Visual Aspies

[Pondering]

I feel that myself, along with many others, find it especially difficult to articulate thoughts and emotions. Abstract ideas. A lot of the times I feel like I want to speak by projecting the images I see in my head because there just aren't any accurate words to adequately describe what I wish to covey. For example: the phrase "the music is beautiful" is by leaps and bounds not enough for "the music is [chills up my spine and goosebumps and tears and adreneline through my veins feeling]". Not even facial expressions and gestures seem to be enough. Like I need the full on image and video and essence that makes a mind function to be understood. I'm so visual that even abstract words produce images in my mind, not literal and technical definitions made up by more words. Does anyone else have this problem? Is anyone else this visual?

 

[Nadador]

I am, yes. When I process language, it translates to images, with representative symbols or even color fields [of varying complexity] when a word has no natural pictorial translation. Once filed this way, things don't always translate back into English perfectly. I've been told my visual style of processing is unusual for someone with a scientific bent, but there you are. I am also an artist, so perhaps that aspect of me is where it comes from, and what makes it workable.

In speech I often overuse certain words, despite having a large vocabulary. I think this happens because many of the things I mean to express don't correspond to an English word or phrase, so I find myself fumbling to string together the best approximation, which can make me sound a bit redundant. One of my motivations for acquiring foreign languages has been to expand my options, though rarely in conversation is it appropriate to interject a truly exotic word in lieu of an English one. It's nice to have them for my journals, however, though come to think of it, I draw in those as much as I write.

One of my favourite things about foreign languages is that they come equipped with the worldview of their cultures of origin. I wonder if there might be another language in which you might find words that better express your thoughts and feelings. You might simply have been born in the wrong place.

 

[Aspergirl4hire]

I am, yes. When I process language, it translates to images, with representative symbols or even color fields [of varying complexity]...I am also an artist, so perhaps that aspect of me is where it comes from, and what makes it workable...One of my favourite things about foreign languages is that they come equipped with the worldview of their cultures of origin...

The first time I understood something in my second language before I'd translated it, I made a picture. Visuals and emotions always beat the English--sometimes so fast that the words can't catch up for days.



Córdoba.
Lejana y sola.

Jaca negra, luna grande,

y aceitunas en mi alforja.
Aunque sepa los caminos,
yo nunca llegaré a Córdoba.
Por el llano, por el viento,
jaca negra, luna roja.

La muerte me está mirando

desde las torres de Córdoba.
¡Ay que camino tan largo!
¡Ay mi jaca valerosa!
¡Ay que la muerte me espera,

antes de llegar a Córdoba!
Córdoba.
Lejana y sola.

 

[Nadador]

Federico García Lorca was a brilliant poet. Your image captures "Song of the Horseman" beautifully, A4H.

 

[Ylva]

It is literally impossible to avoid taking things literally when your whole thinking process just gives you images to work with.

 

[Suzanne]

Oh my, this is SO ME, Cheryl

It is so frustrating too and at first, I was pretty worried why I get so high on music or something, that has a profound effect on me and like you say, words are not enough! It is like I am brimming over and have no outlet, to express, which leaves me very disjointed to say the least.

I could never understand how I get this strange, well, popping sounds in my body or shivers up my spine and horror of horror, go red. Now I know lol

 

[Harrison]

I feel that myself, along with many others, find it especially difficult to articulate thoughts and emotions. Abstract ideas. A lot of the times I feel like I want to speak by projecting the images I see in my head because there just aren't any accurate words to adequately describe what I wish to covey. For example: the phrase "the music is beautiful" is by leaps and bounds not enough for "the music is [chills up my spine and goosebumps and tears and adreneline through my veins feeling]". Not even facial expressions and gestures seem to be enough. Like I need the full on image and video and essence that makes a mind function to be understood. I'm so visual that even abstract words produce images in my mind, not literal and technical definitions made up by more words. Does anyone else have this problem? Is anyone else this visual?

