Talk to me about your experiences with being temporarily and/or partially nonverbal?
I still can’t figure out if I’ve ever experienced it. A lot of the ‘official’ information (e.g. books) about autism doesn’t seem to mention it as a thing that sometimes happens to people who can usually speak – but it seems like the vast majority of usually-speaking autistic people mention it as a personal experience.
The closest thing I can think of that I have experienced is a few different thing:
1. When I get kind of ‘hyper-verbal’ when I’m overloaded, and my speech is very garbled and quick, and isn’t really communicating anything I want to say. E.g. I respond to a question quickly without realising and I say something that is the opposite of my actual opinion.
2. There are sometimes times when I have trouble putting a thought into words or working out how to respond to something (e.g. a vague question), but this doesn’t seem to fit the usual descriptions of being nonverbal? Because it’s normally due to the context and specific to the thing that I’m trying to say (e.g. I can’t explain one specific thing, but I can easily tell the other person that I can’t explain it), rather than a ‘global’ inability to speak.
3. Times when i am very reluctant to speak and it feels like a bit struggle to get words out. In this case its more often to do with the person I’m speaking to- usually when I’m socially tired and I really don’t want to spend the energy on interacting. But it’s not impossible for me to speak – I usually just keep my responses brief to try and stop the interaction from lasting a long time (and I can get irritable if people try to keep going).
So. Tell me about how it feels when you become nonverbal? Are you ever ‘partly’ nonverbal in any of the ways I describe? Would you consider them ‘types’ of nonverbal-ness, or just other facets of autistic communication differences? Is it possible/plausible that I’ve never been ‘fully’ nonverbal? Is it possible to have been nonverbal and not noticed? (infodumps greatly appreciated – reblogs/asks/submissions welcome)
The times I have actually experienced this are:
1. When I’m overloaded/having a meltdown/super frustrated or emotional. It’s like a ‘block’. The words are in my head, or, at least the feeling of what I want to communicate is, but I can’t make my mouth move to say them or translate what I’m feeling and force it out. When the overload or whatever passes, it eases off and talking becomes possible again, though fully unhindered speech may take time.
2. During sex, to a lesser degree. Rather than impossible, I often find forming words really hard when I’ve got all that sensory input, and taking the focus off enjoying myself and putting it into co-ordinating speech is kind of annoying, so I don’t tend to try unless I have to (i’m uncomfortable/in pain, i’m oversensitive, etc), or I’ve been asked a direct question that needs answering, like, ‘am I hurting you?’, ‘do you need more lube?’ or, ‘what do you need? (if something’s not doing it for me)’.
knitting in the dark 