Visual Thinking: What Temple Grandin Taught Me About My Own Mind

Visual Thinking by Temple Grandin gave me a lot to think about—quite literally. I picked up the book because I was interested in learning more about the different ways people process, understand, and interact with the world. I didn't necessarily expect to finish it wondering whether I might be a visual thinker myself. That became one of my biggest takeaways from the book, and it ended up leading me somewhere much bigger than a single reading style.

Not One Way to Be Smart

Grandin explores the differences between visual and verbal thinking and, more importantly, what those differences can mean in everyday life. We often talk about intelligence as though there is one primary way to be "smart," but people can approach the exact same problem from very different directions. Some people naturally think through language. Others may think more through images, patterns, spatial relationships, objects, or how different pieces fit together.

What I appreciated most was that Grandin doesn't leave these differences in the abstract—she connects them to the real world. She discusses careers such as engineering, design, science, skilled trades, and other fields where being able to visualize a system, object, or problem can be incredibly valuable. That made me think about how easily certain abilities can be overlooked when education and workplaces prioritize particular ways of learning and communicating. Someone might struggle to explain an idea verbally while being able to see exactly how something should work. Someone else might notice a problem in a system long before they can explain what is wrong with it. That doesn't necessarily mean they understand less. They may simply be processing the information differently.

The Part That Made Me Look at My Own Brain

As I read, I kept comparing Grandin's descriptions with the way I experience the world. One thing that particularly stood out to me was her ability to notice small inconsistencies in patterns—she seems to recognize details that don't quite fit with everything around them, and that immediately felt familiar to me. I often notice patterns, connections, or little things that seem "off" before I can necessarily explain why they seem wrong. Sometimes I can see how several seemingly unrelated ideas connect. Other times, I notice that one piece doesn't fit into the larger pattern even though I haven't figured out exactly what the problem is yet.

Reading Visual Thinking made me curious about whether some of that could be connected to the way I process information. Maybe thinking isn't always a neat internal sentence. Maybe sometimes it is recognizing a pattern, mentally arranging pieces until they make sense, or noticing the one detail that doesn't belong. And maybe understanding how our brains naturally approach information can help us figure out how to use those abilities instead of constantly trying to force ourselves into someone else's preferred way of thinking.

I was also fascinated by Grandin's discussion of animals and the possibility that they rely heavily on visual information. Her work with animals gives this part of the book an especially interesting perspective, demonstrating how paying attention to details in an environment can help us understand experiences that another person—or animal—might be having. Something that seems insignificant to one observer might completely change the experience for someone else. That idea extends beyond animals for me. We experience environments differently. We notice different things. We respond to different sensory information. What one person automatically filters into the background might be impossible for another person to ignore. Understanding someone else sometimes requires becoming curious about what they are noticing instead of assuming they are experiencing the same environment we are.

What This Has to Do With the Whole Person

As I continued thinking about the book, I realized it connects to something much larger than thinking style—it connects to the way we understand the whole person.

When we look at someone, we tend to notice what we can observe: how they communicate, how they behave, what they accomplish, what they struggle with, and how they respond to the people and environments around them. But underneath all of those things is an internal process we cannot directly see. A person is constantly receiving information, interpreting it, connecting it to previous experiences, deciding what matters, and figuring out how to respond. How they think influences all of that. That means understanding the whole person should include asking not only what someone thinks, but also how they think.

This adds another layer to my Whole Person Framework, because our thinking processes do not exist separately from the rest of us. They interact with how we learn, communicate, regulate ourselves, solve problems, build relationships, work, create, and understand our experiences. Imagine someone who understands ideas much more easily when they can visualize them. If we continually give that person verbal explanations and they struggle, we might conclude that they do not understand the material. But what if the problem isn't their ability to understand? What if the information simply isn't being presented in a way that works well with their brain? Give that same person a diagram, demonstration, model, example, or opportunity to physically interact with the concept, and suddenly everything might click. The person's intelligence didn't change. The environment changed. And that distinction matters tremendously when we are trying to understand the whole person.

From "What Is Wrong?" to "What Does This Person Need?"

This is especially important when thinking about neurodiversity. We can easily interpret differences through what someone cannot do—they cannot explain their answer, cannot follow the lecture, cannot organize their thoughts quickly enough, cannot perform the task the way everyone else does. But Visual Thinking made me think about what might happen if we became more curious before making those judgments. How does this person process information? What kinds of information do they notice? What helps concepts make sense to them? What overwhelms their processing? How do they solve problems when they are given freedom to approach them their own way? What strengths might be hidden because the environment doesn't give them an opportunity to use those strengths?

