That feeling when someone asks “so what are you thinking?” and you instantly know what your answer is. You knew it before they finished the question, but now you have to take something that arrived whole, a shape, a feeling, a flash of everything connecting at once, and push it through a straw, one word at a time, out loud, while they watch. 😫
By the time it’s out, it’s smaller and flatter than what you had in your mind, off in ways you can’t quite name.
Maybe you’ve called this “bad at communicating.” Or “overthinking.” Or, if you’re neurodivergent, you’ve had it called something less generous by other people: scattered, hard to follow, get to the point.
Here’s a different theory. Your thinking isn’t broken, it just isn’t happening in words. Words are the translation. Something else is the source.
Which means, for a lot of neurodivergent and neurocomplex minds, language is a second language. It was learned on top of something that came first.
How Do You Know if Words Aren’t Your First Language?
Before naming your first language, it helps to notice what actually happens when you understand something. Read these slowly:
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