unable to understand without visualizing

i’ve been thinking about how i have a hard time contending with anything unless i can get a visual picture of it in my head first.

unexplained new circumstances, i completely freak out, tense up in my head. it’s like walking on a high wire line, dangling above certain catastrophe, me rapidly assimilating as much data as i can to fill in all the empty space in the picture until i can get the picture in my head. then i can relax. with a lot of stuff, this isn’t a problem, because i do pick things up very rapidly, if i’m able to learn in my own way. teaching myself web design, i absorbed it like a sponge, quickly assimilating and trying out everything i discovered online, and within a month of learning html i’d built a 50 page website, for a client, paid; that website is still up and functioning, and looks darn good. but sometimes i run across topics where it isn’t so easy. for instance, currently me trying to figure out the whole business of selecting, investigating and choosing printers to print your design work, the dynamics of the relationship, what’s expected, what my role is, what their role is, what the details are, the overall patterns, guidelines… i have none of that info/understanding right now, so it’s that very stressed out empty space in my head that’s really… just stressing me out, in a neurotic, can’t be happy way. until i do enough to fill in all those empty spaces, til i can get the pattern in my head, know the rules by which i am to proceed.

when going somewhere, i completely freak out in my head unless i can google map it first, plan my pathway, photographically imprint the entire local map in my head, and have memorized all the various transportation options.

when in highschool, junior year, taking algebra 2 honors, taught by a short, thick accented priest with a greasy, slick-backed balding head… math was my absolute worst subject. it was all about memorizing random formulas, long strings of numbers, and i could never get the point of it, my mind simply couldn’t do it. applying my photographic memory i’d photographically imprint the equations in my head before tests, but i never understood it, not like literature and art. all my other classes i got As, but math was always a struggle to get a b, a-. then one day in physics, junior year, the scrawny physics teacher, new to the school and all excited with the spirit of discovery and learning, wrote out on the big chalkboard an endless changing equation, which started out as the formula for distance, then he changed each variable one by one, switching variables successively until suddenly before us was e=mc squared. at that point a huge light dawned in my head, that all math, any mathematical equation i could find, it was all signifying a relationship, that any number of variables could stand on one side of the equal sign, and some hodge-podge mess on the other side, but the entire equation itself simply equalled “1″, if the supposedly dissimilar elements were linked by an equal sign. the very equal sign meant it was a relationship of variables that balanced itself into an equalized continuum. after that, i took that understanding to my math classes and realized i didn’t need to memorize the various algebraic equations anymore, i could simply extrapolate the answers by seeing each question as part of a larger equalized continuum, i just had to find the balancing point, the key to unlock it. math had always been a stressful, confusing, made no sense to me experience until i could get that picture in my head, then suddenly it was free and easy.

many times i’ve found myself in new cities, or new neighborhoods, or simply looking at something from a perspective i’d never visited before, so all the shapes are at an odd angle and the lighting’s different, and my mind completely breaks down. not recognizing anything visual around me, not knowing the context, the logistical extenuating circumstances, i freak out completely in my head, like panic attack, sheer and utter terror, starting to cry, and i spin around, not recognizing anything around me, and i’m breathing faster and… i can never tell you how i get out of those, but the experience is always awful. i avoid experiences like that nowadays mostly by 1) never going somewhere unless i have the map in my head first and 2) if i do find myself in a confusing, strange situation i close my eyes, breathe very slowly, willing myself to stay calm, finding the other side of the terror. i experienced this a lot when teaching myself to ride my motorcycle last year, i found myself driving all over the city, exploring neighborhoods, and one day i found myself way far out in the bayshore area, strange streets, hills i’d never seen, then the surreal twilight zone panic kicked in and i kept riding, riding, hoping to gods i’d find something familiar but it kept getting stranger and stranger and i’m trying to keep myself calm, to not panic, and by the time i finally was able to get back to a neighborhood i recognized i was so strung out i couldn’t ride anymore the rest of the night.

for me to understand anything i have to quickly assimilate all data about the topic that i can, and i quickly block out that data into categorized segments, laying them out visually, rearranging them in my head, all the while the picture kept live in my mind. when i create the various reports i do whenever i research a new topic, it’s always a very rapid process, me quickly scanning pages, not really registering what i’m reading, but somehow my mind sees the pictures of the words and it knows what they mean and it pastes it into the report with a quick assessment, one after the other, and then 40 minutes later my report is done, and then i get to read it and figure out what the hell i’d discovered. =)

i read books in sentences, paragraphs at a time, can’t understand what i’m reading at all if i go word by word. staring at one word, it suddenly achieves that twilight zone dislocation, instead i have to back up and look at the entire paragraph; i have an enlarged viewfinder going down the page that always has at least 3-4 paragraphs in its scope, and i can only understand a sentence if i’m also reading, at the same time, the sentences in the paragraph afterwards, and then as i’m reading that upcoming sentence i also am beginning the read the sentence after *that* so i can place it in context, and so on. it’s like scaling down a mountainside rapidly making huge strung-together leaps.

i can’t understand anything if it’s written in a font size that’s too large, because i can’t get enough of the content in my viewfinder for me to see the context, instead i’m forced to read word by word, and i can’t understand it anymore, it’s like it’s written in greek.

