Relating a story in conversation

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Anyone else have a complete brain freeze when you're trying to tell a story of something that happened to you?

Sometimes I manage to pull the pieces of the story together, but a lot of the time I have to stop mid-sentence to remember, and by then I've lost the person's interest.

To compensate for this, I try to keep them short and to the point. It's a constant source of frustration though. I feel like it's very hard to express myself.

It's kind of like this with writing too, but then it doesn't matter if I've lost my train of thought or not because while I'm writing no one's standing in front of me waiting for the punchline.

Is this more of an AS or ADHD issue?

I also have some social anxiety, but this even happens when I'm around people I'm totally comfortable with.

I have always had trouble converting thoughts or info I wanted to inpart to others into a coherent verbal narrative. I think it is part of my processing problems. I find it easier to write things down, except where it comes to creating stories for school back when I was a kid. I had trouble thinking what to write, and organizing it in my mind well enough to put it down.

This is the reason I am rubbish at telling jokes. I notice some people can stand there for 10 minutes plus talking about a story using only recollection, I struggle to make a story last 30 seconds because I forget parts of it, so like you I keep my stories short and to the point which often makes them lack depth and interest. I have no problem writing a story down because I have the time and peace to recollect but in real time I suck lemons. It gets to a point where if I'm telling a story and I forget parts of it I will confabulate realistic alternatives to what happened to fill in the gaps. It's just one of those things I guess. It doesn't bother me, if I do need to recall some information to someone and I start to forget then I will just stand there and say "hold on, let me just remember what they said", then I'll pause for a second before carrying on. I don't mind if it makes me look absent minded or a bit daft, if someone seems to have a problem with it I'll just say "look, do you want me to remember the information correctly or just make it up?".

I brought this issue up with my therapist today (who did not think I was Autistic) and we talked about it the entire hour. Afterwards she said, "When you brought up Asperger's it didn't seem right but now it fits." More discussion will follow but I may be on to something here. This is after more than a year of therapy, btw.

Basically I have slow recall of memory and when I do remember something, I have difficulty putting it into words. It's like there's a pool of words that are related to each other, and instead of being able to retrieve the right one, I have to keep fishing around for one that at least works, and go with that one. Some miscommunication between the left and right brain, perhaps? Going to research it now...

I did great in school because all you had to do was memorize stuff from tests. It was all very recent and accessible in my memory.

Real life is harder.

I recognize this in myself. If I tell a joke or relate a story verbally, I invariably leave out some critical part. I find it is better to not tell jokes or relate stories so I usually find myself listening to others but rarely contributing to the conversation. I don't know how visual a thinker I am, but I know I'm certainly not a verbal thinker. Getting all the words together and sorting them into the proper order takes a great deal of effort - often more than a conversation is worth.

In my case, social anxiety plays a key role. I become more and more anxious as I notice myself floundering while telling a story and as my anxiety increases, my ability to concentrate on the story plummets.

If a stranger stops me on the street to ask directions, I always get flustered and, without fail, forget some critical direction which I only realize will get them horribly lost after they have driven away.