Moin!
Something I noticed about myself long before I realized in 2012 that I was on the AuDHS spectrum: I was constantly explaining my thoughts.
Whenever someone asked for my opinion, asked me to do something, or wanted me to explain why I saw something a certain way, I often said far more than people apparently expected.
Short, ordinary explanations rarely felt sufficient to me.
I wanted to explain why I thought the way I thought. How I arrived at my opinion. What my opinion actually was. What I had learned. What experiences stood behind it. What connections I saw.
And most of the time, I described and explained all of it far beyond the point where it still felt comfortable or digestible for other people.
Why?
Because I constantly felt misunderstood.
Not precise enough. Too open to misinterpretation. Too vulnerable to people filling in gaps that I never meant to leave open.
And quite often, the reactions of the people I was talking to showed me that they really had not understood me.
So I felt forced to add more.
To compress more meaning into the explanation after the fact. To become more precise. To provide more details. More context. More intention. More protection against possible misunderstandings.
But that often made it worse.
The deeper I went into detail, the faster people’s attention ended. The sooner they lost the willingness to keep listening or reading. And for a very long time, I did not understand why that happened.
Why it still happens today, even if less often.
Do they not want to understand me? Do they want to misunderstand me?
Why do people read things into my statements that I never said?
Why do they assign emotions or intentions to me that I never expressed?
This often pushed me into sheer despair.
Was I that wrong?
Was I wrong?
Even when my arguments, my logic and my observations felt coherent to me?
Today, I understand much better where this came from. And why it still happens.
Before I explore it from my personal perspective, I want to look at it from the scientific side first.
The scientific perspective: overexplaining as a neurocognitive strategy
Scientifically speaking, “overexplaining” is not an official diagnostic term.
It is not listed as a symptom in the ICD or the DSM.
And still, the phenomenon can be understood very well through known neuropsychological, communicative and social mechanisms.
Especially in AuDHS — the co-occurrence of autism and ADHD — several internal dynamics meet: autistic precision orientation, ADHD-typical associative jumps, difficulties with executive control, emotional reactivity, social misunderstandings, masking experiences and often a long personal history of correction, rejection or misinterpretation.
For a long time, autism and ADHD were treated more separately in diagnostic systems. Only with the DSM-5 did it become explicitly possible to diagnose autism and ADHD together. Before that, the combination was long considered diagnostically excluded or at least difficult to capture properly.
Today, it is much more widely recognized that both neurotypes frequently co-occur and can influence each other.
One important building block is what psychology calls executive function. This refers to cognitive control processes: directing attention, inhibiting impulses, using working memory, sorting thoughts, separating what is important from what is secondary, and bringing an action or statement to a meaningful conclusion.
Research on autism and ADHD shows that both can be associated with difficulties in areas such as attentional control, working memory and inhibition. In AuDHS, this can create a very specific communication dynamic:
A thought is not simply one sentence.
It is a network of causes, exceptions, examples, objections and possible misunderstandings.
The autistic part may help explain why precision becomes so important. Many autistic people experience language not merely as a social signal, but as a system of meaning, accuracy and context.
A sentence is not just “roughly meant.” It has to be as correct as possible.
If a statement leaves room for false interpretation, it can feel incomplete or even dangerous. This can lead to context being added before it is even clear whether the other person needs that context.
The ADHD part can intensify this dynamic.
In ADHD, impulse control, sensory filtering and thought sequencing are often organized differently. One topic immediately activates other topics. One explanation opens the next mental door. While speaking or writing, additional connections appear that also seem relevant.
So what emerges is not necessarily a planned monologue. It can be an associative chain that expands while it is being explained.
Then there is the issue of social reciprocity.
Modern autism research increasingly describes misunderstandings between autistic and non-autistic people not merely as a deficit of the autistic person, but as a mutual communication problem.
This is often called the “double empathy problem”:
People with different perceptual, cognitive and communicative styles understand each other less easily because they bring different expectations to communication.
This is central to overexplaining.
