Is verbose speech a sign of masking?

Yes, and the effort required to explain the effort we put into masking would probably be greater than the effort we put into masking!

Shardovan said:

Our communication styles - blunt or circumlocutionary in an effort to leave no stone unturned - are at the extremities of a spectrum

This is a lovely way to state a strength of the autistic spectrum, I find it quite encouraging, even more so now it has had a year to age..

Well they do say that what-someone-says is only 8% of what constitutes an effective-communication, so if like me you have odd-or-unrewarding tone and body-language, you get a good idea of just a large the mountain of social-impairment can be.

NTs really tend to take for granted the energy it takes to mask-enough to produce an effective-communication. There’s a reason that 90% of us do not have meaningful employment. It is an act of heroism to find stability in an NT world I think.

I’m glad that what I had described is familiar to you. For me I can boil my writing down to the act of scribbling, sometimes when I write you can literally see how spared I was/becoming that day, as the quality of my prose and form deteriorates but the quantity does not.  

Sometimes I try to speak to people about the nature of that mask, about how it can shield me from the presence of a communication, but they cannot see it for what it is and they say that I seem fine. Which on a positive note, is proof of just how effective that type of maskIng/compensation/concealment can be..

It is important to communicate clearly.  Never let asshats convince you otherwise!

Never despair ..... there are still a select group of people (both NT and ND) .... who rightly (in my opinion) see past the "dressings" of life and look to connect with the sentience within.  If this were not to be the case, then I would never have any work.....and I'm always working!

It is very convenient to me that, people who only go by appearances, never want to engage with me.  This suits me perfectly because I know I am not missing out on anything interesting!

I'm very, thoroughly, extremely verbose. I have always thought that it was important to communicate clearly. It turns out that, while I'm crafting the perfect sentence, most people are judging me based on my neutral facial expression, soft monotone, and unfashionable clothes. 

Verbose is a pretty word and it's something I have been called many times before. At school and university I was called verbose and every essay and piece of work I wrote and typed was triple the size they likely anticipated. I've always been at peace with writing. In person I hide myself, I don't let anybody in because I can't control how much of myself I can reveal but in words I can choose what to say, choose the meaning and describe it with as much detail as I like. I suppose in a way it is masking myself though I like to think when I write and explain about things, like I am now; it actually lowers my mask and shows the 'real' me that very few get to meet.
When I was at school and university I had comments about not being smart as well. Ax few people told me how I was just good at writing lots of words and it meant nothing and that I was a retard. I got a lot of comments like that during my education. It didn't deter me though.

I've always loved writing, by hand and on computer. I feel free when I write. The sky is the limit and so long as the mind is willing I can write for several hours. Sometimes I write poetry, code, journals or creative writing.... I communicate with the people I know by writing in text and email, and I write actual letters to my last remaining grandparent. I never thought of it like masking but I can see how it could be associated with masking. A lot of food for thought regarding this actually. A big part of it for me is more of a love of writing. I have always loved writing, making words in to sentences, sentences in to paragraphs and then making it in to a story. Same with doing computer programming. Taking nothing and turning it into something fabulous just by writing it out.
This is why I love writing, the creative process, it makes me happy and I feel free and I recognise it's something I am good at and that helps me feel good about myself.

It likely is part of a masking thing as well though regarding communication with others. I never even thought of that before reading your thread. Thanks for creating this! It's given me an entirely different opinion of why I write to people and why I write so much instead of making it short and sweet and to the point.

Autism affects us in such a wide and varied way. It's fascinating!

Number said:

I feel that you are evolving.  It isn't always a "positive" experience, but BEING evolved is (in my experience.)

Am agreeing with your wisdom Number. 

Fallow times, they seem to me, where the way may seem lost. It seems like nothing is happening, but it is, although you may not see it. Probably won't see it, tbh. 

Then it seems like everything suddenly gets moving, but I think that's probably just the next stage in the process. It can take a long time. 

I am 34. It may feel at the moment as though I've made progress in my life, but it's typically slow, and so far, there's always been an end point. 

But then there's a beginning point too. That's what I've learned.

Thanks Number..

DeSpereaux said:

I reached a ceiling of survival needs and I don’t understand the world beyond survival enough to fight with it.  

