You describe it very well – it really is like language is something that we apply to the pictorial representations to enable communication.

I too was surprised to discover that not everyone thought about things in the way I did. But then again, we only have our own experience to go on, as people don’t tend to express how they think about things very often, so why would we have had cause to think we were unusual?

I’m sure that plenty of people without ASDs have visual thoughts too, but these days I’ve accepted that it isn’t the norm. Maybe it goes a good deal of the way towards explaining why I find it difficult to turn a thought into verbalised idea – sometimes the correct words simply don’t exist.

Interesting isn’t it? You’re not sure what the correct mannerism to use is, and you don’t feel like you have a natural response, so you borrow someone elses. I do this a lot.

I hope the trip to the GP goes better for you this time. Let us know how you get on.

Absolutely – I’ve had people look at me like I’m very odd on many occasions when I resort to telling a story to explain myself. It makes perfect sense to me, but clearly not to them.

It does work some of the time where a conventional description has failed, and as I said in the article, the allegorical story helps me make sense of things too, so it’s certainly useful from that point of view.

What really interests me about this is the visual thinking you refer to. I was reading Tony Attwood’s The Complete Guide to Asperger’s over the weekend and I was surprised to read that “People with Asperger’s syndrome have a different way of thinking, sometimes thinking in pictures rather than words.”

What surprises me is not that some people are visual thinkers, rather it is the implication that most people (particularly NTs) don’t think in pictures but in words. Perhaps that should have been obvious to me but although I’ve always been conscious of thinking in a very visual way myself I hadn’t actually thought that everybody else must be thinking in words… It appeared obvious to me that the visual is innate and more immediate and that language is something that we then apply to the visual image to enable communication.

I thought I was on a slightly different wavelength to other people but perhaps I hadn’t appreciated just how different that might be.

Jake

I do have trouble explaining things though. Will be going to GP again, this time with an advocate.

I don’t think I use these as a response to anything, it feels like the natural way to me.

Have you tried the use of metaphor or allegorical stories? I’m sure my use of them started almost by accident, but they really do help, at least some of the time. And like I said, when I can, I resort to email etc., to get my point across.

I think it’s a touch rash to write off anyone ever knowing you fully. It’s true, I think, that neurotypical people will never understand fully the way you work (and likewise you won’t fully understand them), but whose to say that you won’t find a close friend in another person on the spectrum, who in time really does fully understand you? I see no reason at all why that couldn’t happen.

James