Delay Speaking with People

[fishead]

I've found myself delaying speaking to people about important matters as I'm afraid I'll misspeak, lose my thought(s), have difficulties in understanding what they're saying, etc. Does anyone else do this?

Oh YES YES YES YES!!!!
What frustrates me MOST is, when you are trying to interpret what they are saying, you get "left out" of the convo. I.E. people "talk around/over" you and don't give you that space to jump in.

[Marco]

Cutting & pasting

I can relate to every post. It's frustrating. While others could still understand me, I would often feel dumb, or retarded, because of the way I sounded. Sorry for the non-PC terms, but I am being honest to and for me. It got to the point where I would try not to engage in conversations and interrupt the flow with my garbled gibberish. People would try, but it certainly made communicating much more difficult. I would often look towards my wife to bail me out and she always did. This however, did not help fix, or even work on fixing, the problem. I also spent a long time commiserating with others, but things started improving when I started working with a good speech therapist.

Just this weekend, I made a post on help for cognitive issues. The identical advice can help you with word block, scanning, stammering, fluency shaping, and even improving breathing. Please check my comment here:
http://www.msworld.org/forum/showpos...5&postcount=29

More than anything, please know you are not alone, you have no reason to be embarrassed and there are people trained and ready to help you. I wish you all well ...

[daraslyte]

What annoys me is i cant get my thoughts and words together now as it is and when i am having issues its alot worse , and i get interrupted all the time and it makes me so mad .

I swear my family dont have a clue and i explain it to them all the time. Its like they are the only ones that can say stuff right and fast enough. Its really annoying. Anyways thats all for now folks. Have a great week everyone.

[Cartoonist2]

I have a hard time keeping a conversation in my official language, but not in my dialect. So, I usually do not pick up the phone for strangers, unless I forget to not do so, which happens. If that happens, I tell them that they need to talk slow, repeat when I ask and not rattle because I have cognitive MS issues. If they can't comply, I make it clear that I asked them to help me. If they still don't, I say that they are not putting in any effort, say goodbye and hang up.

It's easier when I see people face to face and people seem to behave better than over the phone. My official language was gone in 2006 due to MS, I have managed to learn it back, but it feels like it's a foreign language to me.

I have stopped caring about how people see me and think of me, I only respond when people gesture that I am drunk when I spot that. It's very liberating.

[ree221]

OMG YES!!!!!

I find that i have been withdrawing from social situations more and more. I can't keep up with the conversation because of processing delays and memory deficits make it near impossible to retain what I CAN keep up with! I make those funny faces too when I strain to follow and understand. LOL

What makes all this worse for me is I have other issues that compound it. I have social anxiety disorder and I have sensioneural hearing loss in both ears. It's so difficult to be around people because of my anxiety and when I push myself through that (because I have to sometimes) then I am challenged with hearing what is said if I don't have my hearing aids on; even with them on I have issues hearing if there are too many people and too much background noise. Add that on top of the cognitive deficits. UGH!!!!!

No one understands why I just rather sit at home all day. This is why. Having depression does not help, either.