Thinking with images. How do you do it.

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It occured to me about a week ago that my anxiety with talking to somebody on the phone as alot to do with mental imaging. I find it hard to concentrate on a telephone conversation with people that I barely know and even more when I never met the person.

Basically , when I hear someone voice on the phone, his face pop up in my head and I manage to have a decent conversation just like if we were talking face to face. The more I know the person(family or girlfriend) the easier the conversation is. This mean that whenever I get a phone call and that I can't picture the person I'm talking too, my stress level go up and I have alot of trouble following the conversation. I get frustrated when somebody just take for granted that I know who it is mostly because his face doesnt pop up in my head. I came up with a "default" face for people working at support hotlines(Which probably are 75% of my phone calls outside of work.)

Calendar dates have a specific position on a oval shaped calendar that surround me. For exemple 15 February is behind me, 15 july is straight ahead of me, 25th of december is at a 110 degree angle left of me.

What's your ways of thinking with images?

I think visually, but also in patterns/graphs (those are visual as well, but more abstract than a photograph).

I dislike phone calls to the point of almost never speaking on one. I feel blind in them, but I'm not certain why. I don't think my experience is the same as yours. I do not picture the person who I am speaking to on the phone (I also do not look at people very much in face to face conversation). I prefer text communication over phone or in-person.

I like your calendar image. That seems neat.

I have numbers/colors/days I associate with one another. Blue-1-Monday, green-2-Tuesday, and so on. 6-Saturday is pink and 7-Sunday is purple. I decided this on my own though; I'm not synesthetic. And I cannot do savant calendar tricks.

My preferred method of thought seems to be picturing wave functions of events. As an example, I have trouble touching people. I have less trouble with babies. I seem to see wave functions in dissonance when I cannot handle touch. Babies seem to adapt to my personal wave function and create no dissonance.

I create mental pictures of all types of functions and categorize objects and events this way.

I'm a strong visual thinker - which is probably why I became an engineer.

For me, lots of things tend to be processed as three dimensional blocks or shapes that I move around to put into order. Even driving in traffic that's how I think, I often naturally put all the vehicles around me into wire frame models and visualize their probabilities of movement relative to me. Not always though - often enough I turn on the radio and "go with the flow" in traffic.

When working with large amounts of data it's something like floating above an empty football stadium with a file cabinet in every seat location. I am able to zoom in and access the topics I need.

It sounds weird when I try to decribe it but it's how I think. I often find when I am having trouble expressing a concept, I close my eyes and then everything comes out of my mouth precisely the way I want it to. It's like when I free up my brain from having to take in visual inputs, the visalization processesing and concept speaking ramps up by making use of the additional brain capacity available.

i dunno

i just think by pictures instead of words

i cant even begin to explain

With talking on the phone?

Or just in general?

Im visual, but more two diminsional. Which is why I like maps. Love historic atlases. Love to flip through the centuries and watch the countries grow and shrink and devour each other like a bunch of canibalistic ameobas.

I mainly think in words, music and emotions. I usually only think in pictures if I am thinking of a memory.

When I think of any physical object, I get a 3D model in my head that I can "look" at from any angle. I can also get an "exploded" view of that object if I know enough about how it is constructed.

Usually, I don't just get 2D pictures in my head, but more often 3D models of things. If I think of a place, I don't just get a picture of that location, but a scene I can move around in.
I can also "layer" or blend those 3D models of the different states of dynamic objects. It's tough to describe, but I visualize how those things change over time. Kinda like a 4D or even 5D object.

I spend much of my time exercising my visualization skills, attempting to stretch the bounds of what I can already do.

Sounds, I visualize as a frequency separated voiceprint, with vectors pointing to their source, if it is a sound I am currently listening to. There is also a little bit of a tactile bleedover for the texture of a sound.

Words, they are jumbles of 2D symbols that can lead to a confusing landscape of associations. Words are kinda tough for me.

It just happens.

Usually it's when I'm problem solving and I "see," the solution, or component parts or tools/materials/designs/processes etc. Sometimes it's when I'm remembering something or thinking about someone or something. I can't recall any other specific types of situations (ie your phone call story) where I know I think visually. It never occurred to me that other types of scenarios besides problem solving/memories etc cause visual thinking in others. Makes sense, though.

I still have visual thoughts daily, but I think the frequency of them has been decreasing. This is one trait I wouldn't mind keeping forever - it's about the best ASD trait there is.

