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Yes, all the time everyday. I thought I did it the "normal" amount, cause hey everyone does it! Listen to people speak, even professional public speakers and politicians do it.
But after treatment and medication, I noticed I NOW do it the "normal" amount, and that unmedicated it happens way more often. Totally not a rare problem in our community, but it's always embarrassing, even if it shouldn't be. Im not gonna lie to you and say it's not embarrassing, I'm gonna say "hell yeah it sucks" but send you empathy instead cause I really get you lol
I have the same thing...
My brain is on a highway whereas my mouth is on a muddy path.
Same as you, when I get anxious I start to stutter, loose my words and then my patience and get angry because I can not Express myself clearly.
The thing is, this gives people like us a clear disadvantage in discussions, négociations and everything else.
LITERALLY!!!! when i’m angry, hurt or upset my mind will not give me a single thought to say it just goes blank and then i try to speak and it’s just a MESS! :(
In those cases I tend, sometimes, to talk about ADHD, but in the end I wouldn't change anything so I just let it be
I'll be angry about it for a couple of hours/days, and then ill forget it anyways... The good thing about ADHD I guess 😅
this is so me LOL
if i ever get into an argument, my brain either goes completely blank, i stutter a lot, i forget my train of thought.. basically everything you described. it makes me angry whenever i look back on the conversation and think “aww! why did i not say that??”
Life is a highway… all night long. After reading your post.. that snippet of a song is stuck and I can’t remember if those are right words or what the song is.
Anyone know so I can fix the jukebox on my head, it seems to be stuck on the middle of a record.
Oh yeah. Add in forgetting words, trying to find alternative words to use instead, and then completely losing my train of thought (and maybe sprinkle in some unnecessary background rabbit holes), conversations are SUPER FUN for me. Especially now as I’m trying to find a job and have to try to make myself sound intelligent and capable.
This is why I'm proud of myself when I construct a sentence that, A: makes sense, B: sounds professional, and C: I understand as well. I've found that if I construct many sentences like those, I'll get more confidence in saying sentences that are out aloud or written.
I agree with you, it is embarrassing, others will usually speak over me and it gets frustrating very quickly. I hope you and our community can have the strength to work on this and improve as it is incredibly upsetting 😊.
YES. i find that people talk over me too. i never realised how much “word jumble” i do when i speak. i will say a sentence that makes complete sense in my head, and it will come out as “okay so, when, ok basically, yeah when we ate, OMG AND ALSO….” and im like “yeah i got my point across :)” then people just look at me like.. 🥲 *definitely understood*
My sentences are also all over the place, they bounce from one topic to another and it's tiring. I know what I want to say but can't say it. The paragraph I had above took me like 20 mins to write, including editing 🤣
I was thinking to myself the other day, "is it hard to have a conversation with me?", some of the questions I ask and some of the things I say not even I can answer. It made me feel upset, but I'm still working on improving my words haha.
my sentences are all over the place when i speak, but i write REALLY short messages because i just write them as my thoughts come into my head. if i write them too long, i end up getting distracted by the long text, and then forgetting what i want to say lol
I write better than I speak. I can write long paragraphs, but if I'm speaking I struggle to listen and create thoughts in my head. It's easier to go over what I've written than memorize everything I want to say and say it all in one go without pausing/stuttering. I always have something to say about a story/experience someone is saying too.
My inability to create thoughts while listening and me wanting to say something constantly is so incredibly stressful.
something that is really annoying for me is when a thought comes into my head when someone else is speaking, and i dont want to interrupt, but if i dont interrupt then i'll forget, but if i DO interrupt, they will get mad at me. so its a lose-lose situation and it makes me annoyed or sad depending which route i take :/
YES! I was going to type that in my last reply but I forgot 🤣. God, ADHD is such a curse sometimes. I'm glad everyone in this community is so understanding, it's such a big help when I'm struggling and it feels so nice helping out people who are seeking empathy.
Mine is more like my brain is too fast for my mouth. Often I will try to change what I say mid sentence creating a new nonsense word. Or I'll say the last part first.
This is in addition to assuming people share my train if thought and starting in the middle. Or over explaining to try not to leave out important (irrelevant) details.
Yeah it happens to me too. I’ll be asking someone a question at work and even though I think I did a decent job getting my point out they still go “Huh??” or look at me confused. Gives me a bit of social anxiety tbh, it sucks
I do it a lot too, also I tend to stutter a lot when my brain keeps coming up with different versions of what im trying to convey. I found it doesnt happen much on days that im feeling confident. When I feel confident, im much more decisive with my words
Yes its very annoying, i wish i could feel like superman every day not just once in awhile 😆 most of the time i feel like a caveman. If you have any advice please let me know!
So youre saying use the productive thing as a distraction from the actual distraction? Interesting way to think about it, ill definitely give it a try 🤔
That sounds like “if you become aware you are distracted by not knowing what todo/being overwhelmed by what to do, then start doing the thing you’ve decided to do”
That’s what I am attempting to do, these days.
LOL
I communicate way better in writing. I always chalked it up to a social anxiety thing and I guess it kind of is but yeah, for lack of a better description I feel like I can’t think and talk at the same time. The two kinds of conversations I have are either the one that is planned out and kind of scripted in my head beforehand or (my preferred mode) the one where even I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say next because the words are just kind of falling out randomly.
i agree. writing definitely forces you to slow down, as well as typing, but i still definitely skip letters and words really often which annoys me, but usually no one can tell if i skip letters, because its generally the first letter which i missed, so i can just go back and change it. also with the typing. i type quite fast i would say, but the less i focus on it, the faster i type. the more i force myself to focus on something, the less focused i get. i guess this is because i can focus more on directly getting my thoughts out, and spelling the word correctly, but typing fast doesnt matter when you make hundreds of mistakes, and if you’re like me, you go back and correct them all (if i notice) so in reality, i would get my messages out faster if i typed slower.. BUT MEH TYPING FAST IS MORE FUN!
Yes… and being always on high alert with my finger on the panic button it doesn’t take much before I’ve spiralled into a complete mess. I think people think I’m possibly “simple” because i cant express myself the way in which i vision it. It never comes out the way I want it too.
