarks. It's not a lack of function in me, it's extreme slowness. An alternative would be being so autistic that I'd never get it, but I can't make myself more autistic.

I identify with both of you to a large degree. It doesn't take me months or years to process things, but days? Very often, yes. When people are talking to me I'm often only "half there". It's almost like I'm recording the conversation passively on DVR or TiVo or whatever they call it and it's later on that I'll revisit the conversation, replay it and process it.

I'll just make something up here to illustrate, but if my wife and I were talking a few days ago and I replay our conversation a few days later, it would go something like:

"When you were telling me about talking you your Mom, you mentioned that John is getting married. When is the wedding?"

It is extremely difficult for me to be completely present in the moment.

Yes, I totally relate. Eventually, everything will come down all at once on me but it might take a long time.

On what comes to girls, most of us males - aspies or not - have a great deal of difficulty trying to figure out whether or when they are into us. You can rule that out alongside mourning and death. That's even harder for us aspies but don't worry about it. Not knowing what they want is absolutely natural and don't let anyone convince you on the contrary. People who believe in the opposite most likely know less about women than yourself.

Also, we aspies tend to ruminate on the most minute and irrelevant things and that's not sane. Chill out. Don't be too harsh on yourself about that. Yes, that's a problem but that's not something you can control. Bashing on yourself because of that just makes it a lot worse and makes you think of "how many times did I miss something important", what is absolutely useless. That can't help you.

Whenever you find yourself in a situation where the bells seem to be late for ringing, if there was anyone who was hurt, make amends, fix the situation and say that you're sorry. If no one was hurt, that what you're so worried about doesn't even matter! If it was a gorgeous girl that you may have lost the opportunity to get laid with or something along those lines, be grateful that someone found you attractive and know that others will come.

Yes, I do know what you mean. I would say that my brain is just fine processing anything which can be processed logically, systematically and where concrete questions have concrete answers. As soon as emotion or social nuances are a factor, I'm lost, and I return to them and ruminate about them over and over again. The trouble is that, if reading social situations is difficult, reading memories of those social situations isn't likely to be much easier. So each session of ruminating doesn't get much closer to a resolution, and they persist until we think of them again.

Difficulty identifying emotions in the spur of the moment, and it taking them a long time to surface, could be a sign that you are alexithymic. Alexithymia isn't a particular condition, but describes a set of traits which make identifying, giving names to, and talking about emotions difficult. It is not exclusively an autistic trait, but it is far more common for autistic people. Alexithymic autistic people are also more likely to experience a more profound version of it. There are a few threads here about it, and other online resources, so I'd advise you to take a look to see whether it is a good match for the experiences that you're describing, or at least some of them.

I found CBT with a good, prefererably autism trained, counsellor very helpful for dealing with this. The counsellor was able to give me enough insight into to the confusing memories that I could find some resolution for them, and clear some of the "pile up" in my head. She also helped me with some ways to better identify my emotions, so that I had a better starting point for making sense of new situations.

Journaling regularly about your daily experiences can help you be more in tune with them in real time.