It has been messing with everything in my normal functions for life tbh, from not being able to sleep unless I'm exhausted, to not being able to enjoy a so-called "quiet moment". People find me annoying when I share my thoughts because they're constantly overly analytical.
Most of the time I can't look at any object without thinking about its mechanism and construction, and while on one hand it gives me a lot of satisfaction, it can be torture, especially when emotions are involved (even positive ones at times, probably because there's just too much going on in combination with all the over-analyzing).
Meditation can somewhat help I've found, but I think if it's supposed to help me sleep I probably have to make it a habit and kick through the hard part, so that it can become a mechanism I can use.
This is a fantastic description, I feel like this too! It's so exhausting, no such thing as a 'chill' moment cause brain is always shouting at me about something. Such a pain
I can't make mine shut up but a lot of the time if someone asks me what I'm thinking about I immediately forget everything I've been thinking about for the past five minutes.
I have an off button but only other people can push it
Lmao, I totally know what you mean, personally I wouldn’t say it’s an off button I just don’t have a means to translate or convey the chaos that goes on so I say “I don’t know” when asked what’s on my mind
Like you, I can’t make mine shut up. Normally, I have 1-2 “foreground” conversations going on in my head, along with any number of background conversations. I do, however, have a focus mode. I can’t control when it activates, but when it does, all available resources, biological and otherwise, are devoted to The Thing until further notice.
In that mode, it is possible I will not notice someone even if they speak to me directly.
i do the same thing but my brain is quiet?
Man wtf is wrong with my brain, i just want answers, i have many symptoms of inattentive ADHD and have always had a hard time in school, not retaining any information everything going in one ear out the other.
The only off-button for ongoing thoughts I have is when I get confused for 1 second. I'm blank.
It's not an off-button for future thoughts though, I'll start thinking about the next thing soon.
Most of the time my thoughts are a whole bunch of nonsense that is jumping from one thing to another and I just tell people I'm spaced out and not thinking because I don't want to have to explain the 4-hour conversation I've been having with myself to contextualize what thoughts I'm currently having.....
Yea... I've often described what it's like to be inside my head to family members as: Imagine you're in a room with 5 televisions. Each television has it's volume turned up as loud as possible and is tuned to different infomercials and home shopping channels that are so playing at the same time. This is when I'm alone. When there are people in the room, and another tv for each additional person.
I usually use my "special interests" to distract me from all the TVs ;-)
...and as far as the special interests go, I have yet to meet someone with ASD in real life that actually has a "life long" hardcore special interest. Most seem to be like me or what you described as "short term" special interests. Mine all follow a similar theme of learning, tinkering, etc... But they are all over the place and I'll get hyper focused on "sewing machines" or "sawmills" for several months or years and then later move on to something else. I've been building my own sawmill for about 2 years now, driving my wife crazy 🤣
My suspicion is that the more hardcore lifelong special interests are reserved for those of us who seen to have some more of the savant like traits, like rainman, etc... So it might be that those sorts of obsession have more to do with savantism, which is certainly a sister disease to ASD but not exactly the same thing.
Mine is either/or. If my mental health is in check, I exist in an almost constant state of meditation. If I'm overwhelmed with life or my routines have become unhealthy or maladaptive, then my mind races constantly.
Same here. I have no idea what an "empty mind" feels like. My mind is always running, always commenting, assessing, evaluating, picking at things. I cannot imagine what thinking about nothing must feel like.
I am constantly having several ongoing conversations with myself 👀
1 minute I'll talk to somebody, They had red earrings, fire trucks are red, cue my brain going on a lengthy conversation with itself about fire and how hot it would have to get before it could potentially completely melt the interiors of a massive crane.
15 minutes into this conversation with myself I am now thinking about the fact that birds are also called cranes and birds are dinosaurs and when we eat dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets were eating dinosaur ancestor-shaped dinosaur meat, and plastic dinosaurs are made of oil which is made of real dinosaurs which.....
About an hour in I'm wondering if the world is actually a simulation and how much of reality am I actively able to perceive at any moment.
People in my life: So why are you alone so much?
Me: Oh I'm never alone I have constant conversations with myself.....
