So like I have this problem. Mostly it appears to be that when I look at a room I view it like "okay, this is how it should look". Which causes a lot of problems because then tend to not notice if there is trash, or laundry, or something that needs to be put away. Which leads to messy rooms and pissed off family. I can't figure out how to fix this, or why this even is a problem. Trash should be obvious but somehow I just don't process that I have to Do Something About It. Anyone else have this problem?
I get roughly that; the way things are is the way they have always been and should be, I don't "see" things that are static parts of the environment, like basically any object that's been around for a day or so.
Wait....this happens to other people? I thought it was my brain trying to protect me from going crazy over mess I didn´t have the spoons to fix.
Yes! Apparently this does happen to other people. I was worried I was the only one this ever happened to.
Wow. I thought I was the only one who did this. Source of 16 solid years of mild conflict with my mother.
A low level of this is actually something most people have! It's why most people can't proofread their own work, and forget that they leave their keys on the table. Your brain fills in the gaps with "should" to save on processing power. Thus, people with sensory processing disorders tend to fill in a higher level of "should" - I've known other people who are disabled by this kind of filling-in, to the point where they have to explicitly look at a table and enumerate the objects on it before they can figure out whether the table needs to be cleaned. ...Notably, I do not have this. I see exactly what is there. All the time. Instead of this making me a super-neat-freak, it mostly just means that I look at all the cleaning I have to do, get completely overwhelmed at the magnitude of the task, and don't do anything. On the plus side, the fact that I don't fill in anything whatsoever makes me absurdly good at proofreading.
Thanks, that explanation makes a lot of sense, and knowing why my brain does a thing is very helpful to me.
So that is why I have massive piles of clothes outside my perfectly usable wardrobe and why I spent half an hour frantically looking for a thing I remembered putting somewhere and eventually crying while standing directly in front of it. Good to know. "Can you do the dishes" "Doesn't look to urgent to me" -> literally a conversation I had with my mom more than once while standing in a kitchen so full of dishes that there was no surface area for cooking left MY BRAIN SUCKS
