Now before you refer to my post history and just assume that yes, I am indeed autistic, please hear me out.
Here is what I experience:
1. I am deeply impressionable. Seemingly insignificant moments make lasting impressions on me. I place an inordinate amount of importance on these moments. It can be really insignificant stuff. There’s this one kinda fat girl with a weird face at the local Dunkin Donuts I frequent for coffee. Even though she always looks tired, and she works at Dunkin Donuts, and she’s not very pretty, she is always so polite and has a wonderful attitude. And then I realize she is my teacher. She is teaching me about Christ. She may not know that, but she is. And then I realize that everything we do matters: how we talk to others and our attitudes in interacting with them. I fail at this time and time again, and I feel incredibly guilty for doing so. Then I am often brought to tears thinking about the mercy of Christ, how it’s possible to know him even though I’m not worthy of it.
This all starts by going to get a coffee, mind you.
2. I experience a sensation that I can only describe like this: one stimuli creates a perception of another, additional stimuli. I’ve experienced this my whole life. When I hear a wonderful song, visions and scenes materialize in my head almost like a movie. In this way, to me, songs have always had “characters” in them, almost like a theatrical production would. And I don’t mean the musicians as characters. I mean new characters. They’re just invented on the fly, in my head. I get a similar sensation when I read, except when I read something I really like, I experience a musical sensation rather than a visual one.
I’ve never found a name for such a thing. I’m sure others have experienced something similar but I don’t know what to call it.
I would note that I find these experiences and sensations pleasant. They’ve never stopped me from forming healthy relationships or caused me any kind of social anxiety. I don’t really want these experiences to go away. I’d just like to know where they came from and what the mechanism behind it is.
Here is what I experience:
1. I am deeply impressionable. Seemingly insignificant moments make lasting impressions on me. I place an inordinate amount of importance on these moments. It can be really insignificant stuff. There’s this one kinda fat girl with a weird face at the local Dunkin Donuts I frequent for coffee. Even though she always looks tired, and she works at Dunkin Donuts, and she’s not very pretty, she is always so polite and has a wonderful attitude. And then I realize she is my teacher. She is teaching me about Christ. She may not know that, but she is. And then I realize that everything we do matters: how we talk to others and our attitudes in interacting with them. I fail at this time and time again, and I feel incredibly guilty for doing so. Then I am often brought to tears thinking about the mercy of Christ, how it’s possible to know him even though I’m not worthy of it.
This all starts by going to get a coffee, mind you.
2. I experience a sensation that I can only describe like this: one stimuli creates a perception of another, additional stimuli. I’ve experienced this my whole life. When I hear a wonderful song, visions and scenes materialize in my head almost like a movie. In this way, to me, songs have always had “characters” in them, almost like a theatrical production would. And I don’t mean the musicians as characters. I mean new characters. They’re just invented on the fly, in my head. I get a similar sensation when I read, except when I read something I really like, I experience a musical sensation rather than a visual one.
I’ve never found a name for such a thing. I’m sure others have experienced something similar but I don’t know what to call it.
I would note that I find these experiences and sensations pleasant. They’ve never stopped me from forming healthy relationships or caused me any kind of social anxiety. I don’t really want these experiences to go away. I’d just like to know where they came from and what the mechanism behind it is.
