On verbal shutdown

I want to tell you something very personal about myself today. I’m someone who experiences verbal shutdown¹.

It usually happens in situations with loud noises, crowds, bright lights, or other distractions, and it sometimes results in well-meaning people around me wanting to know “what’s wrong?” or “how can I help?“. The frustrating thing is that in asking, they’re implicitly seeking a verbal response, which is exactly what I’m NOT able to provide.

I’m writing this post for exactly those people. I completely understand wanting to help and not knowing how, and I understand feeling anxious about it. The thing is, I’m not sure I have an answer. If I ever figure that out, maybe I’ll make a separate post about it. For now, the best I can do is try to put some words to what verbal shutdown feels like — a task I’ve found fiendishly difficult due to the aforementioned verbal shutdown (and because, in my experience, shutdown affects my ability to think and therefore write words not just to say them). I want to describe it to you the best way I know how: through analogies. None of them are perfect, but together they form a more complete picture.

Analogy 1

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of having a word “on tip of your tongue”. You know there is a word that you want to say — a word that would perfectly fit the situation — but you can’t quite remember it. If you speak multiple languages, you’ve probably experienced the version of this where you can remember the word for something… just not in the language you’re currently trying to speak.

When tip-of-the-tongue moments happen once in a while, you can shrug them off. When they happen multiple times in a single conversation, you might start to feel like something’s wrong. When they happen multiple times per sentence, well… you’ll probably feel like giving up entirely.

That’s what verbal shutdown feels like to me. It’s not necessarily about being unable to speak in an absolute sense, but it is a feeling of being unable to communicate, often alongside intense feelings of failure. The pain of verbal shutdown is that I know, in general, I have the ability to communicate with words—sometimes, I daresay I even manage to be fucking eloquent—but in this moment, I am utterly failing at a task most people take for granted. It sucks.

Analogy 2

You know you need to say something, but your mind is suddenly blank… and yet at the same time, no! Not blank, not blank at all! It’s a crowded room full of people all talking over each other all at once. In one way, you’re at a loss for words, in another way, it’s the exact opposite. You have plenty of words. Too many, in fact — so many, you can’t organize any of them into a coherent thought.

You think, maybe if you concentrate on a single voice, you’ll be able to make out a coherent sentence. You give it a try, focusing in on the loudest person. Turns out, the loudest person in the room is also an asshole. You don’t want to say that. You try focusing in on someone else—anyone else—but the loud asshole keeps talking, and it’s hard to make out other voices. You decide to say nothing.

Analogy 3

Have you ever played the game Taboo? It’s a party game where you try to get your teammates to guess a secret word by telling them clues. You’re not allowed to say the word directly, and to add to the challenge there’s a list of related words you can’t say either. To enforce the rules, one person from the other team acts as referee, ready to press a buzzer if you screw up by saying a banned word. With the right group of people and the right mindset, it can be a really fun game! It can also be anxiety-provoking.

Experiencing verbal shutdown feels like I’m playing the game Taboo, but with real-life stakes. Taboo meets Squid Game. It feels like there are gaps in my vocabulary, and there are things I desperately need to communicate in spite of them. If I’m successful, well… it doesn’t feel like winning. My reward is that my doctor doesn’t misdiagnose me, my partner doesn’t get mad at me, or my waiter doesn’t get my order wrong. Speaking of…

Analogy 4

My next analogy is ordering at a restaurant. The main thing I want to get across in this analogy is that I don’t experience verbal ability and verbal shutdown as a binary (“can speak” or “can’t speak”). They feel like a continuous gradient, but with discrete tipping points. One tipping point is when my ability to form words is hampered enough that not talking starts to seem more attractive than continuing to talk and risking having a frustrating miscommunication or saying something I regret. Unfortunately, even past this tipping point there can be immense social pressure to keep talking anyway (not to mention consequences for breaking these expectations). It’s situations where I have to aggressively mask that bring me to the second tipping point: where forming coherent words is essentially impossible.

Finding something to eat sometimes comes with varying degrees of challenge. Analagously, here are what different degrees of verbal ability feel like to me:

Very verbal - you can say exactly what you mean to say.

You’re at your favorite restaurant. You’ve tried everything on the menu and you love all of it. You’re good friends with the cook and feel comfortable ordering off-menu.

Mostly verbal - you can say most of what you want to say. You sometimes need to “talk around” points where you don’t have the right words.

You’re at a restaurant you’ve been to before. You know the menu pretty well. They don’t have root beer floats like you wanted, but you can still order a root beer and a scoop of ice cream. Close enough!

Somewhat verbal - you can communicate the broad message you want to get across, but not without effort.

You’re at a restaurant you’ve been to once or twice. You don’t know the menu very well. You find a few things that look okay but aren’t quite your speed. Maybe the kitchen can hold the mustard. Maybe you can pick off the mushrooms… that kind of thing.

Partial verbal shutdown - you can’t access many parts of your vocabulary. The things you can say aren’t what you mean. Face it, you’d probably be better off keeping your mouth shut.

You’re at a restaurant you’ve never been to before. The menu has stains on it, and some items are scribbled out. Most of the things you can read look unappetizing, but one seems okay. You try ordering that only to be told it’s sold out. You give up on eating something you actually enjoy. If you’re lucky, maybe you can stomach the stinky tofu without vomiting. At least it’s calories.

Total verbal shutdown - you can’t access most of your vocabulary. You’re just about physically incapable of forming a full sentence. Most words you try to say come out garbled and incomprehensible.

You’re at a restaurant you’ve never been to with a cuisine you’ve never tried. You can’t read anything on the menu at all. Most of the items have an ominous number of spicy pepper icons next to them. You try to pronounce the name one of the dishes you hope is safe, but the waiter just shoots you a nasty look. You sheepishly gesture at what you were trying to order. They impatiently tell you the thing you were pointing to was a side dish and you need to order an entrée for it to come with. You break down in tears.

Closing thoughts

If you have people in your life who struggle with communication, I hope I’ve given you some framing to empathize with their struggles. If you’re someone who can relate strongly to the analogies I’ve described here, I hope I’ve given you ways of explaining them to people in your life. And if you relate to these descriptions, but you’ve never had a label to describe it, consider that verbal shutdown might be what you’re experiencing. I hope you can find some comfort in knowing you’re not alone.

Footnotes