Macro/Micro Monotropic Mind
I realise now, that it's no wonder I used to lay on the ground in the woods as a child, and stare intently and deeply at moss. Imagining tiny cities of bugs, bacteria, fungus, plants. I would make up little stories in my head about these minuscule worlds. Busy woodland lives all going on without us big humans even noticing. Who am I kidding, I still do that now but getting back up is definitely more tricky!
You see, I have a macro/micro mind (depending on camera used). I see, feel, and process detail that perhaps non-autistic people wouldn't. I hear sounds that are so distant, yet completely jarring to me sometimes. I can feel the tiny weave of cotton on some clothes (it's not pleasant). When someone speaks to me, I don't instantly see the full phrase or meaning/intention. No, I see the individual words, the individual meaning of those words as separate pieces of information. My macro/micro mind has to piece it all together to interpret meaning. (Rachel Cullen - Autistic Language Hypothesis)
When someone expresses an emotion, my detailed processing mind always wants to know more before I can interpret it and respond as I would like to. I am not nosey, I just need the detail surrounding the emotion, because saying "I am sad" doesn't necessarily compute fully. Macro mind wants to figure out why. Is it just sadness or something more, broader, deeper? How does it feel for that individual rather than drawing on when I was sad, because they really will be different.
I have a macro/micro monotropic mind, because I believe I have a macro/micro monotropic nervous system. (Trigger warning these researchers used highly pathologised language and terminology…Sulzer & Tang, 2016, Pagini et al, 2021 - oh and so many more researchers now!)
Image of turquoise background, macro photo of dandelions with tiny water droplets.
My synapses haven’t been pruned like neurotypical synapses. I have retained so many more and that means I am taking in so much more, feeling so much more, processing so much more, and craving the detail. All the synaptic connections, all firing away, picking up all that microscopic data of my environment.
I'm drawn to detail. I love it. I often want to play very intricate music on my piano because I love the complexity of how it all works together. When I listen to music, I love it when there is a whole orchestra of instruments whatever genre that is, because my macro mind can pick up the detail. It can hear the individual notes and adore how they all work together. When I had photography as a hobby (before children!) I would always switch to macro. I didn't want to just see the moss, I wanted to see the minuscule details of what made the moss, the spores, the cells if I could!
If you consider monotropism. “As a trait, monotropism is a tendency to focus on relatively few things, relatively intensely, and to tune out or lose track of things outside of this attention tunnel” (Murray, 2023). The macro mind will be taking in the intricate data of our surroundings, if it catches our interest (good or bad!) then our macro/micro monotropic mind will want to focus in further. We will want to zoom in and look at the moss (if you love moss, like I do), the spores, the cells until there is perhaps nothing left we can actually see.
Whether you are autistic, or have loved ones who are autistic or work with autistic people. Think macro micro. Think how that person is taking in a glorious abundance of detail all the time. Detail of environment, sensory, communication, emotions, internal data and more! We work very hard to process as quickly as everyone else, much to our own detriment. But you know, as any photographer will tell you, working in macro takes time and patience. It takes the right environment and care. Working in microscopic photography takes even more time and patience!
Don’t rush us, perhaps try and see/feel/hear what we can?
