How I process things (LONG!)

[wispfox]

Attempting to explain to people how I process things has been interesting, so now I share.

How I process input, and not normal, daily life things, is less of a unusual thing, I think. But it _does_ require me to remember to have time on my own for a while, or my brain will start refusing to let me sleep until I take the time to process on things.

Which, considering that I process much less well when tired, is a _bad_ spiral to get into! I think it's what tends to be going on when I feel like I've been too social, and get all ansty about it. And, the more non-daily life stuff going on, the more rapidly I will need time to process. I can hold it off, but at a cost.

In effect, really processing new input requires me to have time to sift through all the non-daily life things that have happened since the last time I did this, and detemine what bits are not relevant to anything. Daily life things, I appear to have enough experience with to be able to mostly do the sifting while living through it.

As well, verbal communication between me and another person still entails a certain amount of processing, but basically has no good communication between my core self and my surface level/fully conscious self, unless I can take necessary time to do so. Doing so slows down my verbal communication speed a _lot_, though. So I tend only to be willing to do this with people I know pretty well, and who know what I'm doing when I suddenly go silent.

It's not _just_ finding words, it's also testing the reaction of my core self to whatever it is that I'm trying to reply to (will go into this more later). It's a large part of why I so badly need to get important things verbalized - this solidifies them at the more surface level, and makes them more accessable to me without large amounts of time/effort. But, it does take a while for newly verbalized things to get the 'right' words, and then even longer for those 'right' words to really sink into my surface self and become mostly automatic access.

After I'm done sifting, I need to ponder what's left, and see if there is anything in there that changes anything directly relating to me, or which my brain very much wants me to _do_ something about.

Finally, I need to try to integrate into my deep down, probably mostly unconscious, thought processes (made up mostly of emotions and concepts) whatever bits and pieces feel like they fit somewhere, and ditch what's left.

Not completely ditch - it's probably in my memory somewhere, but my memory for things I did not process on, or for things that I discarded as irrelevant is _much_ worse than for other things. Probably because I _must_ connect things to what is already in my head in order to access them later.


When I'm trying to get concepts/emotions (I'm not completely sure these are different things in my head. I wonder if it would help things for me to think of it all as concept?) out of my core self into words, I first need to realize that there _is_ something in there that needs words. This can take a while, depending on the urgency of the concept, and on available processing time/energy.

Then, I must take a stab at finding words which even _vaguely_ approach what I'm trying to verbalize. The next fairly large amount of time is taken up with me taking the phrase, or phrases, I'm trying to use to describe the concept, and comparing them with the original concept, to see how well they resonate. Perhaps, to see how true to the original idea they feel. I never expect words to be _exactly_ true to a concept, but I can eventually get to a point where they feel as close as I will get.

Each time I test for accuracy, I need to try a different - sometimes seemingly _wildly_ different - set of words or phrases. This is basically me spiraling in on the 'right' set of words I want. And can take a while.

Once I think I'm close enough, the next requirement is for me to be able to noodle at someone about the concept in question, using some of the sets of words which feels close enough. This is partly to gague the reaction of the other person or people, because this gives me a decent sense of how close to the concept I've gotten, or if I'm still missing important pieces. This need is also partly to determine if the words I've used do, at least, manage to convey what I want them to, regardless if it is the full concept yet, or not.

Noodling at people is _much_ more useful to me if I can do it in-person, because I can gague reaction better, and because I can often get a general sense of what concept the words in question are giving the other person.

However, at least in the beginning, I suspect that noodling in written form is more useful to me, because it forces me to attempt to phrase things and organize things in a way someone else can understand them. And I'm _very_ bad at trying to do this aloud when I'm still really really really not sure how well I'm communicating the concept in question. This may be why I like LJ so very much. It's less directed, so it works better for the initial stages of my noodling. Later stages seems to need specific people, and/or in-person conversations, more.

Because of all of this, I tend to need to remember to _say_ that I'm noodling (or similar). Otherwise, something that I say right now about a concept I'm still trying to verbalize may not be the entirety of the concept, and may later appear as if I completely changed my mind on the topic in question, as I add more pieces to the puzzle. This can, as one might imagine, be a problem. Also, me noodling entails a _lot_ of words, as I attempt to get closer to the 'right' ones, spiralingly.

Once I've gotten sufficiently close to the 'right' words for a concept, a) there are far fewer words involved, b) I can start integrating that concept into my more surface/conscious/extoverted/other-people-interacting self. This _will_ still entail some amount of futzing with the words used, as I fit it into my surface self, and as I continue to narrow in on the concept in question. But, this is also when it starts to solidify, and feel much less vague.

When verbalizations of concepts have truly _become_ part of my surface self, I tend to rarely think of them, unless externally triggered. And, at that point, talking about such concepts is more in terms of something simply _being_, rather than in trying to figure out what it _is_. As well, because they have become myself, I no longer worry that I will forget them when they are necessary, or that I will lose the words for them, or something. They simply _are_.

However, that takes a while, and sometimes I forget, or revert to either an earlier behavior which I was trying to rewire with said concept, or to wherever I was before I was struck by some revelation on how I work. How I _am_, I guess. So it's quite a lot of work. But I would rather do the work a little bit at a time, and slowly/carefully than have it sneak up and bite me. This is why I tend to try _so_ very hard to be decently aware of my current mental state, and to find time to process. I _need_ to!

And, in case anyone was wondering, yes, I _am_ still noodling on how I process things. ;) (with the amount of words involved, that may have been stating the obvious!)

Also - because of the amount of effort I put into trying to word things, I can get _really_ frustrated if I have to repeat them again not long after having done so. Partly because I tend to lose the words while still noodling, as well.