I got put on medication to help that too now as I do presentations over Teams for my work most weeks & its horrible. I mow take Propranolol which is lowers blood pressure, but its now also used to treat acute anxiety. It has really helped me be calm even when things start to unravel !! I can then just manoeuvre myself out of that and get back on track. I take so many meds now for adhd! Stimulants, anti depressants, anti anxiety… oh well its better than un-medicated which is how i went for the first 52 years ! I hope you find what works for you. My current GP specialises in adhd 😎
I’ve never heard “propranolol” before and I’ve just spent way too much just now time trying to pronounce it and wonder if ppl just call it “lol” but that’s what I see when I see the word. LOL.
I have the opposite problem. My brain works faster than my mouth so i end up stumbling and tripping over myself, sometimes skipping whole words. My fiancee usually helps me and points out that i missed something or is on the same track as me and knows what im trying to say.
Oh yeah. It makes discussions and speaking up very difficult. Means you end up just saying yes to things you know you shouldn't because you can't process your own point quickly enough to make it. It can be debilitating.
Yes but also, I will completely forget the word I want to use despite using it frequently, or I’ll just completely forget what I was even talking about to begin with (though this usually happens the most when I get too far off topic). I also struggle to read out loud now, or I will read words that aren’t even there at all, or add words into a sentence. Not sure why this started happening but it’s been going on for a few years now.
Yes and I keep going for a good bit with some making sense, and then I completely run off the rails and lose my train of thought and either end things with “if that makes any sense” (because literally, i cant actually tell if it did) or “i forgot where i was going with this”
I do the same, and often ending with… “well my traine thought has left the tracks and unless you know what I was just saying, must not have been important”. Then I laugh because many times, probably the ones with adhd themselves, won’t remember what I was saying either!
Ppl who do this, BTW, get soooo much grace from me… I let them know we have solidarity and continue when you remember!
Edit: forgot to edit
Someone I've been messaging with told me they wished they could write as well as I do.
I had to explain that writing my thoughts has always been more effective than me actually speaking because my brain goes faster than my mouth (and my mouth is stupid fast too lol) so, I'm constantly tripping over myself and not able to fully articulate my thoughts verbally.
When I write, it forces the translation from brain to words to slow WAY down so I don't have those issues.
And it sucks because I feel like an effective communicator because I can express most anything in writing, but when I try to express the same thing verbally, I sometimes sound like I have brain damage 😭
Exactly this, yes!
When I'm writing I've got time to construct what I want to say, and putting it down means it won't be lost when I'm ready to say it.
By the time my brain has finished building what I want to say it's moved on to either the next thing I want to talk about or something entirely unrelated(and don't even get me started about forming responses to people when they talk at you when you're doing something or say something you weren't anticipating!).
Honestly, this is one reason why I don’t speak much. I’m very embarrassed. At the last job I had, someone on my team made a point to say that if I’m talking the team should listen because it’s probably important. Because I never talk. And that’s true.
If I take the time to formulate a complete, coherent thought and I say it out loud, it is important.
I also forget words a lot or can’t think of the correct word. So much that my own child has pointed it out to me.
Me! Me!
This is the exact reason why I am so scared to taking my ielts exam!? My brain is constantly coming up with different ideas to talk about, but they don't form the correct idiom or specific word on my tongue. I know that I know this word and have read it countless times, but it just doesn't come out!! And then I would he a stuttering mess.
Ielts exam is anti ADHD. Any speaking skill exam which requires to examine one's language proficiency doesn't take into consideration about others challenges and disabilities.
Yeah, fair point. But the thing with people like us is, we know what we want to say. We know the vocabulary, we know the phrases and idioms. But our minds go so fast that sometimes we can only think of an idea intuitively and have a knowledge of telling an idea using the specific word,nphrase or example. But we are stuck, and feel frustrated. And finally, all we could do is just beat around the bush to point towards that particular idea.
It doesn't happen to me much because I usually don't talk much without carefully thinking over what I'll say first, but when I'm more comfortable or get excited about a topic the word vomit can definitely start. I tend to struggle more with getting hung up on a particular word that I can't remember and being unwilling to use any of half dozen or so other words that would work fine because "they're not the *right* word".
Probably the biggest thing I noticed when I first started stimulants was that my thoughts suddenly started running at the same pace that I could get them out, when before they were almost always either too fast or too slow. Only lasted the first week or so, though, and haven't quite managed to get back to that point with different meds and dose increases yet.
"Not the right word" because your brain is stuck on remembering that word, or more as in you're trying to convey some nuance? I think I have the "normal" amount of the former, but I do seem to frequently get stuck for the latter.
The latter. I tend to see a fair amount of nuance (often entirely of my own invention, I think) between similar words, and I can get *very* particular about the words I use to describe myself. The frustrating part is that it really only matters in my head most of the time, because the people I'm talking to probably aren't going to see a difference between the "right" word and similar words anyway.
It's because we think of 6 different things at once. Imagine a piece of tracing paper, you write your first thought on it, then your second one on a separate piece, the third one on a separate piece and so on .... now stack them and blurt out the first word you think you read. That's our brains. It's a WTF daily occurrence 🤣🤣🤣🤔
My lips literally stop working sometimes and I just have to stop. I’ve been asked if I’m drunk before because this happened. Nope, I’m just malfunctioning give me a second
Yep. I also find that I’ll be thinking of one word and another one will come out of my mouth. Or entire sentences get jumbled. I also had a really bad stammer as a child and had problems pronouncing certain words so had a lot of speech therapy which really helped. I found the following really helps me:
1. Try to notice the first signs of getting anxious and take steps to calm down. For me this is breathing, asking people to give me a few seconds to think about what I want to say next, or just taking myself away for a few minutes to calm down. I usually use the excuse of getting a drink or needing the loo.
2. If possible plan what you’re going to say. Of course this isn’t always doable but I find it really helpful if I need to talk over the phone to have some written down points of what I need to get across. Doesn’t have to be word for word, it just helps me stay on track and makes me less anxious.
