Why can't I explain this clearly to people?

You call it 'distilling.' Examine that word. It suggests the clarity already exists somewhere inside the complexity, waiting to be extracted. More often, the clarity does not exist yet. You have not decided what matters most. You are asking language to do the work that judgment has not done. Notice what you do instead: you include everything, in order, hoping the listener will find the point themselves. This is not thoroughness. It is avoidance dressed as diligence. You are afraid that if you choose what to leave out, you will choose wrong — so you choose nothing, and leave the sorting to someone with less time and less context than you have. This is fixable, but not by finding better words. It is fixed by deciding, before you speak, what you need from the person listening. One thing. Everything you say should serve that one thing. Everything else — however true, however hard-won — is not the message. It is your comfort, not their information.