Anybody more socially perceptive than most NTs?

Post Reply New Topic

This is exactly like my experience also. I could pick up so much more if I could only concentrate enough to focus on it.
You mentioned in some other thread that the Aspie brain-wiring is not really suitable for
verbalizing thoughts all the time, and that visual thinking would be more natural and using less processing power.
I've been looking into this lately and find it to be very true. You gave me an excellent tool, for developing my mental capacity, I thank you for this, Ghost Neanderthal!
Although I kind of knew before, that practicing mindfulness had a beneficial effect, I didn't know why,
and I was unaware of the verbalization issue. I have been trained at school to constantly talk
in my mind and that actually feels rather awful and unnatural, but I find it very hard to stop it.
But now that I know more about it, I can focus more effectively on visual thinking and maybe have a chance to relearn a natural ability which I lost.
And thank you for posting that link about the empathy imbalance hypothesis, that makes very much sense.

Thanks for listening . (I feel like Frasier Crane right now )

Also there is a very interesting blog I found recently about an autistic/aspie man who thinks in pictures: Pre Rain Man Autism

I don't know if I myself think in pictures but definitely I don't think in words either. Actually I have a hard time pin-pointing how my natural thinking is. I'm definitely a very visual person. Maybe I am a visual thinker, and it just takes time to fully get that ability back/adapt it to the real world pragmatically.

Is someone suggesting. shut down the internal monologue?
Very interesting idea.

At the moment I can't stop it, I'm still observing the internal monologue and try to remember
how I was thinking before I started talking.
In a way, I'm 'catching' the verbal thoughts that push their way into my mind, and 'translate'
them back into non-verbal thoughts.
Those are not necessarily very visual, but rather compressed blocks of information, which can
include memories of all the senses, including sounds, sights, feelings, atmosphere, touch and anything
that can be stored in the memory in it's original form.
So to me meditation is not about 'stopping to think' but to catch thoughts before they turn into
words.
If you are interested, here is a link to a site that got me fascinated:
Koan Q&A

Non verbal thinking (which I just described to Chicken Bird), when I finally remember how to do it for short periods of time, feels extremely blissful to me.
And then I clearly remember this blissful intensity of quiet beauty (or spooky terror in scary situations) from my early childhood.
One of my main problems with AS is the extremely narrow focus of attention.
Thinking verbal thoughts is taking up too much effort, to pay attention to sensory perception at the same time.
If I could only stop that, I could be much more aware of my surroundings and cope so much better with everyday life.
Yesterday afternoon, while I was on my way to some social interaction, I was in a situation where I felt mentally so exhausted that the verbal thinking had to stop, because I didn't have enough energy to keep it up.
That brought instant relief from the exhaustion.

The link you posted is very interesting.
But I'm a bit puzzled about the pain-perception part. I knew a man from Estonia ( best-man of my parents) who was totally resistant to pain. He even had teeth extracted without anesthesia.
But I believe he was not on the spectrum. How does this pain resistance tally with hypersensitivity of the senses which is also a common symptom of autism?
That must be a separate condition which some people on the spectrum develop, but others not?
Or is it like the empathy-imbalance, also an imbalance of sensory perception, which can develop either way, too much or too little?