I’ve recently been trying to work out how to describe my difficulty talking about certain topics and trying to find out if this is an autism trait, a common co-occuring condition, or just anxiety. Lacking the right search terms hasn’t helped in that regard!
Neither selective mutism nor alexithymia seem to be quite the right terms, although it’s definitely connected to topics that carry emotional weight. I can have the whole concept or discussion that I want/need to have worked out in my head, but when the time comes my chest really tightens up and my throat feels restricted* and it’s like I have to physically push to get the sentences out.
(*) I know that this is a physical indicator of stress and am very much aware that I am stressed in that situation. However, it’s not the way I typically experience stress, though (I usually carry that in my shoulders/back and end up with vice headaches from high-stress situations).
It’s similar (but definitely not the same) as when I feel like I am bracing myself for a verbal assault (again, that manifests itself specifically in a lot of tension in back). I don’t think I’m expecting to be attacked, but it definitely feels like my system is screaming at me to not talk about whatever it is.
This is also distinctly different to when I can’t quite explain something or struggle to describe what I am feeling. In those cases I end up taking a minute to work out how to phrase what I am experiencing or describe the concept I am trying to explain (and I almost always have to break eye contact to do this).
Does anyone else experience this sort of difficulty and how would you describe it?
Edited to add clarification (also in one of the comments):
I can talk about lots of things (not just special interests) including divisive issues such as politics (and sometimes even when I know I’m likely to receive an unpleasant response), but it’s difficult to neatly categorise what types of topics cause this. If I had to guess, it would be topics surrounding my (emotional?) needs that are most likely to trigger this. The current one (and this was a challenge to even type) is the fact that a combination of health+work+life factors is currently making me feel like I’m stuck with no good options to resolve them and hence going to miss out on a lot of things in life that I value.
It’s not necessarily dependent on who the other party/parties in the conversation is/are, either. For example, I have an incredibly non-judgemental and compassionate GP and yet one of these instances occurred when trying to work through my health issues this year. My wife is incredibly understanding and patient as well, so it’s not as though it’s an unsafe environment for the above conversation either.
It might help to know what topics bring up this feeling? To me it sounds like how I experience social anxiety. So maybe it’s just anxiety?
Hmm, not sure. I can talk about lots of things (not just special interests) including divisive issues such as politics (and sometimes even when I know I’m likely to receive an unpleasant response), but it’s difficult to neatly categorise what types of topics cause this. If I had to guess, it would be topics surrounding my (emotional?) needs that are most likely to trigger this. The current one (and this was a challenge to even type) is the fact that a combination of health+work+life factors is currently making me feel like I’m stuck with no good options to resolve them and hence going to miss out on a lot of things in life that I value.
It’s not necessarily dependent on who the other party/parties in the conversation is/are, either. For example, I have an incredibly non-judgemental and compassionate GP and yet one of these instances occurred when trying to work through my health issues this year. My wife is incredibly understanding and patient as well, so it’s not as though it’s an unsafe environment for the above conversation either.
I also don’t recall feeling like this when I know I was nervous/anxious in my teens and early twenties trying to talk to new people (before I became practiced enough at small talk). It could definitely be anxiety, but if it is it’s not the typical way I experience it.
yeah, sounds familiar. I’d also say it’s completely different than other situations where I’m usually lost for words, for instance if I need to react spontaneusly, delayed processing and such.
There are some things I just can’t find the right words for and/or not being able to articulate any of the words that would express what I have in my head, even though I have a conception of what to say. For me it’s about expressing emotions too. So I would begin 1, 2 words starting a sentence and then… no chance finishing it.
Usually my brain starts spinning quite intensely in these situations with either memories of similar past situations and thoughts about how to express what I’m trying to say, (kinda like overstimulation in mental images/thoughts leading to me not being able to think about what to actually do) or just turning completely blank, both in my head and verbally. Eye contact, definitely no.
I gave up on it over the years with people around me and avoid these topics and situations. However, my last therapist helped me a lot in this regard, as she always gave me the time I needed to find back to being able to speak again when it happened. Sometimes I sat there completely blank for minutes, just staring outside the window or at the walls, feeling panicky and the need to just jump up and leave the room. I actually did once, but felt really bad about it after as she was such a calm person that I usually always felt safe with. After that incident, and over time I learned to try and rephrase the initial sentence or try to express something else connected to the feeling I wanted to talk about, learning how to navigate the situation. So I guess there’s a possibility to make some progress.
