Living with Outline Tracing Disorder
The condition in which you are constantly drawing outlines of visible shapes with your eyes. Welcome to my world.
You may be sitting at home, or at work, or driving, but your mind traces every line on the wall nonstop. For me, it’s every 90 degree angle from the wall, door, table, chairs, television….everything that has a 90 degree angle, in some cases a 45 degree angle. My mind will trace it, and connect an imaginary line to the opposite 90 or 45 degree angle. This happens to me nonstop, and I mean nonstop. When driving, or in public, or at a store, this has always been the case my in entire life, and it applies to everything around me. I am yet to find anyone with a similar experience.
An internet search resulted in some scant online postings from a few people which was informative but not substantive enough. From my research, I tend to think it’s a hyper-active mind, probably as a result of anxiety — and if you ask me, anxiety is the natural result of thinking. As I outline everything in a room, I also match things. Two doors, door hinges, windows, etc. Perhaps ‘disorder’ may be the wrong word — it may be entirely benign but I outline everything with a 90 or 45 degree angle, and I do it without even realizing I’m doing it. Perhaps it’s some pathological coping mechanism, but I don’t think it’s normal. I can’t believe it’s something that hasn’t been researched.
I even went on Reddit, and an interesting post by a Redditor whytehorse2017 said;
It's called spatial intelligence and spatial ability. You're probably also able to remember every face you've seen, are good at first-person-shooter games, good at rubiks cubes, chemistry, engineering, maths and physics. My favourite past time is running thought experiments similar to the lightning+train one Einstein used to explain special relativity.
While every point he made holds true, I remember every face I’ve seen, I do not like first person shooter games, though I’m very good at it whenever I give it a go, engineering is one of my favorite hobbies, not a Chemistry fan, and Physics comes naturally to me. This still does not help understand the genesis of why I have this condition (or disorder if you call it that). I haven’t found anyone or any expert on this matter, but I would surely continue to seek answers.
Cheers!
