Do you ever feel like a philosopher who can’t speak?

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I feel like a philosopher who can’t speak sometimes. I have all these thoughts and ideas in my head but they are not always in a translatable language.

I feel that I do not always think in words. My thinking consists more of ideas and connections between ideas and information. Sometimes I can just come to an understanding of an idea, thing or a system, in such a way that I sort of have a 3-d CAD model of it in my head that I can refer back to.

The problem is that most of my ideas or understandings are so complex that I simply cannot communicate them to other people without considerable time and effort. I find I’m becoming more and more introverted and even become catatonic at times when I recede into my own head to pursue a line of thought. I’m becoming so focused on writing this that I’m becoming sort of cationic right now. I just shut off my sensory inputs and go away inside my head.

I make some pretty neat connections in my head at times between really strange things like chemistry and art, math and my dog’s behaviour, but most of my ideas are too complex. To write about them would require hours of development time that I just don’t have. The fragmentation and disjointed connections in my thought process are too hard to translate into written or verbal language.

I’m not gifted, my IQ is only a bit above average as far as I know, but I am well educated. My education has shown me that I’m not normal. My thinking patterns are not typical of normal humans and I have met very few people that think the way I do throughout my life. What I do know is that I have this ability to make connections that most others don’t. At times this causes me great pain when I see someone taking a very poorly thought out course of action.

I think myself into anxiety with everything in life and that eventually leads me to depression. I’m not convinced that I have ASD or that ASD is simply not a “catch-all” category capturing a multitude of neurological differences, and disorders. I think ASD may one day be eliminated when we have more evidence based information rather than using behavioural observation which is subjectively biased and ambiguous.

Anyway, those are as much of my thoughts as I can write, too tiring for me to translate, and too tiring for you to read. I am interested in your thoughts.

I tend to think a lot in subvocals (though I'm trying to train myself to minimize them)

I'm more of a thinker than a speaker, but only because I never had much opportunities to socialize and speak, and had all the time to think. Because of this, I'm really good at forming conversations and lectures in my head, but when it comes to speak all I'm worried about is pausing midsentence due to my belief that I'm not a very good speaker, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that I would do anything to get rid of. All I want to do is become a professor, and this problem is all that's hindering me. Screw brain conditioning.

But I find that it's a lot easier to speak when I feel comfortable around the person I'm speaking to. Even if it's someone I've never spoken to before, so long as they make me feel comfy, I can chat a storm with them.

And then my perception of self seems to get in the way sometimes. There are times when I find myself attractive and times when I don't, which greatly affects my mood, which greatly affects my speaking.

Perhaps you can find some other outlet for your thoughts, instead of speaking them.

i think i can understand what you mean.
i am not good at making sense when i talk about what i'm thinking. things get jumbled and i'm not sure which connections are significant and which ones aren't. oftentimes when i'm thinking through and idea i get sucked into a whirlpool of ideas and then the original thought is lost and i'm left feeling overwhelmed and stupid.

but i obsessively make objects in my free time, and the things i make do a much better job as a translator for my ideas. it makes it easier for me to formulate ideas with tangible aids and through physical actions. the way you describe your thought processes like 3D CAD models makes me think that maybe there is a creative translator can help you speak too.

Sounds like you're a visual thinker, who also thinks in three D.
Maybe you should try sculpture as a hobby.

I seem to be visual first, and verbal secondary, in my thinking. But I am basically two dimensional in thinking.Am good at maps. Someone on WP is a chemist who can visualize molecules in 3 D. Dont think I can do that.

You might try finding metaphors for the images in your mind that can aid in verbally communicating your ideas.

I feel exactly the same. I spot connections and patterns in many things and have the ability to see things from all perspectives in an instant but if I try and explain these *thoughts* I stumble. I struggle to retain my thought process and realise that these are not verbal ideas halfway through explaining, so I end up seeming incapable of clear thought at all. I've spent my life being frustrated by this and take some consolation to hear I'm not alone. I hope you can feel the same and if isolation doesn't feel good for you, that knowing there are others who can identify may help you from withdrawing. ☺️

I feel like this too. It can sometime feels like theres no word in the human language to grasp these words. It's more like a feeling and experience in your head. Making connections and forming ideas. Inside my head is chaos and it's only one that I can understand. It sucks cause you can't express it for other people. But i'm sure there's have to be a way to express them though but we just haven't discovered it. It won't be with words though cause that would be too limited. I don't know about you guys but I feel like there's more to feelings than what most people know about it. I really don't know how to explain it but I noticed it a couple of years ago when someone asked me how was it that I have good memorization skills (long term). For me I don't recall a memory ever. If I was then my memory was to suck. The way my memory works which I'm surprise no one has ever noticed is more of a reaction to a situation or to a person talking or asking about something that happened to a certain event. Not really sure how it works but from there it's like I can feel my way back to that event and feel everything I felt and thought of during that time so I can easily tell the person if theres something wrong with what they said or tell them what it is that they don't remember. There's more to it then that but I know for the long part that's how my long term memory works. I can't recall my memory as i see most people do.

And... Forgot my train of thought... I know what you mean about ASDs - that there'll be more explanations, more understanding in time. The fact that there are so many cross-overs with other things... I am very interested in Autism from an academic point of view because it certainly doesn't feel like we have enough understanding about it. But I feel it's there - just beyond - and so I'll keep observing and reading about psychology, neuroscience, people's experiences etc...until I make my own connections. ☺️

It IS crazy and cool!! I love the way my mind works - I can really enjoy it for its own sake - even if I can't impart it to anyone else. But at least we all understand what that feels like. We can acknowledge this stuff from a distance - I see us being a bit like giants, with our heads in the clouds, full of all this amazing stuff and watching everyone below, all in the thick of it, and yet we can only nod to each other. ☺️

some of the best art has come from connections that can't be explained verbally. However, philosophy basically is all about narrowing down the meaning of the words you're using to be able to express your one single thought.
I'm not very... verbally gifted, and I speak slowly and still mess things up.
which is a problem, since I lecture at college these days, and need to speak and make sense. But I found it a good way to use other people's words and quotations and juxtapose them with other ideas, so I only have to fill in the connecting bits.

thankfully, I don't lecture in a verbal field, but in graphics and art, so I can do that. ...
I can feel your annoyance with being unable to express things properly. I find I'm able to express ideas often only after I've finished an artwork based on some ideas, and after I've presented it to people.... they provide me with some of the vocabulary I need....