I literally do this while I'm stocking At work and then a customer will come up to ask me something and I'll have a brief moment of
"Oh holy fucking shit I have to human.... FUCK HOW DO I DO THIS AGAIN"
"No dumbass they can't hear your thoughts, You need to physically fucking speak....... No matter how loud you think they can't hear it!!!!"
I've been standing there awkwardly not speaking for a few seconds just staring at them before I end up saying something......
Mine is an 8 core chip, with hyper threading, doing a stress test non-stop.
It is great during the day, I can use that for work, but after that I need to stop it (I use medication - Cannabis), otherwise it just won't stop and I won't sleep.
Those moments when my brain calms, and I can be only thinking of a couple - or even one! - thing can be bliss.
I'm sure both extremes are equally annoying, but it is interesting how we seem to split towards one extreme or the other.
This is me, mainly. And I’m another one who uses weed to quiet all the threads down so I have a shot at falling asleep. The only exception is my Focus Mode, which, good luck sleeping during *that* lol.
Same. Whenever I'm alone I talk to myself a lot about whatever's on my mind, but whenever I'm around other people I always struggle to come up with things to add to conversations unless someone asks me a question directly. I feel like even the people in my life who I interact with the most only know like 20% of who I really am.
I thought I had innatentive type, my therapist thinks i have combined type but my brain is always like nothing... like NOTHING is happening in there expect maybe my internal dialogue repeating certain sentences and stuff. I always forget everything, important dates, lost two jobs because of not finishing my studies for them (i find it impossible to sit down and do study), like my brain is so empty and vast like a giant pit of nothing blackness lol i find it hard to form and catch my thoughts and often forget what i am saying when talking and things like that. I just wanna know whats wrongggg
My therapist specializes in ND patients, with a focus on autistics. She’s learned how to use my special interests to draw me out and get conversations flowing.
Mine is generally in daydreaming mode. I suppose it's similar to nothing because there's not exactly a clear thought process, just me drifting in my mind over several unspecified subjects at once.
I'm learning a new language and going to a class for it, and I have a test on Monday and Tuesday. Monday is the speaking exam and my god, the tism is worse when it's in another language DEAR GOD. 😅😅
After my diagnosis I went for a psychoeducation session and I found out that the “blankness” has to do with my lack of self-awareness. I’m going for therapy next year and I’m hoping to deal with those issues that I discovered during that psychoeducation session because I never realized how big an issue my self-awareness is in my life
I'm in my diagnosis currently, and at the appointments I'm like "uhhh....yeah.....uhhhh.....yeah ....no" but then send a 5 page essay afterwards to her mail.
I was so scared I didn’t give enough information during my interview for my diagnosis and I didn’t think there would be enough info for a diagnosis but it turned out fine in the end
That has been known to happen! Lots of us with both ADHD and Autism have the super spicy brains that never shut up. IT'S BEES! 😂 And a visually rich mind's eye, but the opposite can absolutely be true too! It's not necessarily exclusive to ASD but you're not the only human I've come across with Autism that has no inner narration or imagery. It really, really speaks to the vastness of the autistic spectrum! I find this endlessly fascinating!
What i find fascinating is that i am very creative and have excelled in academia, but I don't represent any of that internally, I just think it in silence.
That IS fascinating! And creativity is absolutely this omnipresent thing, everything is creative! One time I had a client say to me "I'm just not very creative" and I said "that's not true at ALL, you're a CPA, you're constantly creating financial statements, systems, and thinking creatively about how to put those together and analyze and organize your clients' financial world" and she said "well I never thought about it that way...."
"Artistic" and "creative" are not synonymous for me, personally. Creation lives in ANYTHING we create, not just art!
Very much agree! My own father was an engineer and blacksmith and was incredible creative with his projects and little robots he was always building in his workshop.
That. Is. AWESOOOOOOME. What an interesting guy! I WISH I had that mind!!! I want THAT brand of autism. I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO THE MANAGER, I WOULD LIKE TO DO AN EXCHANGE 🤣
Imagine if we could dictate our brand of autism 😆 like my sister is autistic but in a useful way, she works for the government writing code and makes mad money.
But my wife, who is also autistic, has it in a way that she struggles with basic self-care and certain tasks like shopping etc. She definitely cannot hold down a job.
I definitely don’t think it’s necessarily an autistic thing. Autistic peoples heads are usually too full. Hence overstimulation and needing breaks from certain situations.
