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2:09am July 7, 2014
Anonymous asked: Could you explain what it's like to be a "sensory" person? Like when you think about things to you more process them as sounds, feelings, sensations, etc., rather than in words?

It’s very hard to explain, because it takes place so far outside of the realm of words.

But basically when I experience the world, I experience it in sensory and pre-sensory experiences.  Even when I experience, say, the visual information in a room.  My brain doesn’t conceptualize it the way most people’s brains do.  There’s no words for the things around me.  There’s not even any concepts for the things around me.  It takes effort to get to that point.

What I see instead is colors, visual textures, and shapes.  I can’t always differentiate where one object ends and another begins.  But I do see patterns – not logic-based patterns, but sensory-based patterns – between different sensory experiences and those form what I do in place of conceptualizing things.

If you’re interested in more, Donna Williams wrote a book called Autism and Sensing: The Unlost Instinct.  For all that I disagree with some of the stranger conclusions she comes to, it’s still the only book out there that accurately describes what it’s like to be a highly sensing person in a world that is largely interpretive.  Obviously I’m able to switch into interpretive mode – not always, but sometimes – or I wouldn’t be writing this.  But sensing has been my dominant mode of thinking since early childhood, when I didn’t even have interpretive thought to fall back on.  And some of what I dealt with is what I’d call pre-sensory information, but I don’t know how to describe that at all, it’s worse than trying to describe sensing itself.

So you could do worse than read Donna Williams on the topic of sensing.  Her book is in the Kindle store.  If you’re that interested.

Notes:
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