When a neurodivergent person repeatedly experiences being misread, a preventive pressure to explain may develop.
One does not only explain what one means.
One also explains what one does not mean.
One explains the intention behind the statement.
One explains the exception.
One explains why one is explaining at all.
Not out of arrogance.
Out of experience.
Overexplaining also touches on masking.
Autistic camouflaging, or masking, describes conscious and unconscious strategies autistic people use in order to appear less socially different, meet neurotypical expectations or suppress autistic traits.
Recent research repeatedly connects camouflaging with psychological stress.
Overexplaining can be such an adaptation strategy. The person tries to reduce social friction through additional explanation.
At the same time, this very strategy can be exhausting — and create new friction.
From a scientific point of view, overexplaining can therefore be understood as a regulation and protection strategy.
It regulates uncertainty.
It tries to prevent misunderstandings.
It aims to avoid social rejection.
It tries to regain control over the meaning of a statement.
The tragedy is this:
The strategy often emerges from a real problem, but it can become a problem of its own.
The more someone explains, the more overwhelmed other people may feel.
The more overwhelmed they become, the stronger the explaining person’s impression becomes that they have again not been understood.
This can create a loop of explanation, overload, withdrawal, shame and renewed precision.
Overexplaining is therefore not simply “talking too much.”
It is often the visible part of an invisible internal workload:
securing meaning, checking for social danger, anticipating misunderstandings, defending one’s intention, regulating emotional tension and still trying to create connection.
Or, put more simply:
Overexplaining is often the attempt of a neurodivergent brain to be understood in a world that expects a different set of communication rules.
A look inside my neurodivergent thinking system
Here is a small glimpse into my neurodivergent thinking system — one that differs significantly from what many neurotypical people apparently experience.
My thinking is not a diffuse emotional cloud made of isolated words, concepts, images, smells or sensations.
My thinking is more like four-dimensional processing.
It consists of layered video sequences, internal dialogue, sensory impressions, memories, images, sounds, smells and movements.
Not isolated snippets of dialogue, but entire dialogue sequences that suddenly appear, pop up and bring more sequences with them.
At the same time, I can consciously watch myself think.
On another layer, I can add new elements to an internal dialogue, play through variations, check connections and anticipate possible reactions from other people.
Often, what I could say or write about a topic is already thought through.
It does not first appear in the moment of speaking.
It is already internally available as a complete package.
Like something stored in a memory drawer.
I only need to export it into spoken or written language.
And that is where the problem begins.
Direct factual knowledge is often not stored in me as an abstract sentence. It is stored graphically, spatially and sensorily.
It includes sounds, smells, images, body sensations and other stimuli I perceived when I learned or experienced something.
Translating this internal package into understandable language requires an internal translation program.
I can choose the language: German or English.
Because my English is at C2 level, it sometimes happens that the languages overlap in my head. Then, during export, a grammar can emerge that feels logical to me but no longer cleanly belongs to the chosen language.
I may pause, switch between languages or first have to translate my own thoughts back into the right language internally before the sentence works again.
Before I say or write something, it usually passes through a filter and analysis instance.
Does this make sense?
Is it precise enough?
Will it be misunderstood?
Is context missing?
Does this sound too harsh?
Could someone read something into it that I never meant?
In that process, the emotional layer is often filtered out.
Not because it does not exist.
But because it is disruptive, hard to grasp, or not prioritized by me as the central part of the statement.
Sometimes I simply do not know exactly how to consciously export the emotional layer so that other people understand it correctly.
Facial expression. Body language. Tone of voice. Pauses. Volume. Emotional coloring.
Unfortunately, I only have one mouth.
It moves far too slowly.
I only have one voice.
I only have two hands with ten fingers that can export my thoughts in written form.
Again and again, I catch myself thinking about learning sign language.
Not only as a language, but as an extension of expression.
I imagine that my wife and I could communicate twice as much in the same amount of time: verbally and, in parallel, through signs.
