Taking things physically

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I take words literally, a.k.a. physically. I hear words, and my brain processes the words into a physically vivid sensory experience without a corresponding social-emotional experience. "Wearing your heart on your sleeve" comes with all kinds of sensations - seeing my heart on my sleeve, hearing my heart beating lubdub on my sleeve, feeling my heart against my sleeve and my blood wetting my sleeve and my blood dripping down my hand and my heart getting ripped out of my chest to be worn on my sleeve and balancing my heart on my sleeve so my heart doesn't fall off my sleeve and the falling sensation of my heart falling off my sleeve, smelling and tasting my blood and my heart in my nose and mouth, etc etc etc.

I take pictures pictorially, a.k.a. physically. I see a picture of people standing in front of a building, and my brain focuses on the colors and shapes and patterns while ignoring the social-emotional information of the people interacting with each other and the people's thoughts and feelings from their non-verbal cues, or verbal as well if the pictures are moving. I focus on the individual hairs and moles of the people and the patterns in the denim of their jeans and the feel of the denim in my hands and the individual bricks of the building and the feel of the brick in my hands and the color gradient across the sky and the reflections of bright and not as bright spots in the glass and the feel of the glass against my face and the sounds of my fingers tapping the glass and the warmth and wetness of my breath fogging up the glass and the shadows of things against walls and the sharp edges or soft textures of the things that the shadows belong to and the sounds of the parts of the things that shadows belong to contacting each other, etc etc etc.

I take things physically, not socially-emotionally. I don't know what is going through most people's minds when they hear words and see pictures. Do they process words and pictures the same way that I do, or do they do something different, or do they do a combination of what I do and something different? What are the sensations of the something different? Do other autistic people process words and pictures the same way that I do?

Your example of "wearing your heart on your sleeve" Any type of saying like that, I immediately picture a cartoon hear on a sleeve wonder why someone would want that, then realize what they are saying. I hate all saying like that -raining cats and dogs, tongue in cheek (isn't your tongue always in your cheek as its part of your mouth?). Possibly the only reason why I get them is that I was taught what a lot of t hem meant in speech class when I was younger

I just see basic images. Like I will picture my heart on my sleeve and that's it. I can picture my body heart or any heart as in Valentine's heart because that can be my heart I made.

People standing in front of a building, I can picture any building and people are just there. It's all blurry and foggy because I don't know what those people look like.

In that Temple Grandin movie there's a scene where someone mentions "animal husbandry," and in her head appears an image of two cows, one in tuxedo and the other in a wedding dress, and then she starts cracking up.

There's also a scene where her relatives on the ranch say they get up with the rooster (I don't remember the exact phrase) and she visualizes everyone sitting on the roof crowing with the rooster.

I remember that Temple Grandin mentioned a lot about these visualizations in "Thinking In Pictures". I don't remember if she mentioned sensations other than visual. These sensory experiences are starting to interfere with my reading of everything.