“I feel like language limits,” says Annabel, a 29-year-old marketing campaign manager who works in London, and who believes she thinks outside of the ‘textual realm’. “If I was getting out of bed in the morning and thinking that I need to get up and get some coffee,
I see the picture of the coffee cup.” These icons floating above her head plague her until the tasks they illustrate are complete: “When I've made the coffee and drank it, then it stops. It’s almost like a Sim.”There’s more complexity to this way of thinking, though: “It’s not just the next action. That would be really quiet.”
Her head is awash with symbols, icons, and sensations all at once: “I get frustrated when I need to think for specific words for things. If I’m worried about something, I’ll see an exclamation mark pop up in my head, and that’s all the explanation I need.”
This seems like a very literal and direct way of visual processing, things aren't the same for all non-textual thinkers. For Elena, a PhD in linguistics at the University of Texas, her own inner language is a landscape of visual references that she has to strain to convert into the written or spoken word.
It’s a world of associative imagery and metaphor, and is often overwhelmingly visceral – a blend of art, culture, fantasy, and personal experience.