Psychology concepts and applications

¶ … sight and hearing I rely only on the sense of touch, the sense of taste and my sense of smell. I cannot see food but I smell and taste it better than anyone else may be able to. I have nothing to distract me from the taste, as I eat I am immersed by the food. There are no sounds to distract me and nothing to look at to distract me. As I eat I can smell the food completely, taste the food completely and feel the texture of the food inside my mouth completely. I have an appreciation of food that nobody with sight or hearing could ever understand.

My sense of touch and my sense of smell are also far more acute than anyone else's. While many people probably do not even notice smells, I do. I do not need to walk through a perfume store to appreciate smell, I appreciate smell everywhere. I know when someone new has entered the room because I smell them. I know I am walking past certain type of trees because I smell them. And when I smell these flowers or trees or herbs they are more to me than just smells. They bring with them feelings and emotions. Emotions I doubt anyone else would notice like I do. These smells alter my mood in seconds and I can imagine I am somewhere else. While some people do this to relax on occasion, this happens to me all the time. I am always being transported to different times and places and emotions by different smells. I don't just remember times gone by, these smells really make me feel like I have travelled somewhere.

I cannot see and I cannot hear so for all I know I may have travelled. I can place myself anywhere in an instant and there is nothing to make me not accept this reality as real. I can experience it as if I was there again.

I also know touch better than any seeing, hearing person. I touch things and notice textures that nobody else would. My hands are the part of me that sees the world. I touch peoples faces and I see what they look like. I touch objects and see what they look like. My whole body has a sense of touch. I feel the wind and the sun against me, I feel the silk and flannelette sheets against me. I am just as immersed in responses than anyone else, I just respond to different things. I walk along a beach and I feel the grains of sand more than anyone else could and I feel like I am part of the beach.

And I understand the world through my hands. My hands pass over Braille books and the meaning flows into my mind. I shake hands with a person and that same meaning passes up through my hands.

More than anything else, everything I touch, smell or feel paints a picture in my head. It is a picture that there are no distractions from. In my mind, people and objects look as I want them to look. They change as I want them to change. For most people who see and hear their reality is created by the world. But my reality is created by me. I have an imagination that never stops working. My imagination fills in the gaps between what I can't see and hear. This imagination works so hard that it also works well. I can sit and dream up stories that can seem entirely real.

And maybe best of all, I have a sense. I have a sense of what is right, what is wrong and what is happening. I just know things about the world. I can stand in a room I cannot see, but I can feel that room. And those feelings are meaningful. When I am with other people I can sense them. I can sense how they are feeling. I am not fooled by fake smiles, or brave voices. I feel people as they are and they cannot hide from that. I know things on a level that nobody else does.