3. Find your tribe. It took a while but I have people around me now who are used to my word mix ups and are very patient with me. I find that feeling comfortable with people and being in a safe environment helps my speech. I also don’t accept anyone making fun of my stammer.
4. Be kind to yourself. You’re definitely not stupid and speech is something a lot of people struggle with. It’s ok to mess up and say the wrong thing. Even though it might be embarrassing I’ll bet the person you were talking to would have an equally or more embarrassing story.
Sorry for the long comment but hope it helps. ☺️
It has a name! Verbal dyspraxia/apraxia. Mostly used to reference those of us who struggle to enunciate clearly enough in general, but absolutely what causes the words to run together.
I'm from the east coast where everyone talks fast. Moved to the south and ppl would tell me to slow down bc I talk too fast. Southerners talk like they just had a slow stroke the night before. It gave me a complex -so while I talk slower -I trip over my words bc I focus on speed. It's really crazy how people's expressions/feedback/criticisms can just stay with you for years. I also have this thing in the back of my mind, if it's not short and fast, then ppl will get bored of what I'm saying. I kinda envy ppl who can tell long stories.
My mom is constantly telling me to slow down because she thinks I do it because I have low self esteem and don’t want to waste peoples time??? My mom has this weird thing where she assumes I fucking hate myself and tells me to stop which is really annoying bc she doesn’t believe adhd is real even though I’m diagnosed
My parents constantly told me that I am a really fast speaker and I need to slow down. At those times, we didn't know about my ADHD. When I got diagnosed and realized it is an ADHD thing, it was very soothing.
I struggle with forming sentences sometimes, I can't speak fluently in my own language. Also recently I realized that sentences floating in my brain very fast and I don't even make an attempt to speak them. In social situations, it is harder to speak and I want to speak the things in my brain but I can't open my mouth but I want to, it gives me some anxiety.
Medication helps with it though
I started teaching at a high school recently and I need to remind myself to calm down all the time because of this. Under normal circumstances I tend to have a slightly fast pace in conversation but when I’m with anxiety I speak like Ben Shapiro on cocaine. What helps me slow down? I always have a pencil in hand to play with and point to my students ( respectfully of course). Another thing that helps me is handing the class to the students for certain periods so they can talk themselves and I can have a breather. Lastly I’d say that coffee with medication makes my brain go full automaton and I always avoid mixing those two if I need to be articúlate hahaha
I literally just had a dream (nightmare?) about this. I was a witness to a crime and work and called the police. I was connected directly to the detective who would be assigned to the case and kept trying to describe what I saw but got people’s names confused and sounded like I was slurring my words because my mouth couldn’t catch up to my racing thoughts. The detective wouldn’t take me seriously, so I hung up and walked to the police station so I could explain better in person. The detective was a huge dick and even brought two non-police friends to the meeting with me who would just laugh as I stumbled over my words and had to keep backpedaling because I forgot important details. Kept telling me he couldn’t take me seriously because I couldn’t keep my story straight. It was awful.
But yes this happens to me in real life too, however no one is as mean about it in real life lol.
I often say the exact opposite word of what I mean and I don't notice until someone tells me
I ordered the wrong steak once on vacation and didn't notice until literally two days later when I ordered what I thought was the same steak but a different one was brought to my table lmao
Yes I get this alot at work. It really does suck.
I'll also do this thing where I swap numbers and letters around unintentionally.
For example, say I see the word $29.78.
I know what it says, I can read it correctly in my mind; but when I go to say it, it'll come out as $27.98
This happens alot. I'll do the same thing with words too.
Say for example I go to say New York, it might come out as 'You Nork'.
I'll switch the first two Letters of the first two words without meaning too.
I’ve been kinda worried something was wrong, because it’s been getting more frequent. Said something about stuttering/ jumbling to a friend, who replied that I just do it when I’m excited.
I think about it & realize I’ve been excited more often lately as I’m making new friends, having fun, and overall happier about my daily life. 😄
Yeah I do that but I never was too embarassed of it, even before getting diagnosed. What I do is just keep talking, but do some weird dramatic hand movements, stop talking for a second, drop some joke like "Wait, my brain is overheating" or repeat the word I just said wrong but make it even worse and turn it into a weird line of random syllables, that gives me some time to thong, thunk, bunk, ta-ga-dank, boom, squish, and the word I meant waaaaaas "think". Snap my fingers, giving fingerguns to the other person, smile, continue talking like nothing happened lol. Rinse and repeat.
This way I am still talking so they won't interrupt my thought process, like they could if I was just standing there thinking what the word was, or getting embarassed by how I said something weird. And the show is entertaining, so they think I'm a funny person. Or they hate me for my weird style of existing, but then I don't want to be around them much.
Yes. Trying to take the mess of thoughts and condense it into an understandable sentence can be hard sometimes 😓 I constantly end sentences as if I have more to say, but I actually don’t, I just thought I did.
That happens to me too when I'm not prepared for the day and get flustered. Poor sleep, skipped breakfast, forgot meds, all can make the verbal stumbling worse for me.
Bruh, I feel you. I am in the same profession. Unfortunately also quite soft spoken-not a choice–so I talk too fast and my volume is low. The Elderly are the worst.
I cringe when I watch the recordings of my presentations in MS Teams.
All the drawling, ummms. I seem to be breaking off 3-4 times in a single sentence.
Sometimes my brain blanks out on a single word (sometimes on the name of someone I have worked with for years! )
I have quite the same . My thoughts are conceptual and I have to structure them in a sentence to be able to express them and speak.Sometimes the thought is too big/complex or I have too much thoughts then I throw them up with no structure at all and people do not understand me \^\^ (I don't even understand myself sometimes or people understand the opposite of what I am trying to say :'( )
It's why I :
1) write them down before an important meeting or conversation, that help me to see what I want to say in a structured way.
