Curious to know if anyone's found a way to adress this as well. I'm ADHD and I'm constantly tripping over my words. I'll either have a perfectly clear thought and just be incapable of articulating it or I'll forget what I was going to say halfway through. It's almost like I have a stutter or something and it's definitely gotten worse over the last few years. I don't remember having this problem pre 2021-2022ish. Writing is similarly bad for me, but I have an opportunity to edit and focus on what I'm doing so it usually comes out alright.

I wish I had an answer for you OP but hopefully it brings some comfort to know you're not alone

Is there any way to improve this

yes! more reading, more writing. in my experience I encounter turns of phrase and ways of expression that fill my toolbox

Human language is so limited compared to the vastness of the mind, especially when our mind got to conceptualize multifaceted aspects of the reality.

For example: human language presumes time and place. What if the concept revolves around the nothingness and non-existence? If I were to say that "nothing is infinite, ever existed", the grammar will need definite article "the" ("THE nothing is infinite, it ever existed") except that it's not a "thing", it's "no thing", so it'd be paradoxical to refer to it as "it" or "the". In my mind, it makes sense, it's clear to me. But words cannot express it as clearly as my thoughts.

So it's can be possibly be a limitation of the whole human language mechanism (independent of which language).

It's like getting a crystal clear image of a schematic with everything laid out, but then I have to do the human equivalent of translating it into binary so it can be perceived at low resolution by others

This sounds like one of the many exceptionalities that are often concurrent with autism. I only an elementary teacher, but I have kids with ASD who tell me similar things. They normally have a Language and/or Auditory Processing Disorder. There’s lots of things that help my students with spoken and written language development, but yeah it is very much how their brains are. Which is totally valid by the way.

I’m not sure what would be helpful for an adult to improve spoken/written communication. Simple and guiding prompt activities help my students (“I thought/felt/did…because….”) engage with organizing thoughts. Writing and speaking in past tense structure seems to be important, but I honestly can’t tell you why. I just trust our Speech Pathologist and our Psychologist.

If it’s any consolation, I’m not autistic, but I have a lot of overlapping learning disability diagnoses, like ADHD and dyslexia (and probably some kind of sensory processing disorder, but seriously if you have one of these diagnoses you likely experience multiple exceptionalities). Comments like this usually take me like half an hour or more to write. And there’s probably still mistakes.

Something I've noticed is this problem goes away when I'm talking about something technical, or within my "special interests". But then I fall apart if I'm trying to do something like summarize a movie or explain how I feel. If I'm explaining something like polyploidy in plants, my speech becomes fluid and I'm able to adjust my vocabulary/rhythm for the audience. If I want to talk about the movie I saw a couple hours ago, it's hopeless.

Like with every other autistic trait, it's a human brain thing that just tends to have different patterns with autistic people. Neurotypical people also have the experience of not being able to express themselves, but I think being better with social cues/nonverbal communication helps them fill in the gaps. And they usually get a lot more practice.

But it's extremely annoying and gets in the way of building any relationships. Therapy has definitely helped.

Stumbled into this thread because of admin stuff but yes absolutely. Whenever I think of something deep it feels like literature but when I try to convert the words in my head into spoken or written words I fail every time lol. So far I have not found a fix for it.

I think my experience is somewhat related, although from the opposite end - all of my thoughts exist as language and I really struggle with ideas that aren't already "spoken" in my mind. I was completely unable to mentally picture anything in my "mind's eye" before my head injury, I had to describe images to myself using language! Somehow my TBI gave me the ability to mentally picture images if I really focus on it, but it's still very hard for me and much easier to just narrate.

Only ADHD, but I routinely run into a tip-of-my-tongue moment where I can't recall the word I'm looking for right in the middle of a sentence. I'm also pretty trash at properly enunciating while talking, so a lot of my sentences will end on the wrong cadence and people around me take a second to realize I finished it.

I'm not sure there's a fix for any of that, and I'm pretty sure I don't have a degenerative brain disease or something that's actually the root cause.

for me i am incoherent no matter what i do. doesn't help that my handwriting is bad. my speech is all uh's, um's and hexbear's :butt: emoji....'s especially because i can't speak my native tongue normally and apparently my brain is "too fast" compared to my body

i repeat stuff i already said, i somehow piss people off just by speaking, it's a mess honestly. i can't help sorry

The middle of a sentence is where speech goes to die.