Have you ever felt totally helpless?

Only when I'm tied up on special occasions that I can't get free from.......It's not exactly scary though...It's kind of like that old classic film the Sir John Mills stared in when he was quite young....Great Expectations..... ;)D 

ya one time i got deported. it sucked

Yes when I lost my job due to illness, and the utility company was threatening to shut off my heat in cold weather.. I was out of my mind with worry!

As an adult, I have not. Even in the most adverse of times, I have always known that I have the freedom of choice, which includes doing whatever I can to improve my situation the best that I can.     We are the captain of our own ship, no matter the storm. This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at January 20, 2019 12:53 AM MST

Yep.
My husband has some odd ways of communicating:
vague and/or ambiguous statements
or asking questions that do not ask for the information he wants 
or giving replies that have no relevance to the questions I ask.
It happens several times every day and often affects both practical and emotional matters.
It takes immense patience and sometimes five to ten tries to work out what he means.
Sometimes I lose patience and then I feel ashamed of myself.
We've talked about it a lot. He has no understanding of why he does it. Initially, he is disbelieving. I've taken to using a recorder. When I play back his own words to him, he is shocked and confused by the evidence, and still reluctant to believe it. It seems that at the time, he is completely unaware of it; what he thinks he says is not what he intends to say. 

It hasn't always been this bad. There were many years when he would just speak in half sentences - not knowing that he hadn't finished them. Apparently, he heard the second half of the sentence in his head and was certain he had spoken it aloud. Eventually, he did learn to speak in whole sentences - and that was when the above problem began.

Sometimes it drives me flipping crazy!

I feel helpless because I don't understand the nature of the problem.
Is it a neurological problem with language processing?
If it is, is it curable?
How would we go about finding an answer?

Yes.  It is a stinging memory.

Sure, I think we've all felt that way at some time.  We can't control everything .. better to just admit we can't so we can learn to deal with it.

  Almost, but not completely.  Some wiseguy gave my name to police detectives who were investigating a gang that was dealing in knock-off tildes.  For some strange reason, the gumshoes fell for it, as if I have some kind of history with that kind of thing, go figure. So there I am at Police Headquarters in a drafty interrogation room with three detectives tag-teaming me with barrages of questions that are actually accusations. I kept my cool and never admitted a thing to them, they finally had had no choice but to let me go . . .



This post was edited by Randy D at January 21, 2019 11:40 AM MST