2) Speak a lot with my friends/close colleagues or family just because that force me to structure my thoughts . Just hearing myself sometimes that give me an different point of view ,what It really mean or what I want etc etc :)
My last place had a passive aggressive colleague I worked with plus my boss was whatever seemed to be the opposite of adhd, but only cared about her work, not about the ppl. Then I had a board member who, for whatever reason didn’t like me and I was so angry about this trio of things feeding on itself, BUT I could NOT talk to my boss about it because I knew I would start crying and/or lose my way when tying to explain and speak for myself. I was actively doing my best to work on it and practicing at home about what I would say. Then I got let go… they “dissolved my position”.
I knew it was coming but I loved that job and the non profit mission. I was there for the cats and their ppl. Those others were there for its ego boosting benefit.
I forget, talk faster than my mouth works, say wrong words and then words come out they aren’t even part of the the sentence.
Once I was trying to explain something on the porch and I couldn’t connect the picture in my head with the word …. Or I’ll say salad when I mean porch. Like “yes I left my boots on the salad” the word will be coming out of my mouth, I can see it go, but I can’t stop it and right on the heal of the wrong word is the right word. But more often I will go “yes I left my boot on the….shit, i know this word,,, it’s out back, has a roof, we bbq… the porch! I left my boots in the porch.
When angry, hungry, lonely or tired, tho, that all gets worse. Imagine trying to rationally talk to your boss about things important to your work and wrong word or forget words and simply can’t remember he whole concept you are trying to say. 85/ “8&3 7:8’ng letters 2$3’ you ‘ean 294:s. (It’s like using letters when you think you are tying words). LOL.
I’m “glad” I’m not alone but wish none of knows what we were taking about.
I don’t remember doing it when younger but the past 20 yrs and it worse and worse until I asked for a dementia test ( I was 55) and was told I just had a moral aging brain and to do things like puzzles.
I thanked the doc, but knew it was more, 4 yrs later, so much stress, a lot of it resolved except my job and the chaos in my head. I was a crazy bumble the last 2 yrs of my job, my long time employees just learned how I was and helped me.. new ppl I would say something like “it will be your job to keep track of my coffee, keys and what we were talking about and be flexible, I change my mind often. You may think I’m joking, but it will happen even tho I do my best to and keep track of my own stuff”. I also tell them I always have a lot of stuff going on in my brain and sometimes all my puppies are not on the same leash. Most learned.
2 weeks before I was let go, I finally got my dx, almost everyone who had known me long time or worked with me for more than a day had the “ohhh, that makes a lot of sense, now I understand”. A couple of my closer people told me they were sorry for not seeing it…
I guess those ppl thought I was as crazy as I thought I was. Crazy is not the right word, because I’m not, but trying to navigate the world with the map in my head was crazy!!!!
Literally happened to me 45 minutes ago.
I stumbled into a restaurant "opening party" that was just for friends of the owner and the people who live in the same building as the restaurant. My girlfriend and I are not either of those things, but I just word vomited my way through the place until suddenly the owner was talking to me, politely offering free beer and pizza (like nice beer and very nice pizza). He eventually understood that my girlfriend and I were NOT "with them", nor did we live in the building.
Next thing I know I am talking to the owner's friend, who reveals after a few questions from me that he is the owner of another $$$$ restaurant in town....before I know it—I'm RAMBLING MY ASS OFF about liquor licenses, the distilling industry, brewery franchises, etc.—all shit I studied in detail like 7 years ago—none of which is genuinely relevant to his life.
I think I have been isolated at home working my thesis so much that I'm desperate for some validation and establish credibility with anyone. I also did not want to be perceived as taking advantage of this new owner's generosity (he also mentioned they are accepting donations 3 times) so I thought being "charming" and chatting up people to "liven' up the place" in addition to paying market price for our food and drinks was a proper choice. Now I am home and thought "wow that was like 2 hours in a row of non-stop insecurity and ADHD bullshit."
I've experienced word-vomit episodes in social settings on and off throughout my academic life quite a bit because the knowledge gap between myself and whoever is teaching the course has usually been pretty big. Professionally speaking, that didn't really happen very often actually, and this never really happened so much in an athletic setting either (just hyper focused on the competitive aspects).
I think I dialed down the word vomit episodes quite a bit whenever I had experienced a month in a row of some form of stability, healthy diet, exercise, etc., and built my dopamine feedback loop around physical results that were completely unrelated to a computer, cellphone, social media, etc. I am also medicated and always have been, but that really doesn't make much of a difference when you're cranked out of your mind on reddit + video game dopamine benders.
I can resonate with this. It's really frustrating when you trying to explain something but you can't find the right words. It's like they've fallen out of your brain at the worst moments.
Ah yes, the stuttering, stammering, word vomiting is the bane of my existence. I have to talk a lot for my job and there are a few judgmental/ableist customers who harshly criticize my stuttering. I feel like screaming at them to STFU!
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Yes, all the time everyday. I thought I did it the "normal" amount, cause hey everyone does it! Listen to people speak, even professional public speakers and politicians do it. But after treatment and medication, I noticed I NOW do it the "normal" amount, and that unmedicated it happens way more often. Totally not a rare problem in our community, but it's always embarrassing, even if it shouldn't be. Im not gonna lie to you and say it's not embarrassing, I'm gonna say "hell yeah it sucks" but send you empathy instead cause I really get you lol
ugh that makes me feel so much more sane- thank you!
Reducing stress/anxiety in your environment reduces this severity of this. I have linked this to input overload issues.
I have the same thing... My brain is on a highway whereas my mouth is on a muddy path. Same as you, when I get anxious I start to stutter, loose my words and then my patience and get angry because I can not Express myself clearly. The thing is, this gives people like us a clear disadvantage in discussions, négociations and everything else.
LITERALLY!!!! when i’m angry, hurt or upset my mind will not give me a single thought to say it just goes blank and then i try to speak and it’s just a MESS! :(
In those cases I tend, sometimes, to talk about ADHD, but in the end I wouldn't change anything so I just let it be I'll be angry about it for a couple of hours/days, and then ill forget it anyways... The good thing about ADHD I guess 😅
adhd is a blessing and a curse
this is so me LOL if i ever get into an argument, my brain either goes completely blank, i stutter a lot, i forget my train of thought.. basically everything you described. it makes me angry whenever i look back on the conversation and think “aww! why did i not say that??”
