At A Loss For Words

As an apparent feature of my autism, I think in pictures, sensations, and contextual intensities. As a result, I'm frequently left feeling like, at least when comparing myself to everybody I interact with offline, I greatly struggle to translate my thoughts into a comprehensible, coherent set of words.

I "see" what I'm thinking of, I "understand" what I'm thinking of, but I can't say what I see or understand!

Here's a quick attempt at an analogy: if you're an entrepeneur trying to tell the web developer you keep locked in your closet what color you want your site's navbar to be, you might try saying it's "pink but lighter with a tad of blue" but they will never see the same shade as you. They'll probably try approximating it over and over, asking you "is this good?" over and over, until you're like "close as it can get".

Because of this, I often just don't have any words that adequately describe what I'm thinking or feeling. I've unintentionally derailed many conversations with inadequate language that leaves others trying to dive into something entirely irrelevant to what I'm trying to say, or thinking things about me that aren't true.

I think that sometimes I can sit down, try really hard, and exert out some categorically word-based thought for a bit, but this is the default set of "thought tools" I've been using for most of my life.