Autistic brains 'never daydream'

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I think I rarely stop daydreaming... well, thinking about things with an accompanying mental image, and frequently, sound. Sometimes if I am concentrating on something it will be the thing in front of me, but the rest of the time... I can't turn it off. The only recourse is to concentrate fully on an object. In fact if I am trying to fall asleep sometimes I have to visualize a sort of static pattern to try to block out the thoughts in my mind, if they won't relent, becuase they'll keep flipping through one thing after another rapidly. Sometimes I'll be doing this when I'm talking to somebody and I'll be chattering along following the course of the switching thoughts and the other person will be totally lost.

I think I daydream, at least in my own way. NTs daydreams are probably filled with social situations in which they are acting out. I just dream about the designs of computer programs and maps for this fictional island nation I'm writing about. In other words, our daydreams are what would normally be work for NTs. We work during our daydreams and it doesn't feel like work!

I day dream about the London of the past 50 years, which might also be the London of the Future, after Ken Livingstone is ousted out of Office. I daydream about the stress-free life of living on my own, and how that could happen, very soon. I also daydream about the Late 1960s, to see how I would fare, if I was to get caught up into a crowd of Hippies on my way home from somewhere. I daydream about the Internet, when I can't go on it. I daydream about my dog, Chico when I'm somewhere, doing something that I'm not keep about. I daydream about myself at my Goal Weight of 135 Lbs. I daydream about Routemasters the most.

I daydream. The alternative would be a mundane life.

Should doctors be allowed to define daydreaming? It doesn't matter, they'll do it anyway. But I remember the doctor who told me that my wrist is not connected to my arm ...

what did he say it was connected to?

I'm always very quiet and daydreaming

From my own experiences with my disorder, I find daydreaming is one of my primary problems. I can't seem to control what my mind is thinking about. If I can't get it to focus on what needs to be focused on, I'm powerless to do anything. I also have a great deal of trouble keeping my attention steadied. It constantly drifts from one topic to another. If I try really hard to focus on a task, even one that fascinates me, I have so much trouble that it takes a tremendous amount of effort. Even though I'm brilliant with Math - I came up with tons of easier, more efficient methods for stuff I learned in Math homeschooling - it's so tremendously difficult for me to do a Math problem. I can't write and process what I'm writting at the same time, because the act of writing distracts me, so I can't even write down my work and have to keep it all in my head. If I drift for even a second, I have to start the entire problem over again. For this reason, a single Algebra problem usually takes me about a month to complete.

The root of my severe insomnia problem is that I cannot focus my mind to get it to relax. Instead, it goes straight to my worries, and I can do nothing to change the subject. As I get more tired, the problems get worse. Eventually, I lose my ability to read in my head. Then, I have to read out loud. Eventually, I cannot even do this anymore because concentrating on translating the words into sounds distracts me from processing their meaning, so I can't even hear what I'm speaking. At that point, my only option is to use a screenreader, something I have a pitifully limited selection to choose from, and I'm very, very tired of pasting every single post on this forum into word when I'm like that just so I can find out what it says.

Once, I took a medication (I can find out what it was if anyone cares) that made the problem worse, and it really highlighted what it does. At one point during that time, it got so severe that I lost my ability to talk because my mind was going all over the place so fast. I actually became nonverbal. Though this only occured at the worst point of the medication and only briefly, I find it fascinating in that it's caused me to believe that this is why some aspies cannot talk, yet can type.

So to me, the idea that my brain not only drifts less, but that it doesn't drift at all, is completely obsurd. I know from experience that that just isn't the case.

HA!!
thats the thing, the autist would focus on the cross, and in order to keep seeing that cross (s)he prevents him/her self from drifting off...

its a rediculous thing, the main reason they ever thought i had some form of autism was because of extensive daydreaming.
what utter nonsense.

I think I daydream, but I don't know what technically qualifies as daydreaming. That's why I cannot be certain.

Hmmn.. I guess I see day dreaming being the same as hoping?

So therefore everything I day dream about I conceive as possible or imaginable one day, though there have been times in my life when it feels like my own thoughts raced away from me and I couldn't even begin to comprehend where I ended up.

Theres something else that made me think though, I've always been able to visualise things in parts and piece them together into original wholes, but I've never been able to imagine what other people are saying in a visual form, I have to say it to myself and simply understand it..

Maybe we day dream, but generally not in a way thats easy to actually describe...

I find something else intriguing though, I go months and months without a single dream, then in a certain day of sleep (I sleep daytime) will have the craziest most visual experience, as if my body will only allow such thoughts to be subconcious if I don't satisfy myself otherwise..

and a homecoming Queen? - lol

So only 6% of us have ASD and the rest are NT pretenders?

hmmn... I think we need to define day dream before making those sort of assumptions

daydreaming, is when you are essentially awake (even if not effectively), but are "dreaming", as in envisioning a scene or something different from the one you're in, effectively prosponing the realisation of where you actually are.

that a good deffinition?

If these researchers were clever, they'd know that their test was flawed from the start, and are, as I suspect, aiming for a particular conclusion.

If you ask an autie/aspie to concentrate on something, particularly in the scenario of a scientific test, they'll do it, and do only that because their interest in the fairness of the test is probably as innate as the researchers'.

I daydream all the time - I have several worlds in my head to which I retreat frequently, and sometimes spend little time out of. I love playing with the future - imagining in our 3D widescreen cinematic way what would happen if Woman X suddenly decided she liked Man Me. That's pretty common.

My mind is always in three or four places at once, and only one of those is sometimes reality.

I'm not sure if I've ever had a real daydream. In books movies ECT, daydreams are described as the person goig of into like a dream state while they are awake. I have, hower imagined great scenarios in my mind, and sat there for awhile thinking about them.

Long involved daydreams about travel to places I've never been.I think an entire subgenre
of science fiction/fantasy (EX.Lovecraft's The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath) probably came
from Aspie authors.

The central character is kind of undeveloped and just drifts throught the story.