I have this really embarrassing ... ... ... ... ... problem

April 21, 2007 10:53 AM

Why have I developed a bunch of verbal tics/eccentricities in undergrad/law school, and how do I get rid of or manage them?

Mainly I'm interested in similar experiences, and what type of therapist/doctor/whatever I should be consulting. My symptoms seem a crazy-quilt of a few different speech disorders, or I'd presume it was one and go see a speech pathologist.

BACKGROUND: I've always been an incessant talker, but I was always good at it. I could comfortable speak to adults by the time I was in elementary school (confusing the hell out of my stepfather for many years, the poor man) and was happy to do so--in fact, preferred doing so. I did Toastmaster in junior high (grades 7 & 8 here) and was good at it, and all through high school was the queen of raising my hand, doing presentations, and generally being eloquent and loving language.

THEN: In undergrad I discovered I had an auditory processing disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Auditory_processing_disorder) and I also become quite ill, resulting in some sort of chronic fatigue/atypical narcolepsy, the most distressing symptom of which was constantly having not just words but whole sentences, concepts and thoughts "on the tip of my tongue". Or in other words, I "got stupid".

NOW: My brain is mostly back on track, but for a few verbal tics that I find extremely annoying, and which I'm pretty sure have worked against me in job interviews and similar situations.

IRRITATING SYMPTOMS: I pause for no reason in the middle of some (all?) sentences. This can range from infinitesimal (only I notice, and only if I'm looking) to where other people assume I'm done and take up the conversation. Is this what stutterers call blocking? It can go on for almost a minute, sometimes only ending if I derail the sentence entirely (and sometimes not even then), and the only "communication" I can achieve is to snap, wave my hand, or hit the tabletop (as opposed to saying "um" or other interjections). I find it almost impossible to recover from these "brain farts" without breaking eye contact, which looks bad to listeners.

I have a tendency (compensation?) to say half a sentence and then break away into a related but entirely new sentence. Imagine speaking with a million parenthetical asides and em dashes.

This occurs whether I have carefully thought out what I want to say (e.g. replying to a comment in class) or in casual conversation.

The only time it doesn't happen (and this is equally annoying) is when I'm all of a sudden hit with a bout of extreme verbal diarrhea, in which I will blather on endlessly about something random until interrupted, and when finished I will not even remember exactly what I said, just that it was interesting but unimportant.

So...any ideas?

posted by sarahkeebs to society & culture (10 comments total)

Not a doctor, not a stutterer, etc etc... I'm just giving you my initial reaction. So, grain of salt and all that.

What you describe sounds like the flip-side of the auditory processing problem, judging by the Wikipedia article. With the APD the problem is with processing heard speech into coherent thoughts, right? Your symptoms seem like a problem processing coherent thoughts into fluid speech. The difference with the verbal diarrhea could be that it's more of a stream-of-consciousness blathering, without much processing behind it.

Maybe whatever kind of doctor (neurologist? speech pathologist?) you saw for the APD could help with the, for lack of a better term, V(erbal)PD.
posted by CKmtl at 11:31 AM on April 21, 2007

Because of your prior medical history, I'm going to suggest that you ask for a referral to a speech pathologist who may have some specialized training. You may even need to see several practioners, to find one with clinical experience relevant to your needs.

I say this because expending effort to "correct" these problems yourself may actually be reinforcing the problems, and you may benefit by avoiding additional frustration and habituation, as much as by any techniques or excercises you may be taught to help you overcome the problem. Although it is not necessarily germane to your issues, I have known a number of people with serious stuttering issues, who have been helped by excercises as diverse as "singing" their vocalizations, to various kinds of breathing excercises. What works for you maybe a matter of directed experiment, based on some serious analysis of your vocal tract and physiology, which may still be influenced by your medical history.
posted by paulsc at 11:38 AM on April 21, 2007

I am a speech language pathologist, but not your SLP. :-)

It does sound like you should be evaluated by someone knowledgable. Even if your problems are a "crazy quilt of a few different speech disorders," they'll be able to sort it out. I work in a school and few of my kids have just one neatly packaged little disorder. Things overlap.

That being said, it sounds more like you're having word retreival problems than actual stuttering. When people who stutter block they experience some muscle tension. It sounds like your problem isn't physical tension, it's that you can't come up with the appropriate words.

So yeah, go get an eval. And good luck :-)
posted by christinetheslp at 12:02 PM on April 21, 2007

I would guess you have developed some kind of seizure disorder.

The involuntary pausing you do could be your brain's last ditch effort to prevent the seizure from happening. The "extreme verbal diarrhea" is the seizure manifesting itself, from the perspective of my guess, when that last ditch effort fails. I find it significant that you don't remember exactly what you said (am I wrong to interpret this as meaning you can't remember exactly what you said?) because inability to remember what happened during is a fairly common aftermath of some kinds of seizure events.

It would be interesting to know more about your illness; it sounds as if these difficulties are indeed the residue of it.

I think you should not rest until you have been evaluated by a neurologist with a specialty in seizure disorders.
posted by jamjam at 12:33 PM on April 21, 2007

Wow, fucking weird.

I have almost exactly the same problem. I used to be Clarence Darrow in high school (much to the chagrin of my teachers and parents), loved giving presentations and public speeches, etc. In college I seemed to have lost my "edge", and now I have the same annoying pauses where I collect my thoughts or try and nail the exact turn of phrase that I'm thinking of. I also have atypical narcolepsy that was only recently diagnosed.

At least with me, the problem manafests itself in knowing instinctually what I'm trying to say, but for some reason I can't get it exactly—I'll talk around what I'm trying to say until someone interjects, "Oh, you mean like [...] ?" It's usually a phrase or specific word that I'll have trouble with; I can spit out a dozen analogous phrases or synonyms but get a mental blank with the precise word I'm trying to say. As you say, it's infuriating.

