Elucidation
Have you ever heard of 'bottom-up thinking'?
It's just something that I—and probably a tiny percentage of other people—do. And when I say "do," I don't mean I do it purposefully, like it's something I have to work at. It just means I can't help but constantly go to the absolute bottom of things and start from there. I might appear to some people as "slow", "overthinking", or even "unknowledgeable". Maybe I am, but mostly, it's just due to this bottom-up thinking condition.
If you search it up, it's highly possible that you would find it associated with the condition of autism. Though it is not a marker of autism by itself. It can be thought of as one possible cognitive style that appears more often in autistic populations than in the general population. And, whether I, myself, am autistic, I don't know.
As a cognitive style, bottom-up thinking means building understanding from details first, then forming the big picture. Someone might notice patterns, inconsistencies, or specific facts before seeing the overall concept. In contrast, top-down thinking starts with the overall context, expectations, or "gist", then interprets the details within that framework.
I build the foundation first. I often find myself completely 'deactivated' when I discover something is built on a shaky base. I simply can't move forward. I suddenly feel the overriding urge to go down and fix that foundation. I can't continue building on something I know will crumble in the future due to an early crack. If something is going to fail, it can't be because of the foundation—I don't want it to be. Just the thought of standing at the top, only to have to climb all the way back down to fix what should have been built properly in the beginning, makes me deeply uncomfortable. And that, my friend, is a trait that has cost me a lot of disagreements, followed by the immense energy required to mask my instincts just to 'go with it,' because most people are okay with it.
If it sounds like I am bragging about this, I promise you I'm not. This condition isn't about being superior, it's just an outcome of natural selection. I simply happen to have a brain that operates this way. I didn't even realize this was a tangible, valid thing (and not something I needed to apologize for) until I was in my early thirties. That fact alone says a lot about the bottom-up thinking condition itself: I just couldn't be sure of who or what I was until I was. It took me that much time to realize something others might have figured out at a much younger age. However, I do firmly place this trait in the 'Strength' quadrant of my personal SWOT analysis, because I believe it is something I must leverage.
With that being said, if you're still reading this far, I'm going to make my point very clear: I can be your foundation builder and fixer, professionally. I enjoy building and repairing foundations the way other people enjoy sitting comfortably on top of a stable one. I would be thrilled to collaborate in that kind of mutually beneficial relationship.
If something here resonates—a way of thinking, a question, a possible collaboration—you'll find me at the links in the footer, or you can start with the blog.