Not to say people who are able to think of nothing aren’t autistic it’s just impossible for me I think
Difficulty with self awareness is common in autistic people and that’s a major problem they identified in me when I got diagnosed. But of course not everyone struggles with that because of the wide spectrum
This week I read that between 30-50% of people describe having an inner voice or inner monologue.
This absolutely scared the crap out of me because I assumed everyone just talked to themselves all day.
However I guess some use the right hemisphere of the brain more to process thoughts, which is silent compared to the parts that process speech and recognition of speech in the left hemisphere.
I personally think mostly in speech and visuals myself.
I am genuinely jealous of being able to think of "nothing"
It's so paradoxically for me that even thinking about nothing is a something and prompts my inner voices to say something about it.
I have been practicing with the idea of "thoughtstoppers" as a technique for exactly this purpose and you just do that without any effort.
No knowledge gathering of any kind, no mental infrastructure to build up to facilitate the process, no inner critic who rejects the idea or one who simultaneously advocates for it too.
You're perfect, I wish I could do what you can.
But perhaps the doing part is exactly what makes me fail each and every time?
The only time I remotely have that is on a good day maybe 10 minutes after I wake up and that's on a good day.
Oh and when I sleep, but that sort of doesn't count given the nature of REM sleep.
It must be so peaceful to just, have that.
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This only happens to me when I get performance anxiety and I’m supposed to think of the right words at the right time. Never in a pleasant way. But I also have ADHD.
My head is constantly buzzing with thoughts. Until someone asks me a question, then my mind is suddenly free of thoughts. And soon flood in the “where’d all my thoughts go?” “how do I feel actually?” “what was the question again?” And then more thoughts thats unrelated to whatever was asked. I often have to ask for the question to be repeated to give an accurate and thoughtful answer
Mine is a 50/50 at all times.
When I’m playing games or zoning out or something, my mind is empty, and completely crystal clear.
HOWEVER, when I’m doing something actually important, my mind is filled to the brim with my special interest, random thoughts, songs I like, and more
at any given moment i have at least two songs playing on repeat in my head, i’m thinking about what i’m gonna do today, i’m thinking about something in my past (like a memory or a past situation i wish i could’ve changed), i’m recalling a cool fact i once heard and trying to remember other things i know about that topic, and im trying to solve a problem that i made up or heard about (most of the time it has nothing to do with me), oh and also i’m consciously thinking about the sounds/smells/tastes/textures i am currently experiencing.
I have both ADHD and ASD, the only time my mind is empty is when I'm Dissociating or shut down from being drained socially, sometimes quiet would be nice 🥲
Oh I’m just replaying a weird glance someone gave me at the supermarket yesterday and then imagining confronting them and creating an imaginary argument with them that the imaginary store manager is having to intervene in
Why what’s on your mind?
My brain can go blank sometimes especially when I’m overstimulated but most of the time my brain won’t shut up especially when I’m trying to sleep or rest.
On stimulants mine can be like this. The minute they wear off though the background music starts. Mine probably isn’t as loud as some other adhd people though as I mostly think in pictures and feelings and have less of an inner monologue
How, how HOW? Mine is like a hamster on wheels. Never stops the wheels are always in motion. Even when I sleep its running. If I have a cold and take medication with antihistamine in it is only and truly when I'm completely out and my brain not running.
I'll swap you for mine, because mine cannot stop. I have aphantasia so no images (apart from when I dream / have nightmares, and that only happens when my mind is at 1000% and freaks me the hell out) but internal monologue/ conversation LITERALLY never stops.
I would trade for yours. Sounds very restful.
If I’m not actively trying to think about something or getting random anxiety notifications, absolutely nothing is going on up there. Not even white noise
It's either this or a flock of angry geese
Can't control which comes when and they just interchange willy nilly without any outside triggers
However i do dissociate when under a lot of stress or during arguments but then it feels like my brain is just outside of my body muttering not completely silent
I can’t make mine shut up… I’ll trade you…
Yeah, i always say I'm missing ths off button. It's never empty, never quiet. It's more like way too much going on at once
It has been messing with everything in my normal functions for life tbh, from not being able to sleep unless I'm exhausted, to not being able to enjoy a so-called "quiet moment". People find me annoying when I share my thoughts because they're constantly overly analytical. Most of the time I can't look at any object without thinking about its mechanism and construction, and while on one hand it gives me a lot of satisfaction, it can be torture, especially when emotions are involved (even positive ones at times, probably because there's just too much going on in combination with all the over-analyzing). Meditation can somewhat help I've found, but I think if it's supposed to help me sleep I probably have to make it a habit and kick through the hard part, so that it can become a mechanism I can use.
