Expressive Language Disorder and My Experiences

Posted 2025/5/24

For a long time I've had difficulty putting my thoughts into words. No matter who I'm talking to, no matter what I'm talking about, I always struggle. I talk in circles, I repeat the same things over and over, I use the wrong words for things, and I will accidentally describe one concept when I mean to describe another. These are among many other struggles I've experienced when I've tried to have any sort of conversation.

The agony I experience because of this is indescribeable. It feels like drowning, almost. My thoughts are the ocean, and my attempts at explaining them are my attempts at bringing myself to safety. It feels like other people have nice boats, while I'm out on the water without anything. No life jacket, no raft, not even a piece of driftwood to cling to.

It is near impossible to survive being on the open ocean with only yourself.

Despite this, anyone in this position would try to survive no matter what. Your survival instincts wouldn't let you die without putting up a fight. But in the end, you will succumb. You will not make it out.

This is how every conversation feels to me. No matter how much I explain or clarify—no matter how much I swim or thrash or search for a shoreline—I will be misunderstood in the end. But everyone else on boats looks at me struggling and scorns me. They think "Why is this person doing this? They must be choosing to do this on purpose." They assume that, just like them, I have a boat, because "who doesn't"? And so they take what I end up saying at face value, because they believe wholeheartedly that what I say is exactly what I mean to say. Most people do after all, why would this be an exception?

Most people haven't heard of Expressive Language Disorder (ELD). Hell, even I hadn't heard of it until just today. I had to willfully go down a rabbit hole of psychology websites looking for anything that describes the things I struggle with. Once I found it, I learned that there were almost no websites discussing this disorder.

According to this Ability Central article, ELD can be defined as "a communication disorder that makes it difficult for people to share their thoughts or ideas or show they understand what others say. ELD doesn’t only affect speech; it affects expressive language, or the methods people use to communicate their thoughts". Some examples of expressive language are speaking, writing, and nonverbal cues. The article also states that "ELD can be a debilitating condition for many people, especially in social settings like school or the workplace. People with this unique language disorder generally have no trouble understanding others, but when it’s time to speak up in a conversation, they struggle to make sense."

Reading these descriptions and other similar descriptions on other websites hit close to home for me. They articulated how I felt better than I ever could have. This isn't a new experience to me, since most things or people can explain ideas or concepts better than me. I felt seen in a way I hadn't experienced in probably 6 years in regards to my mental health. Despite this, I feel like they barely scratched the surface. Sure, they do a great job explaining the signs and symptoms, but they don't really articulate how it feels, which I feel like people would benefit from knowing. Understanding what someone go through doesn't mean you understand how it affects them.

It makes sense that there aren't a lot of first person accounts given the apparent obscurity of the disorder. This, paired with the fact that it makes it extremely difficult to write things like first person accounts, is kind of a recipe for the voices of people with this disorder going unheard. I will provide an attempt at writing my own.

To say the least, it's agonizing. Almost every single day, at least one thing I say is misunderstood, no matter how hard I try to make it understandable. The only days that this doesn't happen are the days that I don't speak to anyone. Agonizing is an understatement for the excruciating pain, distress, and frustration this disorder causes me. I am constantly so incredibly embarrassed by myself and by my constant failure to properly articulate myself, especially when I look at my peers, whom communication is almost automatic for.

There are many days where I contemplate whether it's even worth the effort anymore. Whether the pain of loneliness is truly more to bear than the pain of nothing I say being understood, of failing no matter how hard I try. It's genuinely exhausting, so much so that it has completely burnt me out socially and made the thought of talking to my loved ones fill me with stress several times in the past. Even with my closest friends that I've talked to about these struggles, who show me unending patience and put in unending effort to understand me when I try to communicate, there will always be something I say that they misunderstand. And it's so painful. I cannot reliably be my own testamony even to people who understand me so deeply.

I am always terrified that I've accidentally said something that portrays my beliefs as something different than they are, and thus painting myself in a bad light. I'm terrified of comforting people and usually outright refuse to just because I know I will say something wrong and end up hurting others more that they already were. I feel like a terrible person and a terrible friend.

I apologize for writing such a heavy blog post, but I feel like an accurate account of this disorder is something that's important to put out there, and since it affects me so negatively it has to be heavy in order to be accurate. ::P

I do hope this was at least some what understandable! Hopefully in the future more people will know about ELD, but for now I will write this blog post to bring more awareness to this disorder and how terribly it can affect people.