Does 'seeing' language distress you?

Yes - it's incredibly stressful trying to work out what strangers might say to you - you have no idea of their motives or feelings towards you.

My imagination can be my greatest joy, and my worst enemy. My thoughts, unless personally derogatory, are in the form of images rather than just words. I do a video playback of everything and can get stuck in a cycle of rewatching the same event in my head.

Although when I'm either very happy or nervous,  I can  be overly talkative, I have a preference for silent communication. 

My previous therapist told me it was one of my biggest causes of anxiety. The other is trying to predict every conversation I could potentially have within a situation. 

I tend to have an overactive imagination, so if I cannot picture what you're saying or use syllogistic logic then it may be quite difficult for me to follow.  So yes, there have been times where I cannot make out what someone was 'trying' to tell me. And there are times when I have had to think about things for years or it's popped into my head years later. Or even still, a phrase can be shocking visually and difficult to shake. 

Before I even knew I had difficulty with language or understanding others, I would find humans incredibly frustrating. I have been called pragmatic. I also might have several possibilities of what something might actually mean depending on the unknown 'variable' (like the X in a maths puzzle)

I dated someone who would tell me to "Use your power for good and not evil". I had learned to just be silent when I didn't understand anything. He'd repeat it on occasion. Maybe 10 years later I started breaking that phrase down. For someone (my younger self) who felt trapped with little "power" (this is a ridiculous word anyway), subjected to things beyond her control, it was out of touch at best. I eventually realised this was probably a behaviour modification phrase that meant some unidentified thing I was doing or saying or engaging in was not approved of. If only I could've simply responded with: Direct is more Sexy. or I have no idea what you mean by that. 

Language is quite organic by nature - it does change and that's a bit chaotic to me. I'd like to simply utilise it for communication but having dived into some philosophy on the topic, it's used to command, to control, to engage in fantasy, to shape, to express, to build... some things are still quite bothersome. But now I'm starting to understand NTs like to play these fantasy/dominate games with language, I try to either pull out improv rules (exhausting) and literally respond with what I'm picturing and how odd/awkward/strange, etc. to add a little comedy or diverge all the cogs in my brain in to something much more intense to knock it out of the irritation (study something difficult but engaging. If I can.

Hello Pikl, does it cause you anxiety?

Thanks Pikl, that's part of the process for me too

The only thing I do is analyse what has been said, the intonation, facial expressions and body language. I pull it all apart to try and work out if what was said was what was actually meant. I do the same to myself to make sure if I've said anything wrong so that I know if I need to apologise or not.

a female friend i know sees colours for words but its not unpleasant. Well some words have horrible colours.

There was another guy on here who had a very bad projection issue and you could hardly speak to him because he would see what you said happening to him.   I could  only speak in 3 word sentences and had to check each time if what i said was ok. 

Sorry he has left some time ago now. It was too painful for him. He had autism as well. I was the only person he had spoken to for a long time. 

sounds a bit like PTSD perhaps?