How I see

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I don't see whole things. I see part of the edge of a door, then another part of the edge; my mind understands this to be a straight line. Then the same process with the top, bottom and then the inner side with hinges. It's almost instantaneous. But I can never see the whole thing, only parts.

It's my mind that puts it together.

Moreover, if I try to zoom into the parts, then these, too, break into parts. It's as though I go from detail to ever smaller detail.

Don't get me wrong: I can see right now that I am in a square room with a door, a window and a rug and a sofa. But the process of mental construction strikes me as piecemeal. So when I walk down the street, every detail jumps out at me. I don't remember them. They just captivate me.

I cannot reconstruct images of faces in my head. I know that my friend Anthony has two eyes, short hair, ears that sick out, and he is Mexican so has dark skin. But I can't imagine his entire face.

are you face-blind? as an example of what I mean, I can tell you that when I was a civil servant, I would not recognize the faces of otherwise familiar fellow civil servants [nurses] wearing civilian clothing after work, instead of their normal hospital scrub attire.

I am so bad at that! For instance if I see somebody in the pantry at work for an entire week at coffee time, the next week I still won't remember which person she is or what her name is. I always try to introduce myself when I meet somebody and then do that trick where you make a mental image to go along with their name, but then it turns out the next person I see also fits that mental image I made up and I call that person by the first person's name oh I hate it so much!! !!

Recently there was a woman who I introduced myself to thinking she was new and it turned out she sits two desks away from me, but in a little cubby hole (for 3 months) and we have spoken several times. So embarrassing!! !!

I don't know about the seeing things in sections though, I don't think I do that.

this is common in autism and happens to be the way i see things too, i can only see details and certain parts of things, when i was younger i would have to look at things for a long time before i can understand what im looking at. Bright lights tend to make the top of my eyesight black or completely white. Drawing helped me adapt a different way to see things

a person went up to me in a supermarket one time, and warmly greeted me- It was obvious that she well knew me, at least, even though I had not a clue as to who she was. so I had to pretend that I knew what was going on, that was SO exhausting.

That is exaclty what it is! Exhausting!! !!

NOTH!! !

I ran into my own brother in town one time, and didn't recognize him. Also I often see people who look kind of like my parents, and I have to stare at them for several seconds to make sure they aren't my parents!

I don't think I see things in parts though... Everything is kind of a blur of color to me, like a Monet painting.

Wow, thank you for this thread. This is fascinating. Except for seeing lots of details and tiny things and bright, and probably noticing and looking at patterns and shapes more, I see pretty much like an NT would see things I think. I had no idea about the different ways things were seen on the Spectrum. This is awesome to learn. Thank you for sharing this.

Occasionally details jumps out at me, but I normally see things like an NT.

Sometimes I do have trouble seeing something for what it is and an example includes complex avatars on WP. I will look at the avatar longer than the average person and I must then figure out what it is exactly and sometimes I may not always get it. I do have visual spatial issues so maybe this is why. Often I do notice small details so maybe I see the trees and not the forest, ha ha.

Sometimes it takes me a long time to figure out what some of the avatars are as well. Some of them are pretty wild. A few of them have even scared me to look at them.

I hope mine wasn't one of the scary ones

Actually this new one you have is a little bit. There is something about the guy's face that scares me a little. I really liked the one you had before of you. I always felt like you were really right here whenever I talked to you and saw your pic. And I liked that feeling.

I see verry merry berry details at the same time, and these details make the whole, which I see at the same time that I see the details.

I see some things like that too. For example, I like to look at carpets because I see all the details and the whole together.

sorry but that picture evaporated when my last hard drive went south. but art carney [the guy in the santa claus garb in the avatar] was still online to be gotten. if I were to take a selfie of me now my hair is down to my shoulders and I would look different from that older selfie.