Ok, it's time for me to be brave and introduce myself...

[Skylark]

Hi Cosmophylla! I'm also new here and self-diagnosed. I'm a visual thinker too but not in the very precise way that you describe. I'm in the UK but your Japanese words leapt out at me - I love Japan! Trying on and off to teach myself Japanese and was lucky enough to visit there a few years ago.

 

[Elemental]

Hi, I've been hanging around AC for a few days now and have made a few posts but every time I have thought about starting my own intro thread I got really nervous and run in the other direction. But I feel it's right to introduce myself, so I'm forcing myself to face my fear.

I diagnosed myself in January this year after decades of knowing I'm different and not really understanding why. Misdiagnoses and misunderstandings, often from not really being able to explain myself or not quite having the insight at that time. I've always been proud to be a "freak", have always shunned following all the other sheep, and yet at the same time I crave acceptance and desperately need to be loved.

I live in Australia with my husband and our two kids, at least one of whom we suspect is also an Aspie. Having kids has been such a challenge for me, and my kids have led me to finally discovering ASD as the explanation behind my lifelong struggles. Every day is a battle to stay calm and my newly purchased noise reducing ear muffs are helping me get through the crazy evening hours when the kids go bezerk! I'm in the process of seeking a professional diagnosis. I NEED to know for sure.

Things I don't like: bright lights, loud noise, screaming and jumping kids (my son jumps and I'm pretty sure he's stimming), rain on my car when I'm driving, lies, injustice, exploitation, environmental vandalism, the current Australian Government (under Tony Abbott... And I thought John Howard was embarrassing!), rule breaking/rule breakers, phone calls, meeting people, watching or playing sport, cockroaches, the self conscious feeling I get when trying to talk to someone while looking in their eyes... And more...

Things I like: plants (especially knowing about indigenous plants), gardening, self-sufficiency, birdwatching, painting, sewing, making things, word puzzles, brain teasers, trustworthiness, honesty, transparent things (coloured glass, gems, marbles, etc.), high end board games (Agricola, Elder Sign, etc. I love them to play but also to feel all those beautiful components in my hands), science, cooking and eating good food, murder mysteries, reading (non fiction mostly, but also children's and young adult fantasy fiction), learning, learning, learning... and more...

A few things I'd like to swap notes with others on:

- I am a visual thinker. I see time as a kind of line of boxes from left (past) to right (future) with the boxes as you would see on a calendar representing each day. The background is dark and hazy and the boxes have a lighter border. I can scroll through the days a bit like swiping left and right on a tablet. I've never found another person who "sees" time like this. When I've tried to describe it people look at me all funny! Is this familiar to anyone here? I'd love to find someone who thinks like me!

- Similarly to above, I see numbers in a line from left (low) to right (high) and although I can do maths the way I was taught at school my instinct is to do it by a combination of feeling/gut instinct and by visualising the line and taking the problem and using blocks of colour to halve, double, etc. for example, 210 divided by 3 can easily be worked out (21/3=7 x10=70...) but my first instinct is to see the number line and shade the block from 0 to 210, then kind of zoom out and use my eyes to visually divide it into three sections, then zoom back in to the line and see where the first section ends and look at what the number is there. So the single block from 0 to 210 is divided into three blocks, the higher two of which I just ignore because my answer is going to be in the first section. I know this is completely weird but there you have it. I always thought this was normal but it's only in the last year that I've learnt that other people do NOT see this stuff in their heads!

- I am a colour-grapheme synaesthete and am interested in others' experience of this. I'm curious as to whether synaesthetes are all visual thinkers, or whether only colour-grapheme synaesthesia is related to or even a result of visual thinking, or something else.

If this is the wrong place to put these questions I'll start threads once I've found the right place!


Ok this is probably unacceptably long for an intro post... I hope everyone can forgive me! So far I am loving that I found AC. Everyone is so supportive and accepting. It's nice to find somewhere that I can reveal my secret maths style and not worry that I'll be rejected.

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu! (Please treat me favourably)

P.S. My username Cosmophylla is from Eucalyptus cosmophylla, the cup gum, one of my favourite local eucalypts. Cosmo + phylla = beautiful leaves. (coz MOFF illa)

Hi, I thought yours was an excellent post Welcome here Cosmophylla
So many familiar things I read on here about AS - ASD are posted by our members in a way that is so much more articulate than anything I think I could hope to write like that; i'm admiring as!!

I always had symbol-images in my head signifying different days of the week & I share with you a love of transparent materials like colored glass. I have the same types of noise & light aversions; I get frequent migraine-induced visual disturbances, like little zig-zags composed of prism-type light spectrum.

