I’m not the best communicator while not distracted to begin with. Often struggling to verbalize a thought or find a word I can’t remember for some reason. If I am focused on talking, though, I can usually get by well enough and even be a bit witty, especially if its not face-to-face communication. However, if I’m doing something else, like doing something with my hands at work, and someone tries to talk to me, I stumble over what I’m saying quite a lot. Banter is nearly impossible. I can normally have a bit of back and forth with someone and throw some funny quips in, but in these situations I just end up saying something stupid and often taking things too literally, only to immediately internally regret my choice of words as I properly process the conversation in the next moment.
I think it’s because conversation takes a good bit of processing power for me to have flow “naturally”. Any sort of distraction diverts some of that processing power and impedes my conversational ability. It can be pretty frustrating since everyone seems to want to talk while working and it just doesn’t work for me.
Do any of you share a similar experience? If so, how do you deal with it?
Definitely. When I am doing one thing and start talking also the talking is semi-stream of consciousness. But when I ‘check in’ on what I’m saying I find it’s mostly just the same two things being repeated but like in different orders. Kind of a word salad with purpose behind it. Though it works better when I can talk and then do the other thing without having to think about the other thing.
I’d suggest if you need to have a thoughtful conversation and put in more processing focus on the convo and stop the other stuff you’re doing. If you feel that’s not possible, stopping the other stuff, maybe try to tell the person that you can give them a minute and you have to get back to your other thing. Obviously works better with people you have talked about this with before.
