Mild prosopagnosia—I know it’s not total, but it can be hard to tell where the line is because with people I know well, I have an abundance of other cues for determining their identity. Watching a film or TV show, I can keep the characters differentiated just fine, but it’s hard to recognize actors across different performances (with a few exceptions).
I have very strong empathy if you go by the impact of others’ emotions on me, and my ability to detect them; it’s actually quite overwhelming. I’ve learned a few tricks for displaying it socially, but they only work at the best of times. This is probably related to my being autistic (I’m not sure how to describe my functional level—it seems to be very high or very low, but seldom between). I also apply it broadly—even plants routinely provoke an affective response..
I have intense, immersive visions and “spiritual” experiences from time to time; in the past, they gave me a lot of trouble, until I practiced ritual magic (note: I don’t believe in anything literally supernatural) for a while and learned how to channel into comfortable realms of imagery.. This is probably related to me being diagnosed as schizotypal.
I’m a weird hybrid of introvert and extrovert: being without contact or space for long enough seem to be equally-draining and unpleasant experiences. I need plenty of both.
I’m synaesthetic: sound maps to bursts of colour, some sounds map to touch sensations, body language maps to colour/flavor combos that I perceive around the person, and concepts are...complicated. I basically seem to manipulate them as 3-dimensional surfaces of an n-dimensional object. Experiencing logical arguments (which are carried in but not solely determined by the words used) is a matter of trying to trace a continuous line between two points on different faces of the object, an unknown number of permutations away in 3-space. Gaps in the argument, my understanding, or the concepts involved will result in an inability to finish tracing that line. Finally, I can mentally simulate the texture of an object’s surface just by looking at it.
I sometimes lose the ability to communicate verbally, or maintain balance, when stressed, exhausted, drugged or hungry.
I’ve been emotionally polyamorous as far back as I can remember.
My orientation seems to be undefined; I will often experience my attraction to others as specifically same-or-differently gendered after the fact, but it doesn’t appear to be a primary criterion for evaluating initial attraction to others. Some nontrivial portion of my attraction just doesn’t invoke gender at all, though I’m neither blind to it nor disinterested in it. At this point I have no social hangups about pursuing a partner of any gender; I also don’t seem to have any inbuilt limits on how many partners I can feel for; only time and resource constraints seem to affect the size of my concurrent dating pool.
Odd quirk: I can’t see stereograms, and am unaffected by some optical illusions. Despite this, I am very easily hypnotised, and quite susceptible to mind-altering substances.
Very hedonic, very intensely affected by my emotions except when there’s a crisis (I can be overwhelmed with ennui, sadness, anxiety or frustration; it impairs my self-control but not reflectivity, which leads to frequent embarrassment) but seem to transform into a very rational, reflective, and controlled person when disaster strikes. It also kicks in when others are very emotional.
Mild prosopagnosia—I know it’s not total, but it can be hard to tell where the line is because with people I know well, I have an abundance of other cues for determining their identity. Watching a film or TV show, I can keep the characters differentiated just fine, but it’s hard to recognize actors across different performances (with a few exceptions).
I have very strong empathy if you go by the impact of others’ emotions on me, and my ability to detect them; it’s actually quite overwhelming. I’ve learned a few tricks for displaying it socially, but they only work at the best of times. This is probably related to my being autistic (I’m not sure how to describe my functional level—it seems to be very high or very low, but seldom between). I also apply it broadly—even plants routinely provoke an affective response..
I have intense, immersive visions and “spiritual” experiences from time to time; in the past, they gave me a lot of trouble, until I practiced ritual magic (note: I don’t believe in anything literally supernatural) for a while and learned how to channel into comfortable realms of imagery.. This is probably related to me being diagnosed as schizotypal.
I’m a weird hybrid of introvert and extrovert: being without contact or space for long enough seem to be equally-draining and unpleasant experiences. I need plenty of both.
I’m synaesthetic: sound maps to bursts of colour, some sounds map to touch sensations, body language maps to colour/flavor combos that I perceive around the person, and concepts are...complicated. I basically seem to manipulate them as 3-dimensional surfaces of an n-dimensional object. Experiencing logical arguments (which are carried in but not solely determined by the words used) is a matter of trying to trace a continuous line between two points on different faces of the object, an unknown number of permutations away in 3-space. Gaps in the argument, my understanding, or the concepts involved will result in an inability to finish tracing that line. Finally, I can mentally simulate the texture of an object’s surface just by looking at it.
I sometimes lose the ability to communicate verbally, or maintain balance, when stressed, exhausted, drugged or hungry.
I’ve been emotionally polyamorous as far back as I can remember.
My orientation seems to be undefined; I will often experience my attraction to others as specifically same-or-differently gendered after the fact, but it doesn’t appear to be a primary criterion for evaluating initial attraction to others. Some nontrivial portion of my attraction just doesn’t invoke gender at all, though I’m neither blind to it nor disinterested in it. At this point I have no social hangups about pursuing a partner of any gender; I also don’t seem to have any inbuilt limits on how many partners I can feel for; only time and resource constraints seem to affect the size of my concurrent dating pool.
Odd quirk: I can’t see stereograms, and am unaffected by some optical illusions. Despite this, I am very easily hypnotised, and quite susceptible to mind-altering substances.
Very hedonic, very intensely affected by my emotions except when there’s a crisis (I can be overwhelmed with ennui, sadness, anxiety or frustration; it impairs my self-control but not reflectivity, which leads to frequent embarrassment) but seem to transform into a very rational, reflective, and controlled person when disaster strikes. It also kicks in when others are very emotional.