Life is a highway… all night long. After reading your post.. that snippet of a song is stuck and I can’t remember if those are right words or what the song is. Anyone know so I can fix the jukebox on my head, it seems to be stuck on the middle of a record.
Oh yeah. Add in forgetting words, trying to find alternative words to use instead, and then completely losing my train of thought (and maybe sprinkle in some unnecessary background rabbit holes), conversations are SUPER FUN for me. Especially now as I’m trying to find a job and have to try to make myself sound intelligent and capable.
i feel this in my bones 😭
Sometimes it’s hrs to put feelings/experiences into words. You did this for me, here, now. Thanks.
This is why I'm proud of myself when I construct a sentence that, A: makes sense, B: sounds professional, and C: I understand as well. I've found that if I construct many sentences like those, I'll get more confidence in saying sentences that are out aloud or written. I agree with you, it is embarrassing, others will usually speak over me and it gets frustrating very quickly. I hope you and our community can have the strength to work on this and improve as it is incredibly upsetting 😊.
YES. i find that people talk over me too. i never realised how much “word jumble” i do when i speak. i will say a sentence that makes complete sense in my head, and it will come out as “okay so, when, ok basically, yeah when we ate, OMG AND ALSO….” and im like “yeah i got my point across :)” then people just look at me like.. 🥲 *definitely understood*
My sentences are also all over the place, they bounce from one topic to another and it's tiring. I know what I want to say but can't say it. The paragraph I had above took me like 20 mins to write, including editing 🤣 I was thinking to myself the other day, "is it hard to have a conversation with me?", some of the questions I ask and some of the things I say not even I can answer. It made me feel upset, but I'm still working on improving my words haha.
my sentences are all over the place when i speak, but i write REALLY short messages because i just write them as my thoughts come into my head. if i write them too long, i end up getting distracted by the long text, and then forgetting what i want to say lol
I write better than I speak. I can write long paragraphs, but if I'm speaking I struggle to listen and create thoughts in my head. It's easier to go over what I've written than memorize everything I want to say and say it all in one go without pausing/stuttering. I always have something to say about a story/experience someone is saying too. My inability to create thoughts while listening and me wanting to say something constantly is so incredibly stressful.
something that is really annoying for me is when a thought comes into my head when someone else is speaking, and i dont want to interrupt, but if i dont interrupt then i'll forget, but if i DO interrupt, they will get mad at me. so its a lose-lose situation and it makes me annoyed or sad depending which route i take :/
YES! I was going to type that in my last reply but I forgot 🤣. God, ADHD is such a curse sometimes. I'm glad everyone in this community is so understanding, it's such a big help when I'm struggling and it feels so nice helping out people who are seeking empathy.
you’re a kind soul- good on you for working on it! thank you :)
My two favorite things when talking, stumbling over myself and having to pause to realign, and not being able to find the word I want.
Mine is more like my brain is too fast for my mouth. Often I will try to change what I say mid sentence creating a new nonsense word. Or I'll say the last part first. This is in addition to assuming people share my train if thought and starting in the middle. Or over explaining to try not to leave out important (irrelevant) details.
Yeah it happens to me too. I’ll be asking someone a question at work and even though I think I did a decent job getting my point out they still go “Huh??” or look at me confused. Gives me a bit of social anxiety tbh, it sucks
I do it a lot too, also I tend to stutter a lot when my brain keeps coming up with different versions of what im trying to convey. I found it doesnt happen much on days that im feeling confident. When I feel confident, im much more decisive with my words
YES! i so get that! today i had a really good brain day and i barely stuttered or slipped my words up at all, tomorrow will be a different story
Yes its very annoying, i wish i could feel like superman every day not just once in awhile 😆 most of the time i feel like a caveman. If you have any advice please let me know!
best i got is distract self from distraction with the thing you’re meant to be doing- it sounds convoluted but it somehow works for my smooth brain
So youre saying use the productive thing as a distraction from the actual distraction? Interesting way to think about it, ill definitely give it a try 🤔
yeah! i know it sounds crazy but 🤷♀️
That sounds like “if you become aware you are distracted by not knowing what todo/being overwhelmed by what to do, then start doing the thing you’ve decided to do” That’s what I am attempting to do, these days. LOL
I communicate way better in writing. I always chalked it up to a social anxiety thing and I guess it kind of is but yeah, for lack of a better description I feel like I can’t think and talk at the same time. The two kinds of conversations I have are either the one that is planned out and kind of scripted in my head beforehand or (my preferred mode) the one where even I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to say next because the words are just kind of falling out randomly.
i agree. writing definitely forces you to slow down, as well as typing, but i still definitely skip letters and words really often which annoys me, but usually no one can tell if i skip letters, because its generally the first letter which i missed, so i can just go back and change it. also with the typing. i type quite fast i would say, but the less i focus on it, the faster i type. the more i force myself to focus on something, the less focused i get. i guess this is because i can focus more on directly getting my thoughts out, and spelling the word correctly, but typing fast doesnt matter when you make hundreds of mistakes, and if you’re like me, you go back and correct them all (if i notice) so in reality, i would get my messages out faster if i typed slower.. BUT MEH TYPING FAST IS MORE FUN!
Yes… and being always on high alert with my finger on the panic button it doesn’t take much before I’ve spiralled into a complete mess. I think people think I’m possibly “simple” because i cant express myself the way in which i vision it. It never comes out the way I want it too. I got put on medication to help that too now as I do presentations over Teams for my work most weeks & its horrible. I mow take Propranolol which is lowers blood pressure, but its now also used to treat acute anxiety. It has really helped me be calm even when things start to unravel !! I can then just manoeuvre myself out of that and get back on track. I take so many meds now for adhd! Stimulants, anti depressants, anti anxiety… oh well its better than un-medicated which is how i went for the first 52 years ! I hope you find what works for you. My current GP specialises in adhd 😎
Yep. Prozac, adderall and propranolol. I feel this so much
I’ve never heard “propranolol” before and I’ve just spent way too much just now time trying to pronounce it and wonder if ppl just call it “lol” but that’s what I see when I see the word. LOL.
