feeling Brain lag when people speak

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Hello folks, I'm two weeks away from first visit with an autism specialist and would like some input. I have a question about something I experience in social situations that varies somewhat depending on the circumstance.

It feels as if my brain lags, when spoken to or when someone speaks near me, at length. For instance I will be with a group and several conversations will be going on and I feel my intelligence drain away and I soon find myself unable to follow what's being said until the pace of speech changes or I get away. When its a large (5+) group it can occur quickly. If its a smaller group or even an individual it depends on the intensity, length or number of conversations going on. I'm terrible at receiving verbal directions as well. "Such and such happened blah blah blah" and it feels like my brain is lagging like a computer with too many windows open, too many programs running and my ability to process the words is diminished or delayed.

Last week two friends were speaking intently, though I was not following their conversation actively as I was supposed to be looking something up in a book I found that my ability to read was effected. I was reading the individual words but not chaining them together to form an idea. I knew immediately it was due to their speaking.

This has happened all through my life but I never analysed what my mind was doing when this occured before. It's just normal to me, maybe its ADD, maybe I was day dreaming...its just how I am and didn't give it much thought. But after I began suspecting my issues had something to do with my mental processes I actively began examining what my mind was doing in these instances. When I realized "I'm not following their meaning. I'm not comprehending and I feel mentally lagged/foggy/blocked" it became very apparent.

As well as the social cues issue and other issues involving processing speech is this "brain lag" an autistic issue others have as well?

It definitely is, I was diagnosed an auditory processing disorder. People will speak to me and I almost always need them to repeat what they, everything is "huh?" or "what?" with me. It just doesn't register in my brain. Verbal instructions are really hard for me, I need things repeated and said slowly so I can concentrate intently on what they say. Stuff going on in the background makes so difficult for me. These were big issues for me while in school and I imagine a big part of how they flagged me to get diagnosed.

I'm not yet evaluated so I don't know if this is the spectrum (for me) or not, but just to say, I get this badly too. If there are too many people talking at once, or there is background noise during a conversation even with one person, I can't focus on what's being said, and I can't think straight, can't put together my own response, either. What you describe sounds exactly like my own issues with this stuff. Again I don't have a diagnosis but I seem to fall into the auditory processing disorder category with this.

Yes I definitely have this. Most group conversations go way too fast for me. I can hear the individual words, but I just lose the meaning of what is being said. Also, when someone speaks to me unexpectedly, I almost always ask them to repeat themselves because the words just didn't register.

It's because I process information very slowly, according to my therapist. I probably have AS or ADD, or maybe both, but he's not yet sure which one causes it for me.

This was one of my first understandings of autism. That what might take a 'normal' person three mental steps to do might take us seven.

(of course no such thing as 'normal' anyway and how boring a place the world if there were! )

Now, the standard advice for our communication differences is 'try harder,' which I think is as ineffectual as telling someone trying to learn a tennis serve to 'try harder'

There is also a tendency to 'left-brain' the advice, and I'll explain what I mean by this. Okay, there's a whole theory where the left side of the human brain is the analytical and logical side, and the right side is pattern recognition, intuition, art, etc. Now, this theory might be overblown regarding the actual sides of the brain. But as far as styles and skills of thinking, I think there's a lot to it, and we can adopt 'left brain' and 'right brain' as shorthand, as long as we know this may not literally be true.

And please notice, if a psychologist or a book recommends, be more careful, more analytical, all this advice might do is add more steps to our communication processes!

Thank you for your replies! Much appreciated.

Yes, this is a common part of the Autism/Asperger's spectrum. It's a processing problem in the brain. I suffer from both auditory and time brain lag. I have trouble registering conversations in the same way you do. I also live and do stuff on a slower time track than the NT world runs. I have always felt way behind the pace of the rest of the world--and there is no way for me to "catch up." It causes a lot of problems, as I am always behind in everything, and people are always on my case about it. Things got a little better a few years ago, once I started living alone, but I still have problems in dealing with the rest of the world. Fortunately, because of my other health issues, and my hermit tendencies, I don't have to have much to do with the rest of the world any more. However, one shouldn't have to be a sickly hermit to get along in life. At least I like living alone--it's far less stressful than living with other people.

Okay, I think most of us probably have an internal censor where we quickly review something before saying it, including quote 'normal' people, too. One thing which has helped me is making a conscious decision to turn mine down, so that the default setting is that it's probably okay to go ahead and say it anyway unless it really jumps out at me as inappropriate.

Combined with, if the other person needs space, give them space. Without the intermediate step of asking whether a person 'should' need space, plenty of time for that later if need be. Just if a person needs space, go ahead and give them space

I have also learned from tabling and petitioning in peace activism, commission furniture sales, working in a photocopy center, working for H&R Block including trying to disclose negatives of bank and loan products. From speech therapy and recording my voice, I later decided I was working on conversational wildcards which would work in a variety of situations. And from my current job as a cashier at *MegaMart. As well as being a manager three times in my life, and a high school math teacher for one year.