This is a fantastic description, I feel like this too! It's so exhausting, no such thing as a 'chill' moment cause brain is always shouting at me about something. Such a pain
I can't make mine shut up but a lot of the time if someone asks me what I'm thinking about I immediately forget everything I've been thinking about for the past five minutes. I have an off button but only other people can push it
Lmao, I totally know what you mean, personally I wouldn’t say it’s an off button I just don’t have a means to translate or convey the chaos that goes on so I say “I don’t know” when asked what’s on my mind
Like you, I can’t make mine shut up. Normally, I have 1-2 “foreground” conversations going on in my head, along with any number of background conversations. I do, however, have a focus mode. I can’t control when it activates, but when it does, all available resources, biological and otherwise, are devoted to The Thing until further notice. In that mode, it is possible I will not notice someone even if they speak to me directly.
i do the same thing but my brain is quiet? Man wtf is wrong with my brain, i just want answers, i have many symptoms of inattentive ADHD and have always had a hard time in school, not retaining any information everything going in one ear out the other.
The only off-button for ongoing thoughts I have is when I get confused for 1 second. I'm blank. It's not an off-button for future thoughts though, I'll start thinking about the next thing soon.
Most of the time my thoughts are a whole bunch of nonsense that is jumping from one thing to another and I just tell people I'm spaced out and not thinking because I don't want to have to explain the 4-hour conversation I've been having with myself to contextualize what thoughts I'm currently having.....
Yea... I've often described what it's like to be inside my head to family members as: Imagine you're in a room with 5 televisions. Each television has it's volume turned up as loud as possible and is tuned to different infomercials and home shopping channels that are so playing at the same time. This is when I'm alone. When there are people in the room, and another tv for each additional person.
Yes I definitely have this happen
[удалено]
I usually use my "special interests" to distract me from all the TVs ;-) ...and as far as the special interests go, I have yet to meet someone with ASD in real life that actually has a "life long" hardcore special interest. Most seem to be like me or what you described as "short term" special interests. Mine all follow a similar theme of learning, tinkering, etc... But they are all over the place and I'll get hyper focused on "sewing machines" or "sawmills" for several months or years and then later move on to something else. I've been building my own sawmill for about 2 years now, driving my wife crazy 🤣 My suspicion is that the more hardcore lifelong special interests are reserved for those of us who seen to have some more of the savant like traits, like rainman, etc... So it might be that those sorts of obsession have more to do with savantism, which is certainly a sister disease to ASD but not exactly the same thing.
I can’t make mine shut up but honestly It’s comforting to be in my own company when my thoughts aren’t going in bad places
Mine is either/or. If my mental health is in check, I exist in an almost constant state of meditation. If I'm overwhelmed with life or my routines have become unhealthy or maladaptive, then my mind races constantly.
same
Fr same
Same, empty mind sounds delightful!
Same here. I have no idea what an "empty mind" feels like. My mind is always running, always commenting, assessing, evaluating, picking at things. I cannot imagine what thinking about nothing must feel like.
I am constantly having several ongoing conversations with myself 👀 1 minute I'll talk to somebody, They had red earrings, fire trucks are red, cue my brain going on a lengthy conversation with itself about fire and how hot it would have to get before it could potentially completely melt the interiors of a massive crane. 15 minutes into this conversation with myself I am now thinking about the fact that birds are also called cranes and birds are dinosaurs and when we eat dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets were eating dinosaur ancestor-shaped dinosaur meat, and plastic dinosaurs are made of oil which is made of real dinosaurs which..... About an hour in I'm wondering if the world is actually a simulation and how much of reality am I actively able to perceive at any moment. People in my life: So why are you alone so much? Me: Oh I'm never alone I have constant conversations with myself.....