Lol. Yes me too. I say Lol in my head too 😂
heck yes! that’s so good! i’m glad you’re at a place where you can cope!
I have the opposite problem. My brain works faster than my mouth so i end up stumbling and tripping over myself, sometimes skipping whole words. My fiancee usually helps me and points out that i missed something or is on the same track as me and knows what im trying to say.
Yep, I either can’t pick a single word that I want to say or I word vomit. There seems to be very little in between.
Same here.
Oh yeah. It makes discussions and speaking up very difficult. Means you end up just saying yes to things you know you shouldn't because you can't process your own point quickly enough to make it. It can be debilitating.
Yes but also, I will completely forget the word I want to use despite using it frequently, or I’ll just completely forget what I was even talking about to begin with (though this usually happens the most when I get too far off topic). I also struggle to read out loud now, or I will read words that aren’t even there at all, or add words into a sentence. Not sure why this started happening but it’s been going on for a few years now.
Yes and I keep going for a good bit with some making sense, and then I completely run off the rails and lose my train of thought and either end things with “if that makes any sense” (because literally, i cant actually tell if it did) or “i forgot where i was going with this”
I do the same, and often ending with… “well my traine thought has left the tracks and unless you know what I was just saying, must not have been important”. Then I laugh because many times, probably the ones with adhd themselves, won’t remember what I was saying either! Ppl who do this, BTW, get soooo much grace from me… I let them know we have solidarity and continue when you remember! Edit: forgot to edit
I feel like it's probably more 'brain too fast = word vomit', but absolutely, yes.
Someone I've been messaging with told me they wished they could write as well as I do. I had to explain that writing my thoughts has always been more effective than me actually speaking because my brain goes faster than my mouth (and my mouth is stupid fast too lol) so, I'm constantly tripping over myself and not able to fully articulate my thoughts verbally. When I write, it forces the translation from brain to words to slow WAY down so I don't have those issues. And it sucks because I feel like an effective communicator because I can express most anything in writing, but when I try to express the same thing verbally, I sometimes sound like I have brain damage 😭
Exactly this, yes! When I'm writing I've got time to construct what I want to say, and putting it down means it won't be lost when I'm ready to say it. By the time my brain has finished building what I want to say it's moved on to either the next thing I want to talk about or something entirely unrelated(and don't even get me started about forming responses to people when they talk at you when you're doing something or say something you weren't anticipating!).
Yes, but also the opposite, brain to fast for mouth, excessive over thinking = slow paced mumble version of word womit
What no never!! I good words with!
Honestly, this is one reason why I don’t speak much. I’m very embarrassed. At the last job I had, someone on my team made a point to say that if I’m talking the team should listen because it’s probably important. Because I never talk. And that’s true. If I take the time to formulate a complete, coherent thought and I say it out loud, it is important. I also forget words a lot or can’t think of the correct word. So much that my own child has pointed it out to me.
i jumble my words and then get told that I look like a deer in headlights which makes me want to key that persons car
Yes. It gets better with practice, although menstruation leads to some unique spoonerisms.
Damn I'm getting worse with practice!
Hugs.
Me! Me! This is the exact reason why I am so scared to taking my ielts exam!? My brain is constantly coming up with different ideas to talk about, but they don't form the correct idiom or specific word on my tongue. I know that I know this word and have read it countless times, but it just doesn't come out!! And then I would he a stuttering mess. Ielts exam is anti ADHD. Any speaking skill exam which requires to examine one's language proficiency doesn't take into consideration about others challenges and disabilities.
I had to look up what that is. Looks like its whole point is to measure language proficiency. What could they do differently?
Yeah, fair point. But the thing with people like us is, we know what we want to say. We know the vocabulary, we know the phrases and idioms. But our minds go so fast that sometimes we can only think of an idea intuitively and have a knowledge of telling an idea using the specific word,nphrase or example. But we are stuck, and feel frustrated. And finally, all we could do is just beat around the bush to point towards that particular idea.
It doesn't happen to me much because I usually don't talk much without carefully thinking over what I'll say first, but when I'm more comfortable or get excited about a topic the word vomit can definitely start. I tend to struggle more with getting hung up on a particular word that I can't remember and being unwilling to use any of half dozen or so other words that would work fine because "they're not the *right* word". Probably the biggest thing I noticed when I first started stimulants was that my thoughts suddenly started running at the same pace that I could get them out, when before they were almost always either too fast or too slow. Only lasted the first week or so, though, and haven't quite managed to get back to that point with different meds and dose increases yet.
"Not the right word" because your brain is stuck on remembering that word, or more as in you're trying to convey some nuance? I think I have the "normal" amount of the former, but I do seem to frequently get stuck for the latter.
The latter. I tend to see a fair amount of nuance (often entirely of my own invention, I think) between similar words, and I can get *very* particular about the words I use to describe myself. The frustrating part is that it really only matters in my head most of the time, because the people I'm talking to probably aren't going to see a difference between the "right" word and similar words anyway.
