Elise Matthesen

I'm saying that my perception of something is no longer primarily filtered through the name-and-identification-and-long-history I have with things-that-also-wear-that-word. I'm seeing the thing, not the word. And it was that way with every thing. I saw every thing. None of it was filtered out. And pretty much all of it was interesting.

This (and the comments) are really interesting to me, because what you describe here sounds more like the way I see the world normally than the way you describe your pre-stroke experience does. The exception is emotional processing - at some point in my childhood, probably around the time my body image issues started, my experience of my own emotions started to be filtered through words, so I couldn't feel things unless I could name them (but equally, could avoid feeling something by refusing to name it.) I un-learned that, as an adult, because it was causing relationship problems. But the idea of processing objects like that is alien and slightly alarming to me, and yet apparently "normal" to the pre-stroke you and to most of your commenters. I find that fascinating, and I find myself wondering whether this difference is related to other differences. djm4 and I increasingly believe that the intensity and immediacy of my spirituality is partly due to something unusual in the way I perceive ordinary objects, so it would fit with that, maybe.