I <3 Central, it's a great place to be informed & entertained + people vent when they need to, too so it's all round good!

 

[Skylark]

I've had those zig-zag migraine auras too! I call mine 'Aztec patterns!'

 

[Cosmophylla]

Thank you Skylark and Elemental!

I used to get a lot of cluster headaches and migraines, but I've not had an aura or other visual disturbance with them, just typical photophobia. Since changing my diet a year ago I've had zero migraines and the few headaches I get now are always caused by staring at my tablet too long, haha. I think sugar was the culprit in my case, so no sugar for me these days. What??? No cake??? No problem, as I can't eat wheat or dairy either...so chocolate and cake are off the menu anyway. (I do make my own chocolate sometimes... Not quite the same but much healthier!)

 

[Cosmophylla]

Hi Cosmophylla! I'm also new here and self-diagnosed. I'm a visual thinker too but not in the very precise way that you describe. I'm in the UK but your Japanese words leapt out at me - I love Japan! Trying on and off to teach myself Japanese and was lucky enough to visit there a few years ago.

I lived in various parts of Tokyo for eight years and came back to Australia in 2006. Japan is a strange place of contrasts and dichotomies. Such gorgeous traditional artwork and cultural behaviours (tea ceremony, dance, festivals, etc.) contrasted with awful sexism, racism, and more. The bureaucracy is infuriating! And it's very insular... I really felt as though I was in a bubble. (But I feel that in Australia a bit, too. For better or worse this is a largely "western" country but Oz is very isolated from its western cousins. Yet many white people here seem to treat Australia like it should be for "westerners" only... but that's for another discussion) I married a Japanese guy when I was there and thanks to him I was able to experience some things most westerners don't. (Good and bad, I suppose!) He's a musician and I got to meet and become friends with bands I was already a fan off, which was great. Our marriage didn't work out, though. Leaving my friends and my home was hard, especially under the circumstances of a marriage breakup, but the culture shock on coming back to Australia was the worst... It lasted at least two years and even now there are aspects of the Japanese culture that won't rub off. I've taught my family some daily expressions so we say goodbye in the morning in Nihongo (ittekimasu/itterasshai), etc. I miss the food sooooooooo much... I don't miss all the people, the stink everywhere, the noise, the pollution and the grime that came from under my fingernails every day, the lack of a concept of personal space, the cockroaches, the consumer culture, the layers and layers of plastic wrapping on everything, the leering men and the gropers on the trains... No wonder I was so stressed there, haha!

As for the language, I learnt Japanese by osmosis... I think I have an ability to pick up languages easily. I don't really know how I did it, but I will say that immersion is key to really getting your fluency up. These days I hardly have an opportunity to speak Nihongo... Except to my son who is studying it at school, and to his sensei. But for some reason it is still in there... It hasn't all fallen out yet, thankfully!

 

[Skylark]

I was only there for ten days and I tend to block out the negative stuff. I've always been really sensitive, cannot bear to watch the news or read papers. Some things filter through still.

I agree that immersion is key to learning a language. Nihongo o benkyou shimasu totemo yukuri kara (I hope you understand! My learning is rather incomplete). Oh, I miss the food too!!

Mata ne

 

[Cosmophylla]

I was only there for ten days and I tend to block out the negative stuff. I've always been really sensitive, cannot bear to watch the news or read papers. Some things filter through still.

I agree that immersion is key to learning a language. Nihongo o benkyou shimasu totemo yukuri kara (I hope you understand! My learning is rather incomplete). Oh, I miss the food too!!

Mata ne

A friendly pointer:「日本語をとてもゆっくりで勉強します。」Nihongo wo totemo yukkuri de benkyou shimasu. The sentence is in standard formal style so the verb comes last.

頑張ってね！（＾＿＾）☆ (ganbatte ne)

 

[Datura]

I used to do math using floating imaginary blue globules. It was hard to keep track of them though, so the method wasn't very effective.

 

[Skylark]

Thankyou, Cosmophylla! I really appreciate the lesson

All this talk of visual thinking...does that equate to 'fluid intelligence' rather than 'crystal intelligence' then? I've always felt that I think slightly differently to others, visualise concepts with the help of shapes (I use spirals alot) and am interested in colour correspondances, numerology and the like.

 

[Cosmophylla]

I used to do math using floating imaginary blue globules. It was hard to keep track of them though, so the method wasn't very effective.

That's cool. Yes, I find it can be ineffective when it comes to larger numbers.

By the way, what's your favourite cephalopod? They are pretty amazing, huh!!! so intelligent... and those colours... Wow!

 

[Cosmophylla]

All this talk of visual thinking...does that equate to 'fluid intelligence' rather than 'crystal intelligence' then?

