Thursday, September 25, 2014

Entry 41: Thinking In Patterns

June. 11. 2013

Temple Grandin says there are 3 ways an autistic may think: in pictures, patterns, or words. Well, I've discovered mine is patterns. I'm sure of it now, because I think she's referring to the thought process occurring first. My thoughts fly through my head so fast...it's hard for me to know what's going on sometimes! It's hindered my potential success in life, to be honest, especially because of the gross lack of awareness and therefore lack of help. I know in my heart it's probably a somewhat-still-locked (I've unlocked some of it!) savant gift.
This does cause me some feelings of frustration and grief. It also explains why I believe my ultimate savant is with my music, and my poetry… creativity basically… but exact creativity, and also, fluid logic. This is theorizing, I guess.

I do this even with cooking! I do not follow recipes, but draw upon my working memory for ingredients and then "concrete-logic-creatively" create pie graph ratios of flavorings.

I guarantee people will be surprised when they hear what I can do with pop music…but I've been quiet about it because it tends to over-excite (and in turn, over excite me too) when people hear it.

I'm just waiting to be able to make that shift, to reach that ultimate dream (and maybe boot Gaga offstage with something just as individualistically artsy, but more inspiring, deep, and tasteful? ha-ha…

There is a difference between a very honed skill, and a savant. For example, my writing and articulation abilities are more of a honed skill, though possibly stemming from certain savant points. For eample, like I have in mimicry, and applying words to those picture pattern codes. 

However, it’s not without effort too. For example, this, what I'm writing now; there’s typos, over and over. I’m editing at least a few times to get it out right. Punctuation and Grammar do not come so naturally to me, but they are honed skills stored in my working memory.
Despite this, I have to get it out the way I feel first, then do my best to "translate/edit" it after." Musical patterns/rhythms, and poetry, come more naturally to me. I see them before me; then the words are "fitted" into the rows of coded pixels. However, prose is not as natural, and takes much further work, beyond simple transformation and into translation.

Why can I appear to be, and in fact be, so articulate when I either want or need to be? It's because I see detailed patterns in human behaviors, despite not possessing the NT ways of reading people. I've combined that with my natural and primitively feminine wiring-to-nurture.  This creates the current viewpoint I have, which bears validity based on my empirical experiences. I've done it for survival of course, like Dr. Attwood says "from an early age, she knows she is different; she watches and learns."

However, this doesn’t mean I don’t have much more to learn. Since I was stunted in many ways, I know I’m still striving to “become” that person in optimal functioning and understanding, in this life. I’m not there yet. This is the stage I’m at now. Telling you the patterns I see, and then you decide to take what you like from them. Again, I know they bare some validity, even if only from a raw angle.

That "wiring-to-nurture" is one that I have embedded in me, especially because I’m female. Some men have a degree of this too, and in fairness there have been aspie men who've flown under the radar too for this reason; but not as many as the women.

I've been able to use a completely different system of reading people, in which is very detailed and may have unique strengths not possessed by an NT. In saying that, it still lacks/falls through the cracks in certain areas. This causes obscured and unrecognized troubles in many respects typical of the female aspie and her potential comorbid problems, all so grossly misunderstood and under-researched.

So, I've lacked self-awareness on "how I think first" until now! I did try to solve it in my "Am I aspergers' or am I autistic?" video, by concluding that it's like "pictures that become patterns that become words"…but no. It's this: patterns. They have tones, colors, and they move. I then try hard to slow down in order to form a picture in my mind, and I can then match to/find a word for them (by which point I've become overwhelmed and am alleviated to find a word for this as-per-usual, pixel-intense intense thought of mine!)



Scarlit-Rose Ashcraft
aka "Rosie"









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