I can even imagine recording videos in which I speak and simultaneously express additional thoughts visibly through sign language.
But then, probably only very few people would understand me.
People who know sign language often cannot hear, or orient themselves differently toward language. And a parallel subtitle track would likely overwhelm many viewers again.
Another aspect of my thinking is that I often cannot export my emotions into words, facial expressions and body language in a way that other people can reliably understand.
It does not matter whether the person opposite me is also on the spectrum or not.
My facial expression does not necessarily mirror my thoughts directly.
It also does not always automatically match what I am saying at that moment.
I constantly have to adjust.
I have to consciously synchronize my facial expression with my speech. Because of that, it can appear slightly delayed, artificial, exaggerated or inappropriate to others.
But internally, it is not wrong.
It is just not automatically synchronized.
This is where part of my overexplaining comes from:
I am not only trying to explain thoughts.
I am trying to press a much larger internal system through a much narrower output channel into a language that other people are supposed to understand quickly, clearly and socially appropriately.
And that is exactly why my explaining sometimes looks like too much from the outside.
For me, it often feels more like too little.
Because even my longest explanations are only a heavily compressed excerpt of what is internally present at the same time.
When my export meets their receiving system
For me, even a long explanation often still feels like a massive abbreviation.
Internally, there is much more:
images, connections, memories, sensory impressions, considerations, possible misunderstandings, counterarguments and emotional after-effects.
What I give outwardly is therefore often not “too much” to me.
It is already highly compressed.
But for the person receiving it, it can feel completely different.
They do not receive my internal system.
They receive language.
Sentence by sentence.
Detail by detail.
Insertion by insertion.
And at some point, their capacity to take it in is exhausted.
Then there is a second layer, one that is even more complicated:
the emotional and psychosocial layer.
Many people do not only hear what is being said.
They also hear what they believe they recognize between the lines.
Tone of voice. Facial expression. Pauses. Eye contact. Body posture. Supposed mood. Supposed intention.
From all of that, they build a second message — one that is sometimes treated as more important than the actual content.
But for me, this second message often is not there in the way others expect it to be.
Between my lines, there is sometimes not much.
Sometimes there is almost nothing there except concentration, translation work, internal sorting and the attempt to be precise.
But that empty space does not stay empty for others.
It gets filled.
And most of the time, it gets filled incorrectly.
If I send too little emotional signal, people may read me as cold.
If my facial expression is not synchronized, people may read me as rejecting.
If my tone is factual, people may read me as harsh.
If I become precise, people may read me as argumentative.
If I ask follow-up questions, people may read me as distrustful.
If I explain myself, people may read me as defensive.
If I do not show a visible emotional reaction, people may read me as indifferent.
This creates a second version of my statement.
A version I never sent.
A fantasy message.
And suddenly, I have to defend myself against that fantasy message.
That is one of the most painful parts of neurodivergent communication:
I speak about content, but the other person reacts to an alleged relationship message.
I send information, but intention is received.
I provide context, but mood is interpreted.
The less I serve this unspoken social layer, the more strongly other people supplement it.
Not neutrally.
Not carefully.
Not by asking.
But often with astonishing certainty.
As if they had read something between the lines, even though for me, there was exactly nothing there.
Then a paradoxical problem emerges:
I explain more because I realize I am not being understood.
But the other person understands less because I explain more.
I try to close the gap.
The gap grows wider.
I try to become more precise.
The other person checks out sooner.
I try to prevent misunderstandings.
The amount of explanation creates new misunderstandings.
And I try to correct an emotional message I never sent.
That is the real exhaustion.
Not only the speaking itself.
But the constant recalibration across multiple levels:
content, tone, facial expression, body language, relational impact, presumed interpretation, possible hurt, possible defensiveness, possible accusation.
Overexplaining is therefore not just communication.
It is social damage control.
From the outside, it may look like being argumentative, defensive, monologuing or lacking a sense of the moment.
From the inside, it is often something very different:
a desperate attempt to finally no longer be held responsible for messages I never sent.
