Are you afraid to use your imagination?

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Are you afraid to use your imagination and express it around other NT's for fear of ridicule and embarrassment? Do you think that the reason NT's think we don't have an imagination is because we are afraid to express it for said reasons? I am bringing this last question up because of the fact that NT's think we don't have empathy. Which of course, is false. But NT's draw to that conclusion because we can't express it, not because we don't have it. I just wonder if the same conclusion applies to are imaginations as well?

Yes, I think that's quite possible. It might also be a self-esteem issue in a sense. I always feel my ideas are somehow inferior to others'. You also need to be skilled in convincing/persuading/dominating other people for your imagination/ideas to be accepted/treated seriously.

Afraid to use imagination? Not at all. Afraid to express it for fear of ridicule and embarrassment? Absolutely. It seems to me that started around second-third grade. Experience is a harsh teacher.


That's a very interesting idea. I always thought the imagination thing was about social imagination. I can't imagine what is going on in other people's heads in the required way, or how their perspective differs from mine. But imagination in general? Is that really perceived as a core feature of autism???

As far as I know, there is no mention of imagination in the diagnostic criteria.

There is a mention in crierion A.3 of "difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends" but this is not in the context of the idea of limitations of imagination, but rather "deficits in developing, maintaining, and understand relationships" so it would be quite wrong to generalize from that to the idea that deficits in imagination in general are a feature of autism.

Many autistic people who have achieved some notable success have done so in fields requiring imaginative, creative activity, such as engineering, computer programming, architecture, etc. These people have successfully imagined complex new things and then brought them into reality. Temple Grandin's is just one example of such people. Their successes should stand as powerful arguments against the idea that lack of imagination outside the social realm is an issue for autistic people in general.

On the contrary, I think NTs have limited/lesser imagination and empathy compared to aspies. Maybe, because NTs have lesser imagination & empathy, therefore, aspies are afraid to express it for the fear of being not understood or for the fear of being thought of as too innocent/naive/ emotional/dreamy/fragile etc. by their (NT) standards.

Imagination is a great gift and I don't even try to hide it. I guess if other people don't like it, they'll just have to ridicule me. Or I can always start to ridicule them for not having a good imagination if they try to have a go at me.

Yes! Especially when I was younger, I was too shy to express my imagination for fear of drawing too much attention to myself. It was like there was something holding me back from saying what I was thinking. I would give my stuffed animals very simple names like Quack or Ducky if it was a duck, because I was too shy to give them really imaginative names. I made up stories in my head all the time, but I never told anyone what I was thinking about. When playing games with other children, I was too shy to tell them my ideas. I think this made people think that I didn't have an imagination, though I really did.

I'm not afraid of using my imagination at all.
Others are afraid sometimes when I mention that I'm going to use my imagination.

First off, I'm an artist.
My work has been exhibited in art galleries, museums, and a solo show.
I sell online and have sold in person at craft shows.
Does this make some people feel threatened, insecure, jealous?
Yes.
Too bad.

Secondly, I consider myself eerily similar to John Delancie's "Q" from Star Trek ...
Q of course is well-known for creativity and imagination.
In fandom, I even dress as Q and attend Star Trek meetings, conventions, and other events in character.
Does this make some people uncomfortable?
Yes.
Too bad.

...

I have no issues with my imagination or expressing it. I have a very weird and large imagination and it can be very childlike but also very morbid. I think others find it unbelievably weird and very creepy at times. I think imagination is more down to the person rather than whether they're autistic or nt or whatever. I think quite a lot of people leave their imagination behind as they get older, I definitely haven't but a hell of a lot of people have.

This doesn't make sense to me.
If I have some quality, it is not hard to show it spontaneously.
I think what you are describing might have more to do with anxiety than autism.
Anxious people are probably afraid to eggspress things for fear of being judged badly.

This is similar to how it is for me. I'm a (wannabe) writer, I've written hundreds of thousands of words, including a fantasy serial that's well over a million words long and still going, and I almost constantly daydream about my characters and stories...but aside from posting the writing to the Web, where nobody bothers looking at it, I don't share it anymore. This trait (imagination) was considered pretty cool when I was in elementary school. When I entered junior high suddenly it was just stupid, and nothing to be proud of. It earned me nothing but ridicule and ignoring, then.

My mind literally overflows with everything I imagine but it has nowhere to go. It's just been criticized, rejected, and ignored so many times. Even work on my writing has almost completely stalled, I've just lost so much heart because nobody else cares. What is the point of having such an imagination if you have nobody to share it with?

To this day I occasionally run into former teachers who ask me if I've gotten anything published yet, and they always seem disappointed when I say no. I don't know why they're disappointed though, that implies I actually had potential, which I obviously didn't. Else I'd have people actually interested in my work.

So, no, I'm not afraid to USE my imagination, since I can't even STOP using it, it's just constant, like breathing. But EXPRESSING it, that's another story. I learned the hard way not to. I just spend the entire day in my own head and nobody even knows; they merely assume I'm inattentive.

If they only knew.

Pirateowl76, Man oh man can I relate. I think so deeply and imagine so much that people just often assume that I either am not or can not think in general. I will sometimes sit motionless thinking so hard. More so when I am alone, though. It kind of scares NT's when you sit silent and motionless while staring at one point for too long.

And then I have the opposite as well(Thanks co-morbid ADHD!) where I say/do things with such little thought that people become concerned for me and convince themselves that I am incompetent.

And sometimes I become aware that I am deep in thought so I try to break it by explaining/demonstrating what I am thinking about(I did a demonstration on kinetic v potential energy as a model for quantum energy transfer for my dog the other day because that is less odd than simply thinking silently ).

But don't stop writing. Even if you are the only one who reads what you write. If you enjoy doing it- shouldn't that be enough?

I have plenty of imagination. I have a number of imaginary universes that I play around with. I don't share them with others, though. My mind stories are a private matter. When I was a child and teen I was taken to many, many psych docs and therapists to try to "fix" me. They were always trying to pry into my private thoughts. They kept asking for details about dreams I had when asleep, day dreams, private thoughts, etc. I found their constant inquisitions to be very invasive. I kept most stuff to myself, and just told them a little bit to make them ease up on the prying.

I also read a lot, and that uses the imagination, too.

I delt with the same issue about 20+ years ago as well. But for me, it wasn't so much about privacy, as it was more about trying to explain what was going in my imagination in the first place. I had no clue how to put it in words, the things that where going on in there.

No, I have no problem with using my imagination. Sometimes it becomes hard to contain it when I am designing molecules for specific applications though. I have even created new molecules before I had a target use for them, just because they have never been reported in the scientific literature. Then I had to spend some time figuring out what I can then possibly do with them, which I finally did. That can be much harder than you would think it would be.

I can't stop my imagination, it has a mind of its own. I do have a certain level of expectation for myself, though, and while I know I'm not capable of perfection, I don't like to share an imaginative creation with others until I'm satisfied that its as good as I can make it.