Thanks for sharing that. It’s definitely something I want to improve upon (hence asking here!) and will try to discuss it with my therapist at my next appointment. It sounds like you have a very good one and they make a world of difference.
It’s interesting that you link your experience to being overwhelmed. I regularly experience issues with overwhelm - when it’s bad enough I definitely get that feeling of wanting to run and hide, so I understand exactly what you mean - but I don’t think that’s what’s happening in my particular case when trying to talk about certain things. I guess it feels more like internal resistance than overwhelm.
Sure, np. It always helps me to read other people’s experiences as well so I thought I’ll share that as it’s no issue for me to talk about it. Try to get into that topic with your therapist, maybe you will need some time or a few attempts, but I’m really wishing you the best with it!
Feeling overwhelmed is a secondary reaction to it that developed over time. Let’s put it that way, there’s been people that have not been as sensitive as my therapist an I’ve been in a few situations where people forced me to answer when I couldn’t + forced eye contact etc., which didn’t make it easier trying to express what you feel/have in your mind. Getting up and leave was the only way to escape these situations. Then, I was also bullied half my life. I think you get a better picture now.
I like your username btw, fellow plant friend :)
Thanks! I fully expect it to take a couple of attempts and a bit of time, but hopefully it will result in some progress.
Yeah, I can empathise with being forced to answer / put on the spot like that. I can recall a few stressful interactions where people jumped to conclusions because I couldn’t formulate a response and then the whole thing got away from me. Sorry to hear that you were bullied; I think that is a common experience (at least one relative of mine was badly bullied growing up and I suspect I only suffered minimal bullying due to studying via distance education for much of my school years).
Glad you like the username! As you can probably guess, orchids (particularly Cymbidiums) are one of my special interests.
Maybe some of the situations you experienced are what causes stress/anxiety in a similar way, which makes it harder to talk. You might find answers to it once you dig deeper into that topic. The only advice I can give you in all of this is to take your time with it, or better put: give yourself the time you need, it’s the most important part… I’m often super slow with understanding where things come from, how they affect me and so on. I think it’s a good sign you came here to ask, a first step in the right direction, so to speak.
I’ve been occupying my mind with plants a lot a few years ago and found geometry in all the leaves and blossoms particularily interesting. Also, botanical names is a whole topic by itself. The pronounciation or words in general surprisingly often fit the “character” of the plants pretty well :)
I guess time will tell - unfortunately beyond realising yesterday that topics that carry emotional pain are more likely to be problematic, I’m still struggling to identify what makes one topic a problem and another easy to talk about.
Botanical Latin is indeed interesting. I’m still learning how all the Cym species names should be pronounced (very few people get them right) and how the root words that make up the names relate to the plant they are describing (quite a few species are are named for people, so they include the name plus the appropriate suffix, but others are descriptive terms e.g. flava/flavum for yellow).
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Sorry, I’ve tried to add more info.
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Considering one of the health issues this year has been severe autistic burnout, I would readily agree with a lot of that. Thanks for the feedback.
I have something that may or may not be related: some stuff just makes me physically faint. It’s never sudden, I see it coming and if I manage to get away from the trigger, lay down and wait it goes away, but if I can’t do it quick enough I know it can be dangerous. Among the triggers are intense pain (like burning your stomach by swallowing something too hot) but also conversations about “real” body horror (a movie is fine, but somebody telling me about how their plan to get an operation often isn’t, back in middle school I remember fainting as the teacher was talking about some health risk).
I can empathise with that feeling. I think it’s technically a form of panic attack; I have suspected nerve damage in one arm and cannot have blood drawn from the affected area (if I do, the pain is too much and I experience panic attack symptoms - nausea, sudden over-heating and sweating, light-headedness and vomiting). Apart from avoiding the triggers for it, I have also found that tensing one’s core and focusing on breathing helps (this reduces the drop in blood pressure and resulting drop in oxygen to the brain, which is what causes the light-headedness or fainting). I think body horror is a pretty typical trigger for this type of reaction too, so you’re definitely not alone there.