i also can’t understand anything if it’s broken apart into different page spreads. you can write about something in text form and split the ideas from one odd numbered page to where you have to flip the page to get the rest of the thought. i can never retain that info when that happens, because to get the entire concept, i have to see the entire layout of it in one spread, or else my mind can’t hold onto it.

when conversations are written in verbal form, i can keep track of the conversation, with some degree of difficulty, for 2 or 3 conversational rounds, but after the 4th or 5th i’m completely lost, don’t know who’s speaking or what the conversation is even about anymore. i can only somewhat understand if i go to the end of the conversational thread and picture the entire conversation as one entity, eyes scanning quickly each individual element, tying them together into a bigger picture. even then it’s difficult.

i can’t meditate with my eyes closed, at all. if my eyes are closed it’s only black space, the undersides of my eyelids, and my brain can’t function without visual input. i have to open my eyes and then somehow the meditation will start up again.

i freak out when it’s pitch black around me, suddenly lose my balance, the entire world turns, because i’m suddenly deprived of the visual context, i can’t spatially organize my understanding of my own placement within the context, i’m suddenly out in a directionless void. freaks the hell out of me everytime that happens. i sleep with several night lights on, or the overhead light on completely.

i’m realizing this applies to my difficulty understanding information if it’s given to me in a spoken, auditory manner. speak the words at me, and it’s all noise, i have no idea what’s coming next, i can’t get the conversational context, it’s the words you’re giving me, one by one, and i can’t prepare myself or understand. write it down so i can see the entire picture, then i can understand.

i think part of the reason why i am so bad with money is that… money is in the form of all sorts of denominations. pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, dollar bills, fives, tens, twenties, hundreds, constantly moving, constantly going away, more coming in, how am i to make any sense of it? it’s all decimated, broken apart into countless singular elements that never stay in one place. if i have money in my hand, all i see is that money in my hand, that’s all there is for me. i will spend that money and if i happen to go to my atm and can withdraw more money, then that’s another small reality for me, not tied to anything else. tying it together, though? somehow i can’t. because it’s a continually changing dynamic situation with endlessly changing variables, and i have not yet been able to get an objective picture in my head that’d enable me to manage my cash flow in a more effective, large-sighted manner.

this ability to only consider things in a visual manner has other downsides. when i’m sitting down with you, at a table, and we’re participating in “conversation”, you are speaking words at me but i don’t hear a word you’re saying. all i’m seeing is the physical reality of you, the texture of your clothes, your hair, your skin, angle of limbs, force by which your hands are laying on the table, wetness accumulating in drips down the side of your drink, the lighting around us, my eyes are rapidly cataloging everything around us, getting the picture in my head, canvassing. so oddly enough if i need to listen to somebody as they’re speaking at me i *can’t* look at them, instead i have to look somewhere else and try to convert their words into visual symbols that my mind can understand, my visual code.

my life is a continual mess, disorganized, no driver’s license, no home, hardly any savings, because it’s just me, a singular isolated element on a timeline, and i cannot get an objective look at the timeline, so it’s just one second after the other, me having no context, and continually stranded in the moment, never able to understand that what i do now will affect my reality at a later point. time? time doesn’t exist because i can’t see it. consequences don’t exist because i don’t see them, because they’re not happening yet. i learn lessons in a very hard manner, they have to happen over and over and over and over before the logic will kick in, in my head, and my robot brain will put two and two together and say, “oh. lesson learned. i shall not do this again, if i wish to avoid this happening again.” and i file that visual note away, it’s an image in my head, and only til it’s a cohesive image in my head can i hold onto it and learn from it. i do stupid things over and over and over.

this manifests itself in my relationships as well. all i can see is your physical surface reality, i can’t visualize anything else like your emotions or propriety or anything, those things are all intangible constructs. i have clumsily inferred, by logical deduction, thru years of painful experience, that others communicate via those intangible constructs, like around me, when i’m in a crowd, the air is filled with glowing halo-like symbols, swirling in an ionic breeze, and when people look into each others’ eyes everyones’ eyes are colored differently, and the colors flash, fluorescent red, glowing purple, halo green and the eyes feel the colors and it connects, via some spectral conduit, to these peoples’ fluorescent souls, and lights flicker and buzzers flash and it’s like a pinball game, all exciting and brilliantly colored. and here i sit, and the air around me is empty, and all i see are these people staring at each other, mouths opening and closing, and that’s it. i feel like i’m missing a lot of the mystery, the magic. so in a relationship with you there’s a lot of empty space, because i can’t see the things i’m apparently supposed to see, and i miss out on a lot, every moment with someone is a stranded moment deprived of context, i don’t know what’s coming next or what the context or governing procedures are. if i could lift myself out-of-body and out-of-timeline, then i can see an entire relationship in one context, i can see the curving sine-wave dynamics of the situation, my pattern-based mind will analyze the flow and the light will click on in my mind, and i’ll say “oh, now i understand, now i see the overall dynamics, and know what my role is expected to be, and what my responses should be.” but unfortunately i am stuck in this body and this timeline.

how can i understand what you’re doing or are about to do if i haven’t been given the rules?

i find it interesting that one can think that one’s dysfunctions are a matter of bad behavior, my being endlessly distracted when people are talking to me, not able to focus, constantly falling behind on my bills, etc. someone might look at me and say, “oh. immature. need to grow up.” but is that really it? have you considered that instead it may simply be how my mind is fashioned? i do try, continually, to self-improve, but sometimes basic nature is basic nature. the trick is figuring out which is which.