This post is by Cherish by my daughter ❤️
I realize that writing is probably in my future too. I know because when you’re being your most honest self, I see a lot of my thought processes there. I do write a lot, but mostly in monologue, when I’m writing to my friends or journaling.
You know about the two kinds of thinkers, right? Or rather, the spectrum of thinking styles, left to right brain, with a range in between. But at the two extremes are two very different experiences of thought:
On one end: The Verbal/Analytical Thinker
These are internal monologue thinkers. They have a voice in their head that they talk with, like an ongoing conversation, planning dialogue or playing out scenarios. They might think five steps ahead, with responses prepared for potential responses, like a boardroom meeting playing out in their mind. They “talk” their thoughts through, and their inner world is shaped by language. These thinkers often plan before speaking and naturally structure their thoughts into sentences before the words leave their mouths. It’s a very logical, word-based approach to processing.
On the other end: The Visual/Emotional Thinker
These people don’t think in words. They don’t have a voice narrating in their heads. Instead, thoughts come as feelings, images, or memories. It’s harder for them to immediately express a thought if they don’t first understand the feeling behind it. So, they often speak in metaphors, because metaphors translate emotions better than words alone. Their minds are like vivid dreamscapes, where meaning is felt before it’s described. They may forget things easily if there isn’t a visual “anchor” tied to the thought. Their memory is nonlinear, associative. Their thoughts are not verbal, they are impressionistic, emotional. They process their ideas by externalizing: writing, speaking aloud, making art. Talking to themselves out loud or writing something down is how they “see” their thoughts.
I remember when I learned about this because I married someone with an internal monologue, and I’m on the other extreme. And it made a lot of things make sense and click:
- Like why I forget things so easily if I don’t have a visual anchor for my thought.
- Why I can feel anxious about something but not know why, because I “saw” something in my mind, but I’m not seeing it anymore. The image is gone, but the feeling remains.
- Why I’ve always been frequently complimented on my ability to convey thoughts and beliefs through metaphor, because I’ve always been translating my entire life.
- Because metaphors are how I am understood.
- Why there is so much emotion in my pictures, because pictures are my thoughts.
- Why I have to be careful what imagery I consume, because it stays vividly with me.
- Why, when I’m triggered, my entire mind can go blank and I feel like I have nothing to say, because fear and trauma can wipe the entire chalkboard clean, like snuffing a candle.
It helped me a lot, especially when it comes to overthinking. Because overthinking, for me, means over feeling. Feeling too many emotions at one time.
That’s why watching something captivating, or going outside when I need to “clear my head,” helps. Activating all my senses with nature, the breeze, the sun, the smell of grass. Even as I type all this, I can’t type without the images in my head. I saw a sharp close-up of a dew-tipped blade of grass with a sunrise blurred in the background.
When there’s a lot to see around me that I love, like nature, it makes my mind quiet. Because it feels like my thoughts are outside of my head. Like my thoughts are one with the outside. Because what’s inside is what is outside.
Or like just now, I had to tab over to something, check it, then come back and realize I didn’t know what I was saying at all. I had to reread everything just to grab my reel of thought again.
That’s why writing is so much easier for voicing my most complex emotions, because I can externally see how I got to where I am in my words. Because I haven’t trained myself long enough to talk in the way I think. I’m constantly creating anchors, “point to the chair mentally, remember to look at the chair, the chair symbolizes this thought we were going to say.” Like I’m constantly making mnemonics on demand just to remember my own points, because if I’m not visualizing them, I will lose them.
I start to type “how do I…” and I close my eyes to try to finish the sentence in my mind, to really hear it. But in my mind, all I hear is:
“How do I… how do… how… how owowoow…”
And here the image comes in, to bridge the gap in understanding and convey the thought I don’t have words for.
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Video: [Alice in Wonderland – Brush Dog Scene]
In this scene from Alice in Wonderland, Alice is walking a curious path when a dog made of a broom comes along and sweeps away the trail behind her, erasing it as she goes.
This imagery is incredibly symbolic of how it feels for me to lose a thought. I can be mid-sentence in my own head, and the moment I look away or get distracted, the path vanishes. It’s not just “forgetting,” it’s like the thought never existed because the image that anchored it was wiped clean. That brush dog is the interruption, the trauma, the detour of life, brushing away my mental chalk lines before I even reach the end of the path. And then I’m left standing still, anxious, knowing I was going somewhere, but having no idea where.
Running Down Vimy 