I suppose it is. The style of maths taught in school has become my crystallised knowledge, while my strange number line is fluid... I never thought of it as that before but it is based on instinct, after all...

 

[Datura]

That's cool. Yes, I find it can be ineffective when it comes to larger numbers.

By the way, what's your favourite cephalopod? They are pretty amazing, huh!!! so intelligent... and those colours... Wow!

The flamboyant cuttlefish is my favorite. I like how it eschews typical behaviors. You would expect a small, soft bodied creature to rely on speed and/or camouflage to avoid predation. The flamboyant cuttle, however, struts along the ocean floor flashing bright colours. It's like the poster child for confidence, and all because it's flesh is potently toxic.
But I suppose the real reason they intrigue me so is I really hope that some day cephalopods colonize land, and the flamboyant cuttlefish have the best head start.

Then again; I could just as easily go with octopus vulgaris or the mimic octopus.

 

[Cosmophylla]

The flamboyant cuttlefish is my favorite. I like how it eschews typical behaviors. You would expect a small, soft bodied creature to rely on speed and/or camouflage to avoid predation. The flamboyant cuttle, however, struts along the ocean floor flashing bright colours. It's like the poster child for confidence, and all because it's flesh is potently toxic.
But I suppose the real reason they intrigue me so is I really hope that some day cephalopods colonize land, and the flamboyant cuttlefish have the best head start.

Then again; I could just as easily go with octopus vulgaris or the mimic octopus.

The mimic octopus is brilliant... I wonder if it's an Aspie, too, seeing as a lot if us are mimics.

I love cuttlefish. They are fascinatingly beautiful and I've always wanted to see one in the wild. We have the lovely Sepia apama off our beaches. At least it's not toxic like the flamboyant! And quite a bit bigger, too, hehe. Cuttlefish skin/flesh looks like velvet.

This reminds me of an amazing experience I had 3 years ago. I was sitting on a paddleboard taking a breather after paddling along a fringing reef (not tropical; I'm in southern Oz) when suddenly an enormous octopus went zooming past a couple of metres beneath me. It was so great!!! It must have been on a mission because it was in an awful hurry. I couldn't believe how big it was.

 

[camerartus]

Glad you are here. Loved reading your introduction. I'm a NT (neuro typical = non-aspie). This is a great place to chat on this subject.

 

[Cosmophylla]

Glad you are here. Loved reading your introduction. I'm a NT (neuro typical = non-aspie). This is a great place to chat on this subject.

Thanks, cameratus.

 

[Cosmophylla]

The flamboyant cuttlefish is my favorite. I like how it eschews typical behaviors. You would expect a small, soft bodied creature to rely on speed and/or camouflage to avoid predation. The flamboyant cuttle, however, struts along the ocean floor flashing bright colours. It's like the poster child for confidence, and all because it's flesh is potently toxic.
But I suppose the real reason they intrigue me so is I really hope that some day cephalopods colonize land, and the flamboyant cuttlefish have the best head start.

Then again; I could just as easily go with octopus vulgaris or the mimic octopus.

I forgot to show you this, too. I made it for my son when he was a baby. It has gone pretty squishy now.

 

[Datura]

I love the squid Cosmophyla. You have quite a talent for knitting.

Reminds me of my parents recent return from a vacation. While away they visited and aquarium, and knowing my inclinations picked up a lovely plush octopus for me. I currently have it resting on top of a giant conch shell. All of this, despite living nowhere near an ocean.

As for flamboyant cuttlefish, they are actually safe to handle, so long as you don't eat them. The poison is found in their flesh.

 

[Cosmophylla]

As for flamboyant cuttlefish, they are actually safe to handle, so long as you don't eat them. The poison is found in their flesh.

That's good...they wouldn't make much of a meal judging from the pictures I've seen... They look pretty small. They're as toxic as a blue ringed octopus, right? We get those here in South Oz.

 

[Datura]

That's good...they wouldn't make much of a meal judging from the pictures I've seen... They look pretty small. They're as toxic as a blue ringed octopus, right? We get those here in South Oz.

Yes, but the blue ring octopus carries it's venom in it's bite, so it is best to steer clear of them.

 

[Cosmophylla]

Yes, but the blue ring octopus carries it's venom in it's bite, so it is best to steer clear of them.

Yep, kids have "don't step in rock pools, don't put your hand where you can't see" drummed into them. With all the venomous fauna in Oz you'd think we'd all have died by now. I did a venomous animals awareness workshop earlier this year (I do bushcare - weeding and re vegetating bushland) but it didn't cover aquatic animals at all. Mostly invertebrates and snakes, which is what we encounter most here.