If this isn't too personal, do you have any prior drug experience, specifically marijuana usage? For some reason I have a sneaking suspicion that my previous youthful indiscretions may have something to do with it. (Brain fart: it just took me about 2 minutes to get the word "indiscretions." I knew it was "youthful -something-", I knew it was a common phrase, but I kept dancing around the word. "Youthful extravagences?" "Youthful misadventures?" "Youthful improprieties?" ARGH!)

I've also found that, as I now have to watch what I say more and more (in front of colleagues, strangers, etc.) I'm more cautious of being misunderstood, so I take longer to get just the right word. Are you a big reader? Do you have pedantic tendencies with regard to language and grammar? I think any or all of these could be a source of the problem.

As for solutions. Man, I just don't know. One thing I'm going to try is to start reading more. I used to read all the time, but recently (as of the past five years or so) I've been seriously slacking. I think perhaps one of the problems is that I'm not being exposed to language as much as I used to be (save for the internet, LOLAMIRITE?) and over the years those phrases and words are slowly going out of focus. They're still there in my head, but because I don't normally use them in everyday conversation, I'm forgetting them. Part of the problem might be that I work in software, where language is of secondary importance, and that my social circle has shrunk considerably since college.

Anyway, good luck. Hopefully someone else here will have better advice than "See a doctor" or "See a therapist".
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:36 PM on April 21, 2007 [3 favorites]

I just feel like I should add that you could pretty be describing me in listing these symptoms, and it happened to me when I was at the (average) grad-school age.

For me, it is almost always tied to stress, which I imagine you have your share of right now. Also, I did some growing up during that time, and I found myself much more self-aware of what I was saying, which made me more self-critical of what I was saying and more likely to critique my words as I was saying them.

The other thing seemed to be the David Allen GTD thing, that I was carrying too much stuff in my head and writing down too little stuff, thus burning too much "psychic RAM." so every so often, my face would turn into the little cursor hourglass until my brain caught up with my mouth.

Not saying you should not see a doctor, especially with the other diagnosis you mentioned, but just saying you are not alone.
posted by 4ster at 5:43 PM on April 21, 2007

[just wondering, if you wouldn't mind sharing, how you got "back on track" after the original fatigue/atypical narcolepsy diagnosis?]
posted by availablelight at 5:55 PM on April 23, 2007

I wish you well with this -- something similar happened to me at what sounds like about your age, and the only thing I've found that helped since then has been speaking very, very slowly when it's important I get it correct. I'm sorry I haven't got any better advice for you than that.

In a lighter vein, you can always cheer yourself up by telling yourself that you are on the verge of transcending earthly concerns:

"The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?" -- Chuang Tzu
posted by little miss manners at 7:01 PM on April 23, 2007

jamjam: I have been given some neurological tests (a sleep study and a daytime multiple sleep latency study, which basically means 24 hours of electrodes on my scalp) but they weren't looking for that specifically, so I will raise the point when I'm trolling for referrals. It hadn't occurred to me, because blackouts and automatic behaviors are also symptoms of atypical narcolepsy. And I do remember what I said, in the sense that I remember the topic and if I ask myself "Did I mention x?" I'll probably know, but it's as if I'm remembering a conversation that happened days ago, not minutes.

Civil_Disobedient: How bizarre! I'd say no to the Mary Jane, except for secondary exposure. I have a semi-magical ability to react oddly to any medication (like Tylenol and allergy meds...gives my doctor the chuckles) so I try to avoid *direct* doses of recreational drugs in case I grow a third arm or travel back in time or something else. You may be right about the contextual use of language though...I still read a lot, but not "good" writing (judicial decisions are either poetry or borderline illiterate) and messaging/blogging/e-mail certainly lends itself to tangential thinking. I am a big reader, and my nickname in highschool was "Queen of the Grammar Rodeo" (God I wish I was kidding) and now I'm an editor at an academic publication...I think you're on to something with that.

4ster: "every so often, my face would turn into the little cursor hourglass until my brain caught up with my mouth." OMG, thank-you for the perfect image with which to describe what I'm experiencing. That is really too spot-on. Not to mention the accompanying user-frustration of wanting the hourglass to hurry the heck up, and moving the mouse around and switching programs even though you know it won't help and will probably hurt.
posted by sarahkeebs at 6:50 AM on April 24, 2007

Oh hey! You sound like me! Yay? This is a question that I asked recently. In fact, one reason that I am going to school online (and working online, essentially) is that I totally cannot handle listening/talking in groups. Email/chat is infinitely better because I can edit everything to mean what I want. I feel like my difficulties emerged in grad school, when (due to a change in academic disciplines) suddenly I had to participate in small group discussions.

I find that I end up talking around the words or concepts that I cannot remember, sometimes using really long, complicated, or made-up words to explain whatever easy thing I'm trying to say. I assumed it was APD or ADD or Asperger's or some other condition that cannot be fixed at this point. Or mini-seizures? I'm on Lamictal now, can't decide if things are any better.

I went to an LD person at my university, but they were really suspicious, and seemed to think that I was trying to get someone to take notes for me. I went to a neurologist who basically said that I was too smart to have something wrong. Psychiatrists said similar things. You might try doctors anyway? I also started keeping a notebook of words and phrases that I cannot remember. For some reason that makes me feel better.

But mostly, at this point, I've just decided to just rock it. Think of it as a charming eccentricity, and if someone can't appreciate it, then fuck 'em. I find that having a good sense of humor about it helps, and finding people to hang out and work with who realize that you are not stupid, just a little weird.
posted by unknowncommand at 10:19 AM on November 29, 2007