Those questions feel much more aligned with a whole-person approach. Instead of trying to determine whether someone fits the environment, we can also examine whether the environment fits the person.

Thinking Touches Every Part of the Person

The more I thought about this, the more connections I began to see. How we process information can influence learning, because different people may need different ways of encountering and organizing information. It can influence communication, because someone may understand something clearly internally but have difficulty translating that understanding into words. It can influence work and purpose, because certain careers may allow particular cognitive strengths to flourish. It can influence creativity, because people may imagine, build, design, write, problem-solve, and generate ideas differently. It can influence relationships, because two people may interpret the same situation in completely different ways. It can influence stress and regulation, because environments that demand constant processing in a person's less-natural mode may require significantly more effort. It can even influence identity, because repeatedly being told that you are bad at something can shape how you see yourself—even when the real issue may be that your abilities haven't been recognized in the right context.

This is why I don't think we can separate the brain from the rest of the person. The cognitive person affects the emotional person. The emotional person affects the social person. The social environment affects the physical person. Our experiences influence our beliefs about ourselves. Our strengths influence where we find purpose. Our environments can either support those strengths or make accessing them more difficult. Everything connects.

Different Thinkers Need Different Opportunities

One of the most important ideas I took from Grandin's book is that different kinds of thinkers have something valuable to contribute—and that becomes especially important when thinking about education and careers. If we create systems that primarily reward people who learn, communicate, or demonstrate knowledge in one particular way, we may mistake difference for inability.

A child who constantly builds complicated structures may be showing us something. A student who notices patterns nobody else sees may be showing us something. A person who understands machines almost instinctively, who needs to draw something before explaining it, or who can walk into an environment and immediately notice that something has changed—all of them may be showing us something. Instead of immediately asking how we can make them perform more like everyone else, a whole-person approach would also ask: what is this telling us about how this person experiences the world? That doesn't mean we stop helping people develop skills that are difficult for them—growth still matters. But support and growth don't have to require erasing the way someone's brain naturally works. We can build skills while also building upon strengths.

Not every intelligent person is going to demonstrate intelligence in the same way. Not every learner needs the same path. Not every valuable career requires the same collection of strengths. That seems simple when written out, but I think it has enormous implications for how we educate children, support neurodivergent people, choose careers, and even understand ourselves. Instead of only asking "what am I good at?", perhaps a more useful question is: how does my brain naturally make sense of the world?

Whole-Person Support Requires Curiosity

Maybe that is where Visual Thinking connects most strongly with my own work. The Whole Person Framework is ultimately rooted in curiosity. Instead of assuming that one observation tells us everything we need to know about someone, we keep asking questions: What is happening? What might be influencing it? What does this person experience that I cannot see? What strengths are present? What barriers are present? What does the environment contribute? What support would help? And what does this individual actually want or need?

Thinking style becomes another piece of that inquiry. It isn't the entire person, and I don't think we should replace one box with another by deciding everyone must be categorized neatly as a particular "type" of thinker. Instead, it gives us another lens. The goal isn't to put someone into the correct thinking box—the goal is to understand enough about the person that we can help them build a life that works with who they are. That is a very different goal.

Understanding Yourself Is Part of Whole-Person Wellness

This is also why the book became personal for me. Understanding how I think isn't just an interesting psychological exercise. The more I understand the way my brain processes information, the better I can understand what helps me learn, work, communicate, create, solve problems, and manage my energy. I can recognize strengths that I may have previously dismissed because they didn't look like someone else's strengths. I can become more intentional about the environments I create for myself. And perhaps most importantly, I can continue replacing the question "why can't I do this the way everyone else seems to?" with a more useful one: "what does my brain need in order to do this well?"

That question leaves room for growth without requiring sameness. We don't take care of the whole person by forcing every person into the same definition of functioning, learning, success, or intelligence. We start by becoming curious enough to understand the person who is actually in front of us—including when that person is ourselves.

I picked up a book about different ways of thinking. I finished it thinking about something much bigger: if we want to understand the whole person, we also have to make room for the unique mind through which that person experiences their whole world.

If you're interested in psychology, neurodiversity, education, learning, animals, creativity, career development, or simply why two people can encounter the same problem and approach it completely differently, Visual Thinking is worth reading. You may learn something about how other people think. You might also, as I did, start noticing something about yourself.