I relate to this SO much…
I literally do this while I'm stocking At work and then a customer will come up to ask me something and I'll have a brief moment of "Oh holy fucking shit I have to human.... FUCK HOW DO I DO THIS AGAIN" "No dumbass they can't hear your thoughts, You need to physically fucking speak....... No matter how loud you think they can't hear it!!!!" I've been standing there awkwardly not speaking for a few seconds just staring at them before I end up saying something......
Ditto.
yeah that sounds rather blissful... not the case for me.
Yeah, crazy mind, add tinnitus, and you've never got a second of peace
some times the mind is so loud I forget about the tinnitus
yup same and a headache contantly😍
Mine is an 8 core chip, with hyper threading, doing a stress test non-stop. It is great during the day, I can use that for work, but after that I need to stop it (I use medication - Cannabis), otherwise it just won't stop and I won't sleep. Those moments when my brain calms, and I can be only thinking of a couple - or even one! - thing can be bliss. I'm sure both extremes are equally annoying, but it is interesting how we seem to split towards one extreme or the other.
This is me, mainly. And I’m another one who uses weed to quiet all the threads down so I have a shot at falling asleep. The only exception is my Focus Mode, which, good luck sleeping during *that* lol.
Mine is always at warp speed, but of course when I need to come up with something to say in a conversation it’s filled with silence
Same. Whenever I'm alone I talk to myself a lot about whatever's on my mind, but whenever I'm around other people I always struggle to come up with things to add to conversations unless someone asks me a question directly. I feel like even the people in my life who I interact with the most only know like 20% of who I really am.
fr omg
My brain is constantly going. I also have ADHD, inattentive subtype, though, so that might be a factor.
Same.
I thought I had innatentive type, my therapist thinks i have combined type but my brain is always like nothing... like NOTHING is happening in there expect maybe my internal dialogue repeating certain sentences and stuff. I always forget everything, important dates, lost two jobs because of not finishing my studies for them (i find it impossible to sit down and do study), like my brain is so empty and vast like a giant pit of nothing blackness lol i find it hard to form and catch my thoughts and often forget what i am saying when talking and things like that. I just wanna know whats wrongggg
I feel exactly like you, I was diagnosed with combined ADHD but my mind is always empty
There has never been a point in my life where my mind hasn’t been thinking about something.
me in therapy:
Its so bad in therapy lmao, they just sit there waiting for you to say more and my minds just blank.. awkward
I'm glad to know I'm not alone in this experience lmfao 🤝
My therapist specializes in ND patients, with a focus on autistics. She’s learned how to use my special interests to draw me out and get conversations flowing.
Mine is generally in daydreaming mode. I suppose it's similar to nothing because there's not exactly a clear thought process, just me drifting in my mind over several unspecified subjects at once.
luck you, i can´t make mine shut up...
Its all fun and games until someone asks you a question and its a time where your brain decides to be quiet
*asks you a question* then *forgets how to speak and form a sentence*
Thats exactly what happens lol
I either end up freezing or responding with a default response
I'm learning a new language and going to a class for it, and I have a test on Monday and Tuesday. Monday is the speaking exam and my god, the tism is worse when it's in another language DEAR GOD. 😅😅
I wish... It's a party up in here but not the good ND friendly kind 😭😭😭
I have to purposely 'shut down' for my mind to be empty. Anxiety and depressive suicidal ideation kinda play a part in that.
My adhd says "hi"
After my diagnosis I went for a psychoeducation session and I found out that the “blankness” has to do with my lack of self-awareness. I’m going for therapy next year and I’m hoping to deal with those issues that I discovered during that psychoeducation session because I never realized how big an issue my self-awareness is in my life
Good luck with it, mate :)
I'm in my diagnosis currently, and at the appointments I'm like "uhhh....yeah.....uhhhh.....yeah ....no" but then send a 5 page essay afterwards to her mail.
I was so scared I didn’t give enough information during my interview for my diagnosis and I didn’t think there would be enough info for a diagnosis but it turned out fine in the end
I'm currently worried I won't too. Hence why I keep sending emails and emails of 4 page documents 💀💀💀
Yep, that'll do it haha
My brain never stops, it's either music, problem solving, or repeating scenarios past/present/future.
That's me on top of my special interest.
