Postcards From My Mind: Perspectives of Asperger's Syndrome

(7) Loose Associations

Does your train of thought have a caboose? I heard this line on the radio and had to use it. I can’t think of a more perfect analogy to describe loose associations! Have you ever had the experience of someone telling you, “I’m going to name a word and you tell me everything that comes to your mind.” All day long this is what my mind does. It’s as if I don’t have a delete key in my brain. All the information I’ve ever seen, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted is stored for good. My mind constantly races with thoughts.

In grade school I would try to make relevant comments during discussion time only frequently to be met with teachers saying comments such as, “Is this relevant to the topic? I don’t think so.” Or “What are you talking about? Save those comments for the playground.” It wasn’t that my comments were incorrect, but rather there was a trail of thoughts that no one else saw but me (only in grade school I didn’t realize that everyone couldn’t see my thoughts). I would verbalize the end result of the trail, which, in retrospect, was rather irrelevant to the topic at hand. Sometimes sensations are so powerful that one word can trigger thousands of associations. Now, this is a cake I baked for company). To this day I can’t stop these associations from happening, but consciously I use the concept of multitasking to keep on tract.

 

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