It used to happen to me sometimes, though not so bad as your experience. Worst case was when I was at school and I felt there was something wrong with my brain because I couldn't understand the stuff they were teaching. The only thing I could put into words was "I forget..." It was something to do with not being able to remember the start of the sentence by the time the teacher got to the end of it, and even my own thoughts could get forgotten like that before I'd got to the end of them. I guess I'd never felt really confused before. It was years later that I heard some people complain of "brain cramp" and "mind-numbingly boring" lectures, when I figured it must have been something like that.
Still to this day I find it very hard to explain why I don't understand an idea, and when people tell me to feel free to ask questions about anything they've not explained clearly in the first place, I usually just can't. Maybe that's got something to do with a fear of offending the speaker - my school days were quite authoritarian, and there were presumptions that the teacher was always clear, correct and interesting, it took me a long time to realise that I wasn't the only person to blame; if you can't conceive of the material being faulty, you won't know how to explain why you can't understand it. Once I'd left school and was free of their excessive demands, my mind seemed to right itself. It rarely bothers me now unless I have to follow somebody else's ways of thinking - if I can just follow my own curiosity I'm usually fine.
I think sometimes the language to describe a thing might simply not be there yet.
I think stress can play a part - when I get really stressed out, I can't easily put sentences together. Some days I'm articulate, some days I'm not, and when I'm not, it scares me.
Other times my thoughts are just too detailed and complicated to easily put into words....I could probably do it in the end but it would take a long time, and I seem to have a mechanism in my head that refuses to do anything that my mind sees as hopelessly inefficient. Philosophers have argued about whether or not thought is dependent on words - I'm sure it isn't, and I believe the mind thinks in its own internal "language" (which one poster on WP called mentalese - good word!!), and the mind only puts thoughts into words to communicate and perhaps to clarify to itself what it's thinking about.
I think reading good stuff (and listening to people who are good at describing things) is a good way of improving your performance. Most of the phrases I use are borrowed from other sources. I don't think I'd be able to communicate very well at all if I didn't read and listen a lot.
Also, if a particular idea is having trouble expressing itself in words, try to just get a word or two that begins to describe it, focus on the idea and just write down any words that occur to you. Then leave it alone, and return later to see if you can add anything. If it's any help, the most effective messages are usually the simplest ones.
One girlfriend of mine would somehow make me feel very slow-witted (not by criticising me, she didn't really do that), and I noticed that after a couple of days away from her I would "get my brain back" and be able to chatter away about anything. I still don't know why she had that affect on me - possibly I was repressing a lot of my thoughts and feelings, which might have had some kind of comorbid effect on the whole of my thinking, but it's only a theory.
The other thing that trips me up is when I forget the old adage "if you have nothing to say, don't say it" - I often seem to feel I must speak, for social reasons, but in truth I have nothing for them, so all they get from me is a series of disjointed and pointless words.
23 Mar 2009, 9:53 am