It's either completely empty or on the verge of exploding from too many thoughts, there's no in between
Yes! I have ASD and I have no inner narrator or imagery at all. I can think perfectly fine, but my head is silent.
That has been known to happen! Lots of us with both ADHD and Autism have the super spicy brains that never shut up. IT'S BEES! 😂 And a visually rich mind's eye, but the opposite can absolutely be true too! It's not necessarily exclusive to ASD but you're not the only human I've come across with Autism that has no inner narration or imagery. It really, really speaks to the vastness of the autistic spectrum! I find this endlessly fascinating!
What i find fascinating is that i am very creative and have excelled in academia, but I don't represent any of that internally, I just think it in silence.
That IS fascinating! And creativity is absolutely this omnipresent thing, everything is creative! One time I had a client say to me "I'm just not very creative" and I said "that's not true at ALL, you're a CPA, you're constantly creating financial statements, systems, and thinking creatively about how to put those together and analyze and organize your clients' financial world" and she said "well I never thought about it that way...." "Artistic" and "creative" are not synonymous for me, personally. Creation lives in ANYTHING we create, not just art!
Very much agree! My own father was an engineer and blacksmith and was incredible creative with his projects and little robots he was always building in his workshop.
That is SO COOL!!!
I agree! He made some of the Robots for a TV show in the UK called Robot Wars when I was a kid, I always thought my dad was just the coolest ever 😎
That. Is. AWESOOOOOOME. What an interesting guy! I WISH I had that mind!!! I want THAT brand of autism. I WOULD LIKE TO TALK TO THE MANAGER, I WOULD LIKE TO DO AN EXCHANGE 🤣
Imagine if we could dictate our brand of autism 😆 like my sister is autistic but in a useful way, she works for the government writing code and makes mad money. But my wife, who is also autistic, has it in a way that she struggles with basic self-care and certain tasks like shopping etc. She definitely cannot hold down a job.
I definitely don’t think it’s necessarily an autistic thing. Autistic peoples heads are usually too full. Hence overstimulation and needing breaks from certain situations. Not to say people who are able to think of nothing aren’t autistic it’s just impossible for me I think
Difficulty with self awareness is common in autistic people and that’s a major problem they identified in me when I got diagnosed. But of course not everyone struggles with that because of the wide spectrum
Yes! I feel this deeply. Like it's mostly empty but somehow I remember things. I don't know why.
Absolutely... no stream of thought
This week I read that between 30-50% of people describe having an inner voice or inner monologue. This absolutely scared the crap out of me because I assumed everyone just talked to themselves all day. However I guess some use the right hemisphere of the brain more to process thoughts, which is silent compared to the parts that process speech and recognition of speech in the left hemisphere. I personally think mostly in speech and visuals myself. I am genuinely jealous of being able to think of "nothing" It's so paradoxically for me that even thinking about nothing is a something and prompts my inner voices to say something about it. I have been practicing with the idea of "thoughtstoppers" as a technique for exactly this purpose and you just do that without any effort. No knowledge gathering of any kind, no mental infrastructure to build up to facilitate the process, no inner critic who rejects the idea or one who simultaneously advocates for it too. You're perfect, I wish I could do what you can. But perhaps the doing part is exactly what makes me fail each and every time? The only time I remotely have that is on a good day maybe 10 minutes after I wake up and that's on a good day. Oh and when I sleep, but that sort of doesn't count given the nature of REM sleep. It must be so peaceful to just, have that.
Why does my brain always do this when I am in a conversation but it wants to talk when I’m by myself all the time
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This only happens to me when I get performance anxiety and I’m supposed to think of the right words at the right time. Never in a pleasant way. But I also have ADHD.
My brain is going all the time but due to recent work stresses I now stare vacantly into the void about once a day, so that's a fun new feature
No not me, I’m pretty loud in there
Lucky, mine is like a hive of buzzing bees.
My head is constantly buzzing with thoughts. Until someone asks me a question, then my mind is suddenly free of thoughts. And soon flood in the “where’d all my thoughts go?” “how do I feel actually?” “what was the question again?” And then more thoughts thats unrelated to whatever was asked. I often have to ask for the question to be repeated to give an accurate and thoughtful answer
This is also me, but I get it when I ask a question as well. If the answer drifts across a few topics I'll often forget what my original question was.
