I get flooded with negative past conversations during stress. Every stupid, embarrassing, cringe-worthy thing I said comes back to me. The rest of the time, the past hardly registers. I couldn't recall most of this stuff if I tried, but under stress, I get flooded by it. This of course stresses me out further, which amplifies the flooding, ... --> disaster.
something similar happens to me - but not exactly the same. my memory is also sketchy at best; i tend to remember only separate scenes that were meaningful and/or emotionally charged - and only the visual information, without any conversations or other "sound effects" being included). but after i have a conversation with a friend, for the first few hours or days while i do remember it, i tend to review it almost obsessively. my thinking is visual, so it feels like having a couple of vcr tapes in my head that i run, rewind and fast-forward at will - one with the actual conversation and another with a hypothetical conversation that contains all the things i should have said, but did not. i can fixate on each word i feel was embarrassing, stupid or just out of sync with whoever i was talking to, which makes me uncomfortable. sometimes i deliberately forbid myself to review any recent conversations to avoid this. then, over a few days, the memory starts to fade - the auditory detail goes first, then the visuals start to blur as well, until the whole scene turns into a single static image of "what that day was like". at that point, the full memory is gone permanently and never returns, regardless of the amount of stress i may be under.
i also review possible conversations in a similar manner. before meeting a friend to whom i am very close and/or whom i haven't seen for several months - which usually produces a feeling that is anxious, warm and thrilling at once - i may imagine the hypothetical way our conversation might go, especially the things i am going to tell him or her, to prepare myself. it also feels like a vcr tape, complete with sound.
Sometimes I imagine that I'm that in an alternate universe or something and everything
around me looks different--suddenly the McDonalds I'm sitting in looks like a futuristic cafe on the edge of a cliff on an alien planet.
That sounds about right. Imagining alternate realities is something I have to make a conscious effort to do, whereas reviewing past conversations comes automatically when I'm under stress.
SJ's live in the past and NJ's in the future/realm of distinct possibilities (as distinguished from the shallow, mostly grounded possibilities of Ne (e.g. a wonderland that's realistic in many ways but has rainbow colors or schnoz-berries or something.).)
i do that too. there are often moments when i will be watching something and thinking, what if i perceived the world in a radically different manner - supposing that i had severe sensory integration/processing issues, or my senses were amplified to a point where it would be difficult to function, or i was an alien who can exist simultaneously in several dimensions - how would i see this object? or, how would one of my and my co-author's characters see it? of course, i have to do a lot of this for the sake of our writing, but even if i didn't, i would still do this just for fun. it is always refreshing to try and see my surroundings from a different perspective.
just the other day, i was re-reading donna williams' "nobody nowhere" and i found myself empathizing with her to such an extent that, as well as imagining the things she was describing (like eating flowers or dirt because she wanted to make them part of herself in a direct physical sense, or, say, the doll's house she saw as a blur of colored blobs that just did not connect into a whole) i would look at my own surroundings and try to see them as she might have done.
on the other hand - i could never imagine a fully foreign landscape, whether in a fantastic world or not. when i have to do this, i end up remembering one i had seen before and changing some elements of it in my mind.
once i had to describe a scene where an alien is walking across a desert terrain. i took the image of a place i and my grandfather used to go to for walks - a large meadow between two forested hills, one much steeper and taller than the other - turned it into a reddish desert in my imagination, and settled for that. another time, i happened to turn on the tv while thinking about a fighting scene taking place in the hills. as it happened, a movie was being shown where some soldiers were fighting on a long narrow hill top covered in trees. i instantly imagined my scene occurring on a similar hill top, though with the soldiers, the soil and the trees being different (in ways that were consistent with my and my co-author's universe).
i have no idea why this is, or why i have this problem only with large, panoramic landscapes. smaller visual detail or other "technical" elements of the story, such as the culture of alien races or visual symbolism, are always fine.
not sure what this may say about my possible S/N preference either.
...that is one screwed up looking penis. It doesnt even have a head.
