10 years ago, I’d have put my ability to visualise at 0 out of 10. Practice and occasional halucinogen use has got me to 2 out of 10. It causes no end of problems in day to day life, so I’m interested to hear if anyone has tips or just experiences to share so it doesn’t feel such a lonely frustrating issue.
edit informative comment from @Gwaer@lemm.ee about image streaming, I did a bit of digging on the broken links, the Dr isn’t giving the info away for free anymore without buying their (expensive) book, but I found some further info on additional techniques here, pages 2/3: https://nlpcourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Image-Streaming-Mode-of-Thinking.pdf
On the good side, we’re much less affected by trauma, because we’re not haunted by replays of it in our minds. So there’s that. Also, we can torment visualizers with words like “moist”, and describing disgusting things that they “see” in their heads, while we’re unaffected.
Use this power only for good, or at least for a good laugh. 😉
I sometimes wonder if there’s not some sort of miscommunication about what it means to visualize something in your head.
I don’t have aphantasia, but hearing some people try to describe what it’s like to imagine something I think some people could get the idea that it’s like a voluntary hallucination, literally seeing a thing that isn’t there that you can conjure up and dismiss at your pleasure.
And that’s certainly not my experience (though it’s possible people have different experiences with it, I can of course only speak for myself)
The things I imagine don’t actually exist in my vision. It’s definitely getting processed through the visual parts of my brain, there’s a sort of visual mental model with all of the dimensions and color information and such, but it’s sort like a video game with the monitor turned off, except since my brain is the computer so I can just keep playing the game, I know where everything is, what it looks like, what it’s doing, all of the physics and such still work, it’s just not ending up on my brain’s screen.
Yes, and not interested in changing.
I’m me and I’m happy. I find that the strategies I learned as a kid sometimes allow me to think more clearly and procedurally than others. I’m not haunted by images of the past. I do take extra photos now that I know what’s up. All in all, I don’t see it as much of a negative. It’s far better than some of the other conditions I was thinking I might have, before I learned about aphantasia.
I was fairly active on r/aphantasia for a bit, but I started to back away when they went for this “total aphant” thing, where you weren’t really in the club unless you couldn’t imagine with any senses at all.
they went for this “total aphant” thing, where you weren’t really in the club unless you couldn’t imagine with any senses at all.
People always have to ruin shit by taking to extremes ey.
Tbh as hard as it is for non-aphantasics to imagine no mental imagery, I find it just as hard to imagine those who have no visual AND no audio mind. Like, how the fuck do they think? Then I reckon, prob the same as me visually… I know what a green triangle is, it’s the colour of grass and has 3 equal sides. Just, I can’t see it when I shut my eyes
I don’t have mental audio, and the best way I can describe it is that I can think of words, but not in words.
I think in concepts that have words attached.
So, if I’m thinking about a dog, I have multiple words that can work for it. Dog and perro (spanish for dog) for example, both point to the same “concept”, and it’s that concept that I have in my mind when I think of a dog. But I can pull the word dog to mind when needed too. Hence thinking “of” words
Either way, I can’t hear any of it
Sorry, are you saying you’re one of the people with no visual or audio inner mind? Interesting if so. Sounds as if you’re thinking in concepts (which is exactly how I ‘think visually’)
Yep, exactly.
I kind of have an inner voice, in so far as I can choose to think of words in a sentence, or I can “translate” the concepts in my mind in to words in real time, but those words have no auditory components. I can’t “hear” them anymore than you can “see” an apple in your mind. I just know that it’s there
(not OP) I’m curious, are you not able to “play back” songs in your head then, for example? This is such a foreign idea to me - sometimes there are melodies playing in my head without me even initiating it, in a way. I’m wondering if there are people this doesn’t happen to.
Lol imagine not being able to picture things in your head. Oh wait…
I have aphantasia. And also extreme crippling insomnia, it has been the last 3 or so years that i learned that other people can actually visualize at all. I always thought it was a metaphor. In my searching about a way to potentially improve it I found this article.
https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/
And it absolutely cured my insomnia. I can sleep easily for the first time in my life. Didn’t do a lot for the aphantasia but i did manage to successfully get an image or two a couple of times. Mostly i just love that i can finally sleep without hours of lying in bed beforehand.
Can I ask, do you remember any of those ‘24 backup techniques’? Unfortunately the important links are now dead
Not who you replied to, but you can copy the link and paste it into the wayback machine (archive.org) to view an older snapshot of the site