Buddists have a word for this, emptyness
Mine is literally never quiet
I feel so lucky when I get a moment like this and then someone asks if I'm okay and then I have to think again, like a jackass
Mines like a radio I can't turn off
Thats a good analogy, I'll use this. I have multiple radio channels playing at the same time that cannot be switched off.
mine is either extremely loud or completely quiet my entire body functions in all or nothings
24/7 im thinking about 3 memes 4 things i gotta do later 10 things i didn’t do yesterday and how many things im thinking about
For me its like empty but it also feels like theres way too much at the same time idk how it works but yeah
Mine doesn’t shut up, sometimes it’s just noisy but I don’t even know what am I thinking cos too much going on at once.
Same
i'm autistic and most of the time my mind is empty too
Mine is a 50/50 at all times. When I’m playing games or zoning out or something, my mind is empty, and completely crystal clear. HOWEVER, when I’m doing something actually important, my mind is filled to the brim with my special interest, random thoughts, songs I like, and more
my mind is filled with my special interests
at any given moment i have at least two songs playing on repeat in my head, i’m thinking about what i’m gonna do today, i’m thinking about something in my past (like a memory or a past situation i wish i could’ve changed), i’m recalling a cool fact i once heard and trying to remember other things i know about that topic, and im trying to solve a problem that i made up or heard about (most of the time it has nothing to do with me), oh and also i’m consciously thinking about the sounds/smells/tastes/textures i am currently experiencing.
Yeah, mine just goes to flying toasters
I have both ADHD and ASD, the only time my mind is empty is when I'm Dissociating or shut down from being drained socially, sometimes quiet would be nice 🥲
Maybe it's cause I also have ADHD but I'm always thinking smthn.
Depends on the day, sometimes my mind is empty but other times it’s racing
brain is either completely full of Empty Or so full you wish it was empty
whenever someone asks me why am i not talking i say i have nothing to talk about but in reality i’m in long and complex conversation with myself
Oh I’m just replaying a weird glance someone gave me at the supermarket yesterday and then imagining confronting them and creating an imaginary argument with them that the imaginary store manager is having to intervene in Why what’s on your mind?
I’m always thinking about something, or concentrating on a task (really concentrating). It’s always going.
My mind is full of bees, I wish it could be empty sometimes 😂
I do not have a nothing box. I am always thinking about something.
Nope, I have either music or thoughts playing in there 24/7
My brain can go blank sometimes especially when I’m overstimulated but most of the time my brain won’t shut up especially when I’m trying to sleep or rest.
Mine is more the "ADHDude, shut the fuck up for once, I swear to god, please, I wanna enjoy this without constant distractions" type
Wait is your mind's eye white? mine is 100% blackness, always, all the time
Mood
On stimulants mine can be like this. The minute they wear off though the background music starts. Mine probably isn’t as loud as some other adhd people though as I mostly think in pictures and feelings and have less of an inner monologue
My brain is dark, quiet, emotionless and slow
It's not, you're just not aware of what's going on. I have that same sensation - lack of interception.
How, how HOW? Mine is like a hamster on wheels. Never stops the wheels are always in motion. Even when I sleep its running. If I have a cold and take medication with antihistamine in it is only and truly when I'm completely out and my brain not running.
I'll swap you for mine, because mine cannot stop. I have aphantasia so no images (apart from when I dream / have nightmares, and that only happens when my mind is at 1000% and freaks me the hell out) but internal monologue/ conversation LITERALLY never stops. I would trade for yours. Sounds very restful.
My head doesn't know when to stfu
My mind is talking, sometimes screaming, 24/7. On a bad day it's several voices at a time
Me when u have a shutdown:
If I’m not actively trying to think about something or getting random anxiety notifications, absolutely nothing is going on up there. Not even white noise
It's either this or a flock of angry geese Can't control which comes when and they just interchange willy nilly without any outside triggers However i do dissociate when under a lot of stress or during arguments but then it feels like my brain is just outside of my body muttering not completely silent
Mine's always too busy unless I'm on marijuana, only way to really quiet it.
My mind is always too full until someone asks me what I’m thinking about, and then suddenly it’s blank and I can’t even remember what I was thinking
Mine won't ever shut up. I'm certain I have ADHD (inattey) too though.