I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, and just realized how weird it is, after trying to explain it out loud to a friend who’s also neurodivergent.
I’m curious to know if it’s a common experience with other neurodivergent individuals.
My mind has three different depths:
- a very conscious one, capable of conjuring images and sounds from the void, capable of manipulating at will said images, morph them, move them… I can think « words » and have them be real in my mind
- a conscious but closed one: I can put words in it but without acting on them, only watching them. This one is the weirdest of all. There is a difference for me when I think about « dog » and just « look at the idea of a dog ». There are some things I don’t want to consciously think about (like things that makes me sad or depressed) so instead of thinking about them I’ll put them in this zone. They exist but it’s very different from having the words out loud in my mind, as if I was thinking inside my own mind. It’s like I’m in a museum watching thoughts behind plexiglass
- the dark zone, where I put things I don’t want to think about at all, things I want to forget. It’s literally a foggy dark place made of some kind of fluid darkness with no thoughts shining in it, I have to consciously want and try to pull things from it
A while ago, I read somewhere that the mere thing of being able to conjure images was « rare », like only 25% of people on earth can do it. Somehow I linked this idea to people being neurodivergent but I have no proof or source and I may just have made things up in my sleep or under the shower.
TL;DR: how does your mind works? Mine is weird
As a neurodivergent who has aphantasia and can’t visualize, not like this at all. For me it’s more like, what I need is there when I need it (usually), not in a visual sense but a conceptual sense.