Hey all,
Just curious about something. I'm in my 30s and it took me until my early to mid 20s to realize that the cartoon thought bubbles or echoy voiceover thinking in shows and movies was kind of a real thing.
I almost never can visualize, and when I do it's not something I can control. I can't just summon the image of an apple in my head, but apparently everyone else around me can. Even when I can visualize, it's like a thin mist that's hard to pinpoint details and easily blown away.
Similarly, I almost never have an internal monologue. The times I do are short-lived and conversational, like "Wow, you should really wake up, it's past noon". or something.
However, I'm pretty good at playing songs in my head and quietly jamming out to sounds that don't exist.
When I have a puzzle or something I need to think about, my subconscious handles it and just tells me the answer most of the time, without me having to do anything but look at the problem and wait. That's super helpful for most day-to-day stuff, and people think I'm smart. But it means I'm terrible at doing math in my head, and can't think through any kind of complicated issue in my head.
It also doesn't help that my short term and long term memory are both terrible. Any memories older than a couple of weeks are just gone, or they are emotionless fuzzy snapshots with no before or after. If I know something, it comes to mind without effort. If I don't know something, it's probably just gone forever unless I have some kind of visual reminder and get lucky.
Basically, I can't do anything in my head. I have to write it down, or have some other way to externalize the information in order to go over it. This make people think I'm stupid.
Add in the classic "bad at social-anything" and every interaction feels like a disaster.
And don't get me started on how often I forget what I'm doing or how badly I fail to multitask. Makes finding a job I can live on very hard, and the one time I had a decent job, I felt like I constantly had to prove myself. I was always making seemingly basic mistakes and letting everyone down.
Anyway, that's neither here nor there. I wanted to give kind of an overview of how my head works. I was wondering what kinds of brains everyone else is dealing with.
Does anyone else deal with things like visualization, or poor memory, or anything like that? How do you cope with the day-to-day?
My brain
Edit: I hope this doesn't come across as me making fun. Everyone's autism is different, and I regret yours comes with memory, visualization, and thought processing difficulties. You had just mentioned having only recently realized the meaning behind cartoon thought bubbles, and that was the thought bubble coming out of my head when reading your post. π
I wish I could help, but my autism doesn't come with those particular problems. Have you receive an ASD diagnosis? Read any books on various function coping methods for autistic people?
I laughed out loud. Saving that pic.
But yeah, I didn't realize for the longest time that most people can see things in their minds at will. I never got an official diagnosis, but I tick damn near every box, and literally every person I've mentioned probably being autistic to has said something like "Oh, that makes sense!" I'm actually talking to a professional this weekend to see what she thinks.
No books though, sorry.
Samesies with talking with other people. At age 39, after realizing I ticked all the boxes, I told my coworkers I thought I might be autistic; they looked at each other and then at me with confused looks on their faces. "You mean you didn't already know?!" I was like what, you did??? Then told my mom I thought I might be, and she said "...yeah...your dad and I always wondered if you might be." (!) Finally got diagnosed lasΟ summer, and it is honestly a relief knowing for sure that I am not just plain awkward, that there is actually a reason behind it.