AS & Right Brain & Metaphor

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Many friends since my Dx with AS last year have said, "Chris, how come you use use metaphors all the time, your not supposed to be able to do that" well............... it's got me thinking.

It is true that nearly every expression I use is through Imagery or metaphor. It was most likely this right brained dominance, that has been one of the main reasons why my autism has forever been in the dark.

My mother was a dancer and folk singer and my father was an oil painter, his mother was a very well known artist. So it makes sense that I have a very feeling, intuitive and visual way of expression.

I was wondering if there are any people here who can say they too have AS and have a right brain dominance and use Metaphor as a natural form of expression?

Chris.

I use metaphors ect fine... though i've heard them all before and I get them... and I do still get tripped up over other ones in conversation from time to time.

Point is, you're not stupid... You can learn what is meant by the expression and then use it.

I read A LOT... I think that really helped.

I don't really use metaphors much, but i do have a weird sense for them, not verbally, but in imagery or symbology

SAME HERE!

SAME HERE!

I actually like them because they give me funny visual imagery.

I think they also stick with me better (meaning I retain them once I learn them) because it's similar to learning a diff language. Different languages have so many funny ways of expressing the same phrase (and I'm not even talking about metaphors ect) that it's not that much further of a leap.

I will say I've been told I use expressions at the wrong time... But I think it's just because they don't understand what I'm getting at... When I explain, they say, "oh." Even if I find unconventional ways of using them that don't go over so well with others, I do understand why people use them when they do.

And I will say, that the times that I do have troubles with them is usually when people are joking about something and are alluding to some unknown thing... If I don't even know what we're talking about, then I'm probably not even gonna recognize the metaphor.

The use of metaphoric language used to be listed among the language criteria for autism. ("If speech is present, peculiar speech patterns such as immediate and delayed echolalia, metaphorical language, pronominal reversal.") Although it usually meant things like taking words from a particular situation, and using the same words for a situation that was different but had something in common with the first one.

Also, if you see a young child with Autism speak, they may use metaphorical language that's only known/common to those around him or her upon first hearing.

Life awakens at 7 (holding seven fingers up), would be an example of someone with Autism using metaphor that's understandable to the parent, but may make others pause for a second.

It's actually still in the criteria for Autism.

O, and it generally means that you may have trouble with understanding metaphors that aren't familiar to you, when people say that those with AS may have problems with "metaphors". It doesn't mean that you can't use them.

I tend to speak in metaphors, more than people like it. I've been called on it.

yeah i'll have some meaning to them sometimes that people don't understand, but when i explain... it applies.

I use analogies to explain and think about a lot.

It's a natural form of expression and especially of understanding for me, I think. It's just that so many things are similar to others and I see no boundaries between them that would make cross-references impossible or unlikely.

So far, I almost always found that nobody understands my explanation if I use analogies.

Ion the other hand don't understand how many students can think in one topic at a time and not see how it connects to everything else, how it is similar to something else and how the two though totally different in content would support or explain each other.

I want to say I cannot do what they can do. Seeing just 1 thing and being able to focus on that 1 thing. Apparently though they also have trouble doing what I naturally do, which is interesting.

Ever met a 4? topic

I tend to be visual and right brained for most mental activities and I think in pictures. I have a thought first and then I describe it. When I hear or see a metaphorical expression for the first time I get a literal picture of it and then i decipher it. So my learning is slower than a NT. when I hear the expression "One swallow does not make a summer" I asked what was meant by the word 'swallow'. When told this was a sort of bird I imagined a sea gull flying by itself. Then I asked why one swallow does not make a summer and was told that just because you see one swallow flying around this does not mean summer is here yet. I then imagined a whole sky full of these birds being needed before the season of summer officially started. The larger meaning I was told was that one should never jump to conclusions. This made sense. More proof is needed before concluding a rule. This is logic. But I still see the swallow(s) when someone mentions this expression. It would seem to indicate that somewhere along the line someone talked about birds and whether seeing one was a harbinger of summer.

I wonder what sort of avian species is associated with autumn?

I'm a right brain thinker and I love metaphors and analogies. I like to make up words too. Maybe the left brain autistics have a harder time with this. I think that the left brain aspies show more visible signs of autism because of social problems and the criteria may be set based on that standard.

At what age did you begin to talk? I was a very early talker.

oh yes. my poetry is generally praised for my use of such things. my speech is ridden with it. but first of all its a generalization that ASD people "can't" do the same things as NT people, it varies from person to person where all the exact differences lie, and secondly, no one says Aspies can't adapt to things. Both I and my Aspie friend use metaphors and things, in fact, when explaining his take on human communication to me he said,

it's like those dispensers outside grocery stores that you put a quarter or two in, turn the handle, and get a plastic ball with something in it. Everyone's mind has little pieces of string in them that are ideas, concepts, pictures, sounds, etc all packaged in those plastic balls. Now when someone comes along and talks to you, they put a quarter in you, so to speak, and you spit out a plastic ball. But the catch is, string can't leave the brain. Whatever you have in your head, can't you can't give to the other person. You can only spit out the plastic ball. They stick the ball in their head and try to find the right piece of their own string that corresponds to the ball you gave them. If they get it right, or close, and so do you when they give you an empty ball and you fish around you head for the right string, then you can communicate with each other. But, you never know exactly what string anyone puts in the ball you give them, or, what string was in a ball before they gave it to you. You can only guess and hope.

He always maintains that you just adapt, Aspie or not, to a situation. So, if everyone around you speaks in metaphors and your brain doesn't have the right string for it...you have to find someway to make new string or use other string in new ways.

Actually I've seen speaking in metaphors as a symptom of Aspergers. Some severely Aspie can only converse that way as they are unable to come up with their own original words.

It is the 'moral' at the end of one of the fables of Aesop (620-560 BC). In the story, this guy sees a swallow, thinks, "Summer's here and I won't need my coat," and sells his coat. He immediately spends the money he got for it, but shortly after there's a freeze and he's left shivering miserably without a coat.

It seems to me that whoever explained this one to you was a bit of a dip, since I imagine that the entire thing would make perfect sense and you would have needed no questions if he'd just told you the little story. How inefficient to let you flounder over it.

If someone says "One swallow does not make a summer" the entire scenario of the story comes to my mind, as well as the illustration in the book of fables I had as a child, picturing the shivering coatless man standing on a frozen pond looking at the dead swallow lying on the ice at his feet.

I often make up metaphors that are incoherent to others, and then accidentally use them in conversation. Or deliberately, because I think they're good ones and want other people to use them, too. This does not generally go over well.