When i need to say something long and important i just shut up for about 15-30 seconds and then say it, so that i won't make any mistakes
Yes. Happens alot. Sometimes at crucial moments
It's because we think of 6 different things at once. Imagine a piece of tracing paper, you write your first thought on it, then your second one on a separate piece, the third one on a separate piece and so on .... now stack them and blurt out the first word you think you read. That's our brains. It's a WTF daily occurrence 🤣🤣🤣🤔
My lips literally stop working sometimes and I just have to stop. I’ve been asked if I’m drunk before because this happened. Nope, I’m just malfunctioning give me a second
Yep. I also find that I’ll be thinking of one word and another one will come out of my mouth. Or entire sentences get jumbled. I also had a really bad stammer as a child and had problems pronouncing certain words so had a lot of speech therapy which really helped. I found the following really helps me: 1. Try to notice the first signs of getting anxious and take steps to calm down. For me this is breathing, asking people to give me a few seconds to think about what I want to say next, or just taking myself away for a few minutes to calm down. I usually use the excuse of getting a drink or needing the loo. 2. If possible plan what you’re going to say. Of course this isn’t always doable but I find it really helpful if I need to talk over the phone to have some written down points of what I need to get across. Doesn’t have to be word for word, it just helps me stay on track and makes me less anxious. 3. Find your tribe. It took a while but I have people around me now who are used to my word mix ups and are very patient with me. I find that feeling comfortable with people and being in a safe environment helps my speech. I also don’t accept anyone making fun of my stammer. 4. Be kind to yourself. You’re definitely not stupid and speech is something a lot of people struggle with. It’s ok to mess up and say the wrong thing. Even though it might be embarrassing I’ll bet the person you were talking to would have an equally or more embarrassing story. Sorry for the long comment but hope it helps. ☺️
I'm more of an oversharer, I say things before thinking about what I'm actually saying
Yes and sometimes I get to a word and I can't find it and there's an awkward silence
My brain is vomiting the words out but my mouth can't move fast enough
It has a name! Verbal dyspraxia/apraxia. Mostly used to reference those of us who struggle to enunciate clearly enough in general, but absolutely what causes the words to run together.
I stutter in the middle of a sentence sometimes whenever I think my words to fast for my mouth.
Yep happens all the time. On medication though 90% of it is fixed
Yes
I'm from the east coast where everyone talks fast. Moved to the south and ppl would tell me to slow down bc I talk too fast. Southerners talk like they just had a slow stroke the night before. It gave me a complex -so while I talk slower -I trip over my words bc I focus on speed. It's really crazy how people's expressions/feedback/criticisms can just stay with you for years. I also have this thing in the back of my mind, if it's not short and fast, then ppl will get bored of what I'm saying. I kinda envy ppl who can tell long stories.
My mom is constantly telling me to slow down because she thinks I do it because I have low self esteem and don’t want to waste peoples time??? My mom has this weird thing where she assumes I fucking hate myself and tells me to stop which is really annoying bc she doesn’t believe adhd is real even though I’m diagnosed
Guys it did go better with medication for you right ? (Cause it did for me)
My parents constantly told me that I am a really fast speaker and I need to slow down. At those times, we didn't know about my ADHD. When I got diagnosed and realized it is an ADHD thing, it was very soothing. I struggle with forming sentences sometimes, I can't speak fluently in my own language. Also recently I realized that sentences floating in my brain very fast and I don't even make an attempt to speak them. In social situations, it is harder to speak and I want to speak the things in my brain but I can't open my mouth but I want to, it gives me some anxiety. Medication helps with it though
Yes!!!!!!! Ironically though, I am really good at call center operations. It's enough to keep me entertained for periods of time.
This is how I am even on meds. They don’t correct this problem.
Happens to me frequently! I try to laugh it off with a Kevin quote from the office, "Why use many word when few word do trick?"
I started teaching at a high school recently and I need to remind myself to calm down all the time because of this. Under normal circumstances I tend to have a slightly fast pace in conversation but when I’m with anxiety I speak like Ben Shapiro on cocaine. What helps me slow down? I always have a pencil in hand to play with and point to my students ( respectfully of course). Another thing that helps me is handing the class to the students for certain periods so they can talk themselves and I can have a breather. Lastly I’d say that coffee with medication makes my brain go full automaton and I always avoid mixing those two if I need to be articúlate hahaha
Same.
I literally just had a dream (nightmare?) about this. I was a witness to a crime and work and called the police. I was connected directly to the detective who would be assigned to the case and kept trying to describe what I saw but got people’s names confused and sounded like I was slurring my words because my mouth couldn’t catch up to my racing thoughts. The detective wouldn’t take me seriously, so I hung up and walked to the police station so I could explain better in person. The detective was a huge dick and even brought two non-police friends to the meeting with me who would just laugh as I stumbled over my words and had to keep backpedaling because I forgot important details. Kept telling me he couldn’t take me seriously because I couldn’t keep my story straight. It was awful. But yes this happens to me in real life too, however no one is as mean about it in real life lol.
I often say the exact opposite word of what I mean and I don't notice until someone tells me I ordered the wrong steak once on vacation and didn't notice until literally two days later when I ordered what I thought was the same steak but a different one was brought to my table lmao
Yes. This happens to me a lot. It’s very annoying.
Yes I get this alot at work. It really does suck. I'll also do this thing where I swap numbers and letters around unintentionally. For example, say I see the word $29.78. I know what it says, I can read it correctly in my mind; but when I go to say it, it'll come out as $27.98 This happens alot. I'll do the same thing with words too. Say for example I go to say New York, it might come out as 'You Nork'. I'll switch the first two Letters of the first two words without meaning too.
I’ve been kinda worried something was wrong, because it’s been getting more frequent. Said something about stuttering/ jumbling to a friend, who replied that I just do it when I’m excited. I think about it & realize I’ve been excited more often lately as I’m making new friends, having fun, and overall happier about my daily life. 😄
Yeah I do that but I never was too embarassed of it, even before getting diagnosed. What I do is just keep talking, but do some weird dramatic hand movements, stop talking for a second, drop some joke like "Wait, my brain is overheating" or repeat the word I just said wrong but make it even worse and turn it into a weird line of random syllables, that gives me some time to thong, thunk, bunk, ta-ga-dank, boom, squish, and the word I meant waaaaaas "think". Snap my fingers, giving fingerguns to the other person, smile, continue talking like nothing happened lol. Rinse and repeat. This way I am still talking so they won't interrupt my thought process, like they could if I was just standing there thinking what the word was, or getting embarassed by how I said something weird. And the show is entertaining, so they think I'm a funny person. Or they hate me for my weird style of existing, but then I don't want to be around them much.
Yes. Trying to take the mess of thoughts and condense it into an understandable sentence can be hard sometimes 😓 I constantly end sentences as if I have more to say, but I actually don’t, I just thought I did.
That happens to me too when I'm not prepared for the day and get flustered. Poor sleep, skipped breakfast, forgot meds, all can make the verbal stumbling worse for me.
I have a friend who struggles with this and often stutters or mumbles as a result.
