Keep in mind, please, that I am not diagnosed, and I don't know if I have AS or not.
My way of thinking seems to be a combination of what some of you have described, and what animallover's friend says she experiences. My thoughts are often a coupling of images and words, though the images that have words with them are often vague, and difficult to pin down.
Like Scoots has described, when someone explains something to me, I need to have a mental picture of it. It's the same when I am describing an experience to someone else. For example, when I think about what I did yesterday, images of myself in those situations appear in my mind. I recall myself sitting in the basement working with a new computer I bought yesterday. Playing darts with my brother, him getting upset because I was winning. Watching a lot of Anime music videos, to test out the new computer's CD and DVD drives and downloading capability. Going into Bestbuy and feeling insignificant and irritated when I had trouble getting any of the employees to come over and help me, with my father standing in front of the computer with his back to me, impatient. These are all images in my mind. They are sometimes like short movies, and other times like a series of images, as though I am viewing a film frame by frame.
When I think of a cat, I see a generalized image of an outlined cat, like a pencil drawing of a cat, sitting upright, with little lines for the fur. I can't really see the face too clearly unless I try. Thinking further, I picture my neighbor's cat, whom I took care of this past week, and who also bit me on the finger. I see her angry, eyeing me with her tail lashing, but I also see her walking through the grass, and the wet feeling of dew. I also can picture my cat, who passed away in October, fat and gray and white, laying on the carpet just by the steps, with the railing behind him.
When I think of a tree, I see a tree, but, like the cat, it is more of a generalized image of a tree, at first. If I think harder, I can picture the tree in my front yard, or the tree that's outside the auditorium at school, but there are parts of these images that are either blurred or indistinct.
Car, I think of my father's car, though in no specific location.
Love- the typical valentine heart appears in my mind, sometimes on a card with lace, sometimes not, but there is no feeling that comes with it. I don't know what love feels like, and can not identify it in myself. If I think further, I think of being in my art class in high school, when we had to make valentines for ourselves (a stupid assignment). Mine was black and covered in wire, it had an image of a human heart inside, which tore in half when I opened the card. I recall responding in this way because I was confused. We were to create a valentine card without using any stereotypical elements (like the red and pink hearts), but that is all I know of love. My friend in that class was rather rebellious, so I followed her example, and did whatever the heck I felt like for the assignment, being as dark as possible, in order to express my frustration and discomfort with the assignment.
Fear- I picture a drawing I did of a dragon which I called "fear." I used it in a roleplaying game- it was a small female dragon, black, and timid. All of the dragons in the roleplaying games always had a specific talent or power, and hers was to manifest the fears of others into corporeal form.
Despite these images, I am also able to think in words quite clearly. It is only when I have to stop and remember something or think of something physical or something that actually happened that I need to picture it happening before I'm able to transcribe it in words.
Quote:
I think maybe the reason you guys who think in pictures have such a hard time with emotions is that there is really no picture as such of love, fear, etc just what you give it. It is a concept, not a concrete. Maybe that is why it grips you so much, because you can’t reduce it down to a picture, so it’s ephemeral and becomes something to be nervous about. What do you think?
I agree with this concept, but I don't know if it describes the whole of my troubles with emotion. It's not that I just don't understand emotion, I also don't feel it very much. Though sometimes, my body will respond in such a way that I am feeling the emotion, my mind is often unaware of it. For example, I had to have surgery earlier this summer, and I didn't feel nervous at all, but my stomach was really upset. When I told my mother this, she just said "You are nervous, you just don't even know it!" I guess not having a solid image or feeling to always associate nervousness with makes it difficult to understand the concept, or connect the word to the feeling, but at the same time, I always feel rather detached from my emotions.
26 Aug 2004, 5:14 am
