Unable to multitask

[Lunarcy]

Yes, Im sure that the title sounds odd.  I have an odd problem.  I cannot hear and read at the same time.  For some reason, when I read I can hear that someone is talking but not what they say, nor can I gage the urgency of their communication.  Only when I break the connection between my eyes and the words, which can be difficult depending on my level of involvement, can I hear what someone is actually saying.  I have this problem to a lesser degree with most visual forms of communication like television and I tend to be more focused on the way a person talks than what they are actually saying.  I generally look away so I can comprehend what they are saying better.  This is secondary though.  I seem to be unable to multitask.  If I am speaking and some visual "something", could be words on a page, a commercial, a painting, a person, catches my attention, I lose the ability to speak and it just stops.  It has happened in the middle of a sentence although I have learned to compensate for that a bit and can keep the pauses/stammers to a minimum.  Sometimes people think I stutter.  I do remember what I read with far greater recall than most people and am a walking encyclopedia of trivial information gleaned from a huge variety of sources.

I am 34, F and have had this problem all of my life.  I have always read at a very high level and can even remember the feeling of being impatient at the rate they were teaching me letters and sounds.  It was as if I were being reminded of something I already knew.  I still prefer books to movies or television and rarely watch it.  I have a tendency to keep reading materials in various stages of completion all over my home and read them at the same time.  I keep up with many online activities as well such as forums and newsgroups.  I am a passable artist, more technical than creative, with an ability to reproduce others' art but not really create my own.  I cannot watch horror movies or any that engender extreme anxiety or fear because they seem to affect me more they do your average person, more like I can't filter them through the "it's only a movie" filter.

So what I am asking is this; is there some way to train myself out of this behavior?  Some kind of mental exercise or something, im not sure really.  I sometimes feel like I only have half the functions other ppl have but that half is bionic.  I dont know how to wake up the other half and use them together.

[Mittiin]

When I said fits me to the T it really does. I cannot watch horror/tragic content either and cannot read and hear at the same time as well.

I have been diagnosed with depression and rheumatoid arthritis. I find psychotherapy especially REBT has helped me with confronting many of the things I ran away from especially the tragic movies bit. I need a lot of conscious thought to dissociate mentally from a sad movie. Mostly because I can take the sad movie ahead and use it when I daydream- which I do a lot.

[Mittiin]

Thank you for posting your problem and thank you for the details as well.

I have the same problem to the T. I am 39, female. I have always felt I needed to fix this trait in me because everybody else seemed to be great at multitasking and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I couldn't and cannot.

Have you been able to find a solution?