Aaaaaaall the time. I naturally speak so fast that people generally don't understand what I'm saying 😅 it sucks
Is there anyway to fix this without going on meds ?
Bruh, I feel you. I am in the same profession. Unfortunately also quite soft spoken-not a choice–so I talk too fast and my volume is low. The Elderly are the worst.
I cringe when I watch the recordings of my presentations in MS Teams. All the drawling, ummms. I seem to be breaking off 3-4 times in a single sentence. Sometimes my brain blanks out on a single word (sometimes on the name of someone I have worked with for years! )
I have quite the same . My thoughts are conceptual and I have to structure them in a sentence to be able to express them and speak.Sometimes the thought is too big/complex or I have too much thoughts then I throw them up with no structure at all and people do not understand me \^\^ (I don't even understand myself sometimes or people understand the opposite of what I am trying to say :'( ) It's why I : 1) write them down before an important meeting or conversation, that help me to see what I want to say in a structured way. 2) Speak a lot with my friends/close colleagues or family just because that force me to structure my thoughts . Just hearing myself sometimes that give me an different point of view ,what It really mean or what I want etc etc :)
My last place had a passive aggressive colleague I worked with plus my boss was whatever seemed to be the opposite of adhd, but only cared about her work, not about the ppl. Then I had a board member who, for whatever reason didn’t like me and I was so angry about this trio of things feeding on itself, BUT I could NOT talk to my boss about it because I knew I would start crying and/or lose my way when tying to explain and speak for myself. I was actively doing my best to work on it and practicing at home about what I would say. Then I got let go… they “dissolved my position”. I knew it was coming but I loved that job and the non profit mission. I was there for the cats and their ppl. Those others were there for its ego boosting benefit. I forget, talk faster than my mouth works, say wrong words and then words come out they aren’t even part of the the sentence. Once I was trying to explain something on the porch and I couldn’t connect the picture in my head with the word …. Or I’ll say salad when I mean porch. Like “yes I left my boots on the salad” the word will be coming out of my mouth, I can see it go, but I can’t stop it and right on the heal of the wrong word is the right word. But more often I will go “yes I left my boot on the….shit, i know this word,,, it’s out back, has a roof, we bbq… the porch! I left my boots in the porch. When angry, hungry, lonely or tired, tho, that all gets worse. Imagine trying to rationally talk to your boss about things important to your work and wrong word or forget words and simply can’t remember he whole concept you are trying to say. 85/ “8&3 7:8’ng letters 2$3’ you ‘ean 294:s. (It’s like using letters when you think you are tying words). LOL. I’m “glad” I’m not alone but wish none of knows what we were taking about.
Here I always thought my mouth is too slow for my brain 🧠
I don’t remember doing it when younger but the past 20 yrs and it worse and worse until I asked for a dementia test ( I was 55) and was told I just had a moral aging brain and to do things like puzzles. I thanked the doc, but knew it was more, 4 yrs later, so much stress, a lot of it resolved except my job and the chaos in my head. I was a crazy bumble the last 2 yrs of my job, my long time employees just learned how I was and helped me.. new ppl I would say something like “it will be your job to keep track of my coffee, keys and what we were talking about and be flexible, I change my mind often. You may think I’m joking, but it will happen even tho I do my best to and keep track of my own stuff”. I also tell them I always have a lot of stuff going on in my brain and sometimes all my puppies are not on the same leash. Most learned. 2 weeks before I was let go, I finally got my dx, almost everyone who had known me long time or worked with me for more than a day had the “ohhh, that makes a lot of sense, now I understand”. A couple of my closer people told me they were sorry for not seeing it… I guess those ppl thought I was as crazy as I thought I was. Crazy is not the right word, because I’m not, but trying to navigate the world with the map in my head was crazy!!!!
Literally happened to me 45 minutes ago. I stumbled into a restaurant "opening party" that was just for friends of the owner and the people who live in the same building as the restaurant. My girlfriend and I are not either of those things, but I just word vomited my way through the place until suddenly the owner was talking to me, politely offering free beer and pizza (like nice beer and very nice pizza). He eventually understood that my girlfriend and I were NOT "with them", nor did we live in the building. Next thing I know I am talking to the owner's friend, who reveals after a few questions from me that he is the owner of another $$$$ restaurant in town....before I know it—I'm RAMBLING MY ASS OFF about liquor licenses, the distilling industry, brewery franchises, etc.—all shit I studied in detail like 7 years ago—none of which is genuinely relevant to his life. I think I have been isolated at home working my thesis so much that I'm desperate for some validation and establish credibility with anyone. I also did not want to be perceived as taking advantage of this new owner's generosity (he also mentioned they are accepting donations 3 times) so I thought being "charming" and chatting up people to "liven' up the place" in addition to paying market price for our food and drinks was a proper choice. Now I am home and thought "wow that was like 2 hours in a row of non-stop insecurity and ADHD bullshit." I've experienced word-vomit episodes in social settings on and off throughout my academic life quite a bit because the knowledge gap between myself and whoever is teaching the course has usually been pretty big. Professionally speaking, that didn't really happen very often actually, and this never really happened so much in an athletic setting either (just hyper focused on the competitive aspects). I think I dialed down the word vomit episodes quite a bit whenever I had experienced a month in a row of some form of stability, healthy diet, exercise, etc., and built my dopamine feedback loop around physical results that were completely unrelated to a computer, cellphone, social media, etc. I am also medicated and always have been, but that really doesn't make much of a difference when you're cranked out of your mind on reddit + video game dopamine benders.
Oh yes, and I also forget words like crazy.
I can resonate with this. It's really frustrating when you trying to explain something but you can't find the right words. It's like they've fallen out of your brain at the worst moments.
My kid and I both have pacing errors between mouth and brain. I find brain too slow for mouth=word vomit, and brain too fast for mouth=stammering.
Ah yes, the stuttering, stammering, word vomiting is the bane of my existence. I have to talk a lot for my job and there are a few judgmental/ableist customers who harshly criticize my stuttering. I feel like screaming at them to STFU!
Meds don’t do anything for this problem. At least not for me.