Mental block

When I talk to my therapist I can never coherently express everything I want to say.
Partially because at times I’m crying, but also because I can’t organize my thoughts. I go on long-winded tangents unrelated to what I really want to get at, and then I forget what I actually meant to say. I was reading a book about introverts recently and it said “They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation.” (Quiet, by Susan Cain)

I hadn’t really considered the writing bit before but it’s spot on. I get flustered and my mind goes blank when I try to speak. In university whenever I needed to do presentations I would practice so much, prepare cue cards, pretty much memorized my papers, but when the time came it’s like I knew nothing. My cards would get mixed up, I would panic and it would be my nightmare.
“What’s the play about? Bananas? I don’t know?! Who are you? I can’t feel my arms?”

That’s often how therapy goes. Except there’s a lot more nervous laughter, crying, and when I’m crying I don’t talk because I get caught up in how my voice sounds.
Whenever I have something that’s bothering me with Neil I usually just brood, shoot him daggers with my eyes, and sometimes I text him what I want to say when he’s beside me.

I wonder now if I get flustered and forget things because of MS “brain fog” but I’m not totally sure. When I was younger it was purely nerves, but now whenever I’m so mixed up it seems different. I often feel overstimulated and it’s too much to talk or think about things. I was in a grocery store a few weeks ago and it was busy. There was so much mental stimulation that I forgot what I needed and wanted to leave. My head was sore and I was mentally exhausted. In the moment I couldn’t explain it to Neil when he asked. Everything is easier to write, so maybe I should have just texted him.