Life, for me, has always been a stream of visual and emotional data. Abstract concepts become images and the way I see them often creates an emotional association to other experiences. When I write poetry I 'see' the poem played out first, changing the actions to produce the emotions I am looking to evoke well before committing it to words. Sometimes I will stop writing because the words can't convey the depth of feeling or the scenes I see being played out.

It is not confined solely to my writing, I can listen to someone's story and see it being played out in my mind, which can lead me to being far more emotionally affected than is probably healthy for me.

 

[AsheSkyler]

I'm one of those that everything I hear has a picture to go with it. Along with a scrolling marquee just below it of how ever word is spelled. If I've got extra time to process, sometimes I'll be able to feel or hear little ghost sensations right along with it. Some people tell me they don't do that, and I really wish they could so that way they'd see all the nasty things I see when they say something gross.

 

[Larisa]

Thank you for a great topic!
Maybe it's just a coincidence but I started to recognize and define my sensation better approximately around the time I started to study English.
I'm sorry for I know my knowledge of the language is far from perfect. I often become distracted with bright images from words and I miss other aspects such as grammar.
My native Russian somehow seems to me more complicated and confusing, but I'm getting better with it through English.
I think some words in a way are fading in their sense while being overused. They became just a set of sounds, not an indicator of the notion they served at first.
It's hard to define some concepts into words: what is friendship really?
I think the most important is to study the concept, because the words are but a surficial descriptions and they can not relay the entire content of the notion.
But to approach conveying the extract of the notion into words is a real art and mastery for me.
I love the English word 'integrity'. I more often hear and see its synonym 'honesty' and I keep wondering - why nobody is so captivated with mouthing 'integrity' and observe images sprang from that as I do?

 

[Progster]

I find information much easier to process and understand if it is presented visually. If I'm given a list of percentages in written form, it takes me a while to take it in and fully undertand it, but if shown a pie chart representation of the same information, I understand instantly. I'm not a mathematical thinker and numbers don't mean that much to me. When speaking, images come more easily that words, and I often struggle to translate the image in my mind into verbal information. It can be hard to find the words to explain things. When I'm learning a foreign language, I need to see the word written down, I can't pick up languages up just by listening to them. When I learn a new word, I have a visual image of the word written on the page and that helps me memorize vocabulary. The object the word represents also evokes a visual image, but I tend to rely on the image of the word itself when learning the word, it's shape and overall feeling evoked. I know when words are misspelled because they don't look right.

 

[wyverary]

This is all so interesting to read! I'm certain it's my Nonverbal Learning Disorder but I am reading this from the other side of the fence...I am not a visual thinker in the slightest. Whenever I read I can't imagine what the characters look like no matter how detailed the description...for me, EVERYTHING is verbal, and occasionally numerical.

 

[Datura]

I suppose I am in the middle. I constantly think in words, but also images as well.
This reminds me of an argument I once had with my uncle about ideas. His position was that if you didn't have the words to express an idea that the idea itself was not fully formed. I disagreed with him as I have always been able to form ideas without the use of words. Usually these ideas take the form abstract 3D images with different spacial relations and movements. It's hard to explain. Suffice to say; I could form an idea relating to the practical world, and execute it, but not necessarily articulate the notion. As I've gotten older this is less of an issue as I now have a large vocabulary.

Music has also always formed images in my mind. The sensation is by no means true synesthesia, but sounds do evoke shapes and colours for me.

 

[Ylva]

This is all so interesting to read! I'm certain it's my Nonverbal Learning Disorder but I am reading this from the other side of the fence...I am not a visual thinker in the slightest. Whenever I read I can't imagine what the characters look like no matter how detailed the description...for me, EVERYTHING is verbal, and occasionally numerical.

Do you still have a tendency to take things literally?

Also, how do you remember things? Do you visualise the written word/number, do you "hear" ("auditorialize"?) them with your inner ear, or do you have feelings and sensations corresponding with the ideas in question?

