Have you ever encountered someone so deeply moved by a topic that their words seem to tumble into confusion? I’m not talking about the profound impact of neurological disorders such as strokes, schizophrenia, or a bipolar mania. Rather, I’m referring to individuals who generally communicate with ease but stumble when emotions flood their speech. This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon among highly creative individuals, who often speak from a place of raw emotion and intuition — for example, listen to Kanye speak for about 5 minutes, he can be fascinating and perplexing in equal measure.

Examples – the “um wut” response

Using the typo “wut” is a meme that has come to perfectly express the confusion you might feel from these kinds of statements. I often think of a line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

Oz – “I would have invited you but didn’t think you’d want to skip school.”

Willow – “You think I’m boring.” (Um, wut?)

Buffy S3E16 – Doppelgangland

One can see how that leap doesn’t make sense, but also it’s not too hard to fill in the missing argument “not skipping school means I’m not adventurous, and that means I’m boring.” But sometimes these patterns get much more obscure, or based on very specific personal experience, such as immediately thinking that the sound of a glass falling means someone is drunk.

It can be difficult for a person to articulate this connection or for others to know how to ask about the invisible link between to seemingly unrelated ideas. These thoughts can stem from being overwhelmed by feelings, an experience many can relate to when trying to express newly formed thoughts and emotions. More frequently, though, such communication barriers signal an underlying trauma or a state of shock, and can be called “associative thinking” (or speaking), and if you want to talk to someone with significant trauma, you may find this process to be a significant barrier to understanding them.

Understanding Associative Thinking and Speaking

Associative speaking breaks from the linear narrative we might expect, bridging ideas, experiences, or emotions that seem related to the speaker, albeit not immediately clear to the listener. What you’re hearing is the connection between things that may not be logically similar, but feel similar, or remind the person of something that seems unrelated. This mode of communication often unveils the speaker’s internal battle with flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, or fragmented memories, all fighting for attention and understanding. It’s a window into their effort to piece together their experiences, especially when these memories lack a chronological order, lack understanding or are tied together by emotional resonance to specific, vivid details.

The Link to Trauma

Trauma can drastically alter how the brain functions at a very structural level. It effects both the processing and retrieval of these mental records, recognizing present tense settings, and predicting the likelihood of future outcomes. Ideally, memories serve to highlight significant details for reference in future decisions. However, traumatic memories often remain unprocessed, fragmented, and stored distinct from regular memories. This disruption gives rise to associative thinking and speaking, as survivors navigate their mental landscape, attempting to articulate their thoughts and emotions in a way that gives a window to their internal state.

Effective Listening Strategies

Truly listening requires more than just passive hearing. Patience is the most important trait for friends, family, and mental health professionals when trying to understand and support a person with associative thought patterns. This is definitely a skill, so here are some strategies to enhance your listening skills in these situations:

1. Stay Present: Engage fully, without formulating a response. In fact, be slow to respond at all. Consider it like a puzzle, and a word here might match something said three comments ago, and together they’ll make sense if you just have patience. Work on giving full attention as they weave through their thoughts.
2. Avoid Judgment: Resist the urge to categorize their thoughts as incoherent or to just give up on understanding entirely. If you disagree with something, or hear something that doesn’t make sense, immediately trying to “fix” the problem can be counterproductive. It may turn out they don’t agree with what they said either. In some ways the associative space is where a person tries on various different thoughts to see which seem to fit and which don’t. And something that fits now may be discarded in the next moment. Allow them this space.
3. Keep Questions Open-Ended: Avoid asking questions that have yes or no answers. This approach not only facilitates deeper understanding but also conveys your genuine interest in their perspective.
4. Reflect Emotions: Echoing the emotional undertones of the speaker’s words can validate their feelings and foster a sense you understand them, even if you don’t. Also, if you’re in the same boat with them in their confusion when facing a complex topic, at least they’re not alone. Focus on the complexity not the confusion. Embracing this shared uncertainty can alleviate the speaker’s self-criticism or embarrassment.

Path to Healing

Bridging the gap between traumatic experience and verbal expression is crucial in trauma recovery. Being able to connect with another human being over the great divide of inadequate language is so important. Our ability to have patience and recognize the confusion as a symptom of the trauma itself is the first step towards healing. As I’ve said elsewhere, “the confusion is the injury,” and the presence of a compassionate listener can significantly reduce the sense of alienation and misunderstanding that many survivors feel.

Remember, when it comes to trauma recovery, you are not alone. A good therapist can help organize and track the various puzzle pieces until the person gets enough to start making a clear picture.

---