Resonant....greatly resonant.

Thank you for your full explanation - it is appreciated.

Desp......I'm basically double your age.  One thing I can say with certainty....you are FAR from being basic.

I feel that you are evolving.  It isn't always a "positive" experience, but BEING evolved is (in my experience.)

Don't panic....sit with your sh it for a while and continue to process.  I am supremely confident that you will (when you are good and ready) arrive at a better/settled/sanguine place.

If you can stay sane [and BTW, that is no mean feat with cortexes like ours) then I am confident you will grow ever more confident and happy about yourself.

Just my honest opinion, based on the limited (but more than sufficient) evidence available to me.

My vocabulary is not fantastic being honest. I do take a log winded approach to getting to a point and through the pressure from others often forget the point I was getting to. It bloody hurts so much, that sinking feeling when people are looking at you hanging on to your words and then you just don’t get there. Then I have that conversation over and over again sometimes for weeks and it’s perfect in my head. 
Im sure I would come across a lot smarter if my brain could keep up with communication. 

Lady and the tramp is about a street-mongrel and a house-pedigree, the ‘lady’ in the first movie becomes lost and is rescued by the ‘tramp’, in the end they both fall in love and find a home. 
In the second movie the ‘tramp’ has to head back-out into the streets on an adventure after years of comfort, he has trouble doing so because he has gotten comfortable, his survival senses have dulled.

My point is that after a lifetime of trying to be neurotypical and masking, I was pretty hot out of the gates when I had been diagnosed, a year in I have fought all the post-diagnosis battles and am resting on those wins.  
The result is that I feel less-keen, my fear is that I both will fail to fight-further and that I will be caught out, like the ‘tramp’ I’ve gotten soft it would seem.

Furthermore I can feel the encroachment of NT ideals in my daily-life, I don’t really feel ambitious enough to defend my autism, partly because I reached a ceiling of survival needs and I don’t understand the world beyond survival enough to fight with it.  
I tried a few ambitious-things and I failed due to my own shortcomings, so I feel like I lost my hunger to advance, the world seems to be more fair to me these days, but I’ve failed anyway.

So I guess it is what it is, I may have been in the right place the whole time, I just couldn’t see to the edges of the world’s liability until I was given concession. I can see it was just vanity on my part to think that the world is to blame for my ceiling.  
Or maybe I’m talking a load of piteous waffle, but one things for sure, the man who wrote this article is not the one writing this reply..

I don’t feel enlightened I feel basic.. I’m 28 btw..

I don't understand what you have written here.

I would like to understand.

Can you put some meat on the bones for me?

I like the fact that you are evidently running through some motions (and emotions) that I faced in my years of 34-43.  I believe you are notably younger than I.  I think that this age disparity is probably a great thing from your point of view.  On the balance of current evidence available to me.....I wish I had been aware of my "autistic predicament" in my early 40's - ie when I realised that there was something DECIDEDLY "other" about me, my feelings, my beliefs, my priorities....and at that point, my notably obscure and unusual history.

One of the most healthy things about this place, in my opinion, is being able to talk with other autistics at various ages and various stages of enlightenment/survival strategy.  I love the fact that I feel connected and able to speak with so many, of so many ages, histories and "stages."

A year on I understand my point here on my defences, but I don’t really encounter anything but false-smiles these days, I think if I was challenged now by someone on autism it’d be traumatising knockout..

I feel a-little like the male dog in ‘lady and the tramp 2’, which is to say a little out of shape, a little stagnant..

Thanks a lot!

I had suspected undiagnosed-bipolar for mine, my grandfather is without a doubt autistic though, and youve never seen a more-disaffective person..

I couldn’t agree more..

Sod the old days!  I am a case that is often considered to be "mental" or "super weird" or "unsettling" by many folk who encounter me.......when I am not trying to maintain a modicum of fained normalcy.

A good part of Yoga is aimed to stop the internal dialogue. Accordingly to modern yogi, almost everyone can learn to stop it with a few years of practice.

There is a consistent overlap between schizophrenia and ASD and an higher incidence of schizophrenia in ASD sufferers than normal. I suspect that my schizo father was also an undiagnosed ASD.