I have provided a three part guess below with bonus at the end.
Part 1: Monotropism
I feel like my brain is multiple brains held together by a consciousness. There are parts for all sorts of purposes: seeing, art, feeling, pondering, being tired, remembering, balance, etc. The part that I experience as consciousness is the part that decides to focus on something. From what I can tell by my experiences with others, that part of my brain is good at focusing on one thing, while other people can either focus on multiple things at once or switch between things quickly and repeatedly. Since I’m also ADHD, without stimulants, my brains seems to just pick what to focus on without much of my control. But, when properly medicated, I can choose what to focus and stay focused on better. Being able to focus on one thing allows me to become pretty good at simple tasks through repetition. However, there are many parts of life that require several brain parts working together, such as drumming. What I do with these is to practice each individual limb over and over until doing a task switches from being a purposeful thought to automatic (feeling it). Once I have each of the individual limbs on feeling mode, then rather than think I want play a beat, I feel the beat and it happens without much thought. My focus is then listening to the song and what I want to feel like playing next.
More complex tasks require several brain parts working together by switching focus between them rapidly. Socializing is one of those things. I need to focus on the face, memories of the relationship, what they are saying, my facial expressions, what they want, what they need, etc. All this while also tending to the ever banging info from sensory input. Because I have difficulty switching focus between all these brain parts, I tend to make more mistakes in social situations. What works for me the best is to focus on the content of what they are saying. This is where I find there is the most useful information. If I were to focus specifically on their gestures, I might pick up on social cues, but may completely miss that the content of their words which is usually more important. However, focusing on their words also results in miscommunication because context is omitted, but it’s the best option most of the time.
Part 2: Sympathetic Nervous System
When speaking, my focus is on one thing only too. If I feel comfortable and safe, then I can dedicate my focus on the content of what I want to say. Still, there are other matters to attend to when speaking. One is the safety of the situation. Assessing social safety is complex because people can be quite deceptive when words and other cues don’t match. Luckily, there’s a part of my brain that is dedicated to social danger. It’s back there doing its thing passively observing the world. When a social experience happens that turned out poorly, that part of the brain logged it noting anything it found relevant. Later on, when a similar situation arises, that part of the brain feels it and activates the social danger signal to the rest of the brain. This prepares the brain to be vigilant for danger and avoid making mistakes. Because I can’t focus on many things at once, it saves my focus processing power by merely alerting there is danger, but not why. The why part would be too distracting from observing danger in the moment. I can’t even dedicate focus to a feeling of stress or danger. That would be too distracting. Right now, we just need to focus on danger. The conscious experience I have is that I prepare to talk, make every intention to talk, and go for it. When I get there and I try to speak, the social danger signal gets activated, and I go into protection mode, which means stay quiet and observe for danger.
I think this may be one of the reasons I can’t speak sometimes. My social danger part is saying, “Shut up and observe for danger!” The rest of my brain is then focused on that, so I don’t even know why. Additionally, at least for us autistics, speaking has gotten us in trouble a lot. When we say what is on our minds, we often insult others unintentionally or give away information that could be used to harm us. Depending on how we have navigated through social danger in the past, we may have even learned to automatically fawn. This is when we override our fear expression and authentic selves to go along with the threat to survive. For example, if someone is robbing you, it might be safest to just give them what they want. You may lose material goods, but you stay alive. The same could be applied to social danger. If you just go along with what they are saying, you wont feel the possibly much worse outcome of being authentic.
Part 3: Processing Energy
Everyone has a limit of how much processing energy they have. Once we run low, our minds switch into battery saver mode, and we conserve energy by merely addressing necessities. As autistics, a lot of our processing energy is spent on sensory input and switching focus. If we finally get the chance to speak, but we’re in battery saver mode, we may not have the energy needed to speak properly. Instead, we shut up or say as little as possible. We just don’t have the energy needed to think, organize ideas, create one whole main idea, convert it into words, then say them. That’s too much.
Bonus: Guess what!
I’m BackOnMyBS 🤪
Thanks for sharing all that! Interesting read and raises several good points.
Movies are usually a subject I struggle with because it hurts just watching them all.
Is that normal for an autistic man like me?
Feel free to check out my other post too.
