How do I think?

This is a tricky article, because it is not easy to project the inside of my brain into words. But here goes the best representation in words, how I try to solve any problem or situation as an adult, intelligent person with autism.

I tend to think as a tree, when I encounter a problem in life:

• The roots (observation and assessment) suck up all the aspects of the situation, while observing all the little details. They bring the nutrients towards the end of my tree. The more these roots will feed, the better and more solutions at the end there will be;
• The trunk (forming links and details) will compress and link all those little details together to a complete picture. Before being able to create an entire picture, all details have to be processed and thought about first;
• The branches (the paths to multiple solutions) will present each leaf as a solution. These paths can contain good and bad solutions. The leaves contain each a solution with a possible outcome for me and/or people around me.

I try to pick the best solution from that branch, which will be according my own mantra (my norms and values), affect the least for people around me, or myself. I try to avoid any possible problems for as far as I can, to keep my stress to the lowest.

Mostly these thinking processes go quite well, without any problems for me or anyone else, but under a huge amount of stress and/or under certain medication, my observations and conclusions (roots) could get foggy, which will affect the validity in links and details (trunk) so my paths to a solution (branches) is troubled or incomplete, affecting me or someone else.

That’s where it gets tricky, when you got to rely and trust upon someone else.

Most of the times, a lot of time will go over a thought, before I will form any final conclusions, towards an eventual solution. Either the problem solves itself and was not that important to break my head about, or, the problem has been thought so careful about, that I will try to take the best way possible.