Over the last couple years noticeably, I’ve been fumbling over my words a lot more. It’s progressively getting worse. Most things I try to say include lots of the wrong words contrary to what I plan in my brain (if that makes sense?), thus leading to misunderstandings of what I intended to say or the message being lost. Often, I’m not understood and asked to repeat for clarity. It’s embarrassing.

Growing up, I believe I attended speech therapy for a few years to improve my phonetic pronunciation. Throughout school, my writing abilities have usually been accredited with outstanding grades, though the feedback has always been consistent.

“You make every thing way too convoluted where it’s hard to follow the sentence”

“Careful for careless mistakes – missing words, words replaced with the wrong one etc.”

I’ve never had problems with spelling.

I’m not sure if it’s a social anxiety sorta thing seeing as am generally socially inept. But I do know I’ve had to go back through this and add missing words or change wrong words. Is my brain racing ahead of me?

4 comments
  1. My husband also struggles with this. He sometimes calls himself a dumbass and it hurts me when he talks down on himself.

  2. My husband has ADHD and will often skip words when saying things to me. It’s because the thoughts in his mind go faster than his words can keep up, so it’s jumping ahead while he’s still trying to finish a sentence.

  3. My brain can’t decide which word to use so it messes up sometimes. Started when anxiety peaked at university.

  4. My thoughts are that this is simply fear overwhelming your brain. So it is simply not working as well because you are going into a flight, fight or freeze pattern.

    I would suggest 3 ways to deal with this.

    Many schools have free or cheap counselling available. Deal with any past trauma thought this. Many people have fear around speaking in public because they were, in the past mocked or even bullied for saying the wrong thing. So mentally, every time they go to speak, their minds are preparing to be attacked again.

    I would learn meditation. There are lots of free video on YouTube. Learn how to slow your mind down.

    I would join toastmasters. This is a public speaking group. Everyone who joins is really nervous when they start, the people who are moderately good at public speaking and it doesn’t scare the shit out of them don’t go to toastmasters. So you will get a lot of support and encouragement. If you attend regularly, speaking will get less stressful and these issues will drop Away.

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