 

[113]

I'm a visual thinker. I've wondered if my selective mutism problems might have some relationship to difficulties with converting the mental images into words (though I have less of a problem with writing). If I draw things that are related to my visual thoughts while I'm speaking, it's much easier to speak... but to anyone else, it probably looks like I'm scribbling needlessly. If I don't have paper, I can speak more easily if I move my hands to illustrate the images (which no one else can see, so I try not to do it).

A few years ago, I started creating a system of artificial words for concepts that I frequently encounter. They aren't meant to be used for communicating with other people -- just for internal use. The definitions are images, not words. I would write some examples, but it's difficult to type on my phone, and I would have to draw pictures...

 

[113]

I suppose I am in the middle. I constantly think in words, but also images as well.
This reminds me of an argument I once had with my uncle about ideas. His position was that if you didn't have the words to express an idea that the idea itself was not fully formed. I disagreed with him as I have always been able to form ideas without the use of words. Usually these ideas take the form abstract 3D images with different spacial relations and movements. It's hard to explain. Suffice to say; I could form an idea relating to the practical world, and execute it, but not necessarily articulate the notion. As I've gotten older this is less of an issue as I now have a large vocabulary.

Music has also always formed images in my mind. The sensation is by no means true synesthesia, but sounds do evoke shapes and colours for me.

If you experience colors and shapes when you hear music, you might have a type of synesthesia. Synesthesia isn't uncommon with autism. Many people don't know that they have it until it's pointed out...

 

[Datura]

If you experience colors and shapes when you hear music, you might have a type of synesthesia. Synesthesia isn't uncommon with autism. Many people don't know that they have it until it's pointed out...

I don't literally see colours and shapes so much as I imagine them. If you've seen the first segment of Disney's "Fantasia" then you have a pretty good idea of the type of images that run through my head.

 

[DogwoodTree]

I don't literally see colours and shapes so much as I imagine them.

Synesthesia includes this circumstance. I'm strongly synesthetic with seeing specific colors in numbers or letters, but I don't physically see the color so purely that I can't also perceive the actual font color (e.g., black) for the letters and numbers. It's just a mental association that is extremely automatic and unavoidable. I "see" the synesthetic colors well enough that I can scan a page for a particular letter by "looking" for the color of that letter. But I can still perceive and acknowledge the actual font color. The colors just sort of co-exist in each letter/number. (The formation of the word can also affect how "visible" the synesthetic colors are for letters in a word...some words make certain colors stand out more than usual, or fade into the background some.)

Can you go in reverse? Can you "hear" the music that would go with images dancing in your mind even if no music is playing? For me, if you were to put color blocks together using colors that match letters/numbers, I could "read" the words or phone number or whatever because the associations are so inherent to my understanding of those letters/numbers.

 

[SameStars]

It depends on the associations I have with the words or sentences. That can be sound, pictures or seeing things like a movie. When I read a book for example, I don't envision the characters or places, but when I remember it back it's often in moving pictures. When I read a sentence somewhere that I know from a song, my mind puts music under it. Someone said something about a box some time ago, and I immediately heard the phrase What's in the box?! from a movie scene.

 

[wyverary]

Do you still have a tendency to take things literally?

Also, how do you remember things? Do you visualise the written word/number, do you "hear" ("auditorialize"?) them with your inner ear, or do you have feelings and sensations corresponding with the ideas in question?

That's a complicated question. 1) yes, I do still occasionally tend to take things literally, though I've learned better as I've gotten older. 2) As far as remembering things, it is, in fact, mostly verbal. The visual images that do remain in my head are fuzzy, like looking at everything through frosted glass. I never have clear, visual recollections of anything...if anything, I would say sound makes a much stronger imprint upon my consciousness and memory than do visuals.

 

[Datura]

Can you go in reverse? Can you "hear" the music that would go with images dancing in your mind even if no music is playing?

No. It's a one way process.