I only use pictures when I'm processing visual-spatial information, like looking through a remembered location or object, or designing something in three-dimensional space.

I usually use a sort of associative-web type of thinking, where each concept activates several others. They're concepts, not words; words only get tacked on later if I have to communicate those ideas.

Pete, I often think in 4D (and often find life very frustrating because of this, as if I suddenly get smacked into a cross-section and expected to react appropriately), but I cannot begin to fathom what 5D thinking is like. Can you explain it?

I am a very visual thinker also, I don't do well calling people on the phone. It is fine if they call me but I guess generally I have no clue on how to approach people. Guess the best way to explain my thinking would be to describe the way my mind works in general visual/analytical, social, out of the box, and the void/back burner.

1) the visual/analytical thinking part. Everything is a 3D schematic I can just look at things and when I want to I can expand it into its parts and see it like a schematic. It is like that is for everything I see, even people's body's. Granted the schematics are not always complete but it is very easy to do. It is like a foundation.

2) the social, phew this one is like a tornado, I don't understand it. I catch glimpses and parts of it and yes there are some parts I understand but for me it is the same concept as money(money is debt, that loses value, wtf). I know we need it, I understand the visual and analytical parts of it but when I try and understand the why or why what I just said was not appropriate or why laughing right now is not a good thing, or what I am supposed to say and do I am at a loss. Its just a tornado whirling around the foundation.

4) the void/back burner, skipped 3 ill get to it I call it the void because I don't know where in my mind it is or where things i put into it go. Thoughts just appear fully formed out of it, I can take things I have been thinking about and stick them in and they will eventually cook and come back complete with the problems worked out, some would say its my subconscious but I am not so sure that is the right term its a part of my mind that is constantly working on problems I put in and those thoughts that were not my own they just come to be. its like having someone in a backroom that really dose not exist handing me answers to a surprise test I have not studied for.

3) I skipped this one because this is where people get lost, it is a result of the void. "out of the box" I am not sure it should be called that, the farther out of the box you get the more you realize that its just another box. I would say it is farther IN the box than other dare to go, the largest things we can see look more and more like the smallest things we can see, the only difference is scope, scale, and where you the observer is in relation to it. Its all frequency, harmonics at varying energy levels. I march to the beat of my own drum, its music handed to me from that void, that someone in the backroom. the frequency which my brain operates at. It is the part of my thinking that sees the big picture, the part of my brain that tells me that our galaxy is the same as one atom, that our math is flawed as .5+.5=1 is the same as 1+1=2 or that 1 = 0.99999999999...... (no such thing as whole numbers) . Confused why we have moved away from analog and gone to digital, why we have not farther developed trinary computing and stuck with binary.

So there the essence of me stands on this foundation watching that tornado in a void somewhere in some box seeing such large and small things, watching that tornado go, sometimes in the distance sometimes tearing the blocks off the foundation that I am trying to put together.
4D would be a good way to explain it, there are no accidents and coincidence is just connecting the dots. I cant help it most are lost in the tornado looking at some of the most pointless things.

I like your number 3, lamontge (if I am understanding you correctly). I REALLY love this

I may say this in the future to help explain myself.

One of my recurring pleasant daydreams is scoping in and out between the movement of subatomic particles and the movement of galaxies. A beautiful fractal in motion. These thoughts help make quantum physics intuitive. Particularly when these modes of thought are applied to other subjects: The issue is most of the world does not think this way and so the general understanding of others is that you are incorrect.

feel free to use it

it should be "I would say it is farther IN the box than others dare to go, the largest things we can see look more and more like the smallest things we can see, the only difference is scope, scale, and where you the observer is in relation to it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IVqMXPFYwI is a great example of the large to small similarities

A little OT, but I was watching True Blood and was mildly annoyed when everyone was thinking verbally. (The main character is psychic).

My mind is almost non-visual, so I find many of your descriptions fascinating. I think only in abstract patterns.

I do this! It's awesome, I love it. I call it my computer. I just feed in the problem and a while later the answer will pop out. Used to cause me problems on maths exams because the teachers would want to see how I got to an answer, but I wouldn't be able to tell them.

With the visualisation thing.... I don't quite know. It's hard to explain. I have a visual calendar thing but it's like the more I talk about how these things work, and how I see them, the more they sort of slip away?
I am able to design objects in 3d and also to write and see code in my head.

For some reason I can't easily see faces though, which is frustrating. I often have a delay or complete failure in recognising faces, especially if out of context or after a long gap. Particulary weird as I have a partially photographic memory!