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
How I experience aphantasia is as not being able to maintain an image. However I have good spacial imagination.
Extremely jealous. My friend can manipulate 3D objects in his mind and I wish I had that ability! I did an IQ test once that broke IQ down into different brain regions, on visualisation I got around 20%, for spatial awareness I got something like 12% haha.
Your aphantasia is milder than mind, at least you can form the image in the first place. Maybe you might be a candidate for improvement! Have you heard of image streaming technique?
From asking family members it seems like it runs in the family, so I don’t have much hope it will improve.
I am able to maintain 1-3 simple objects (so cuboids, spheres etc), though I find the euclideanity of this space to be quite fluid (ie impossible shapes, such as Klein’s bottle come naturally), though I can “feel” a few more objects, which can be more complex if I don’t focus to much on them.
As for visualising, I can also maintain simple geometry (& plotting simple functions), and I can let my mind “drift” letting it make random images which morph overtime and I cant focus on the details, or I can focus on trying to imagine something and I can feel like I’m looking at it, but don’t really see it, even less details.
When I let my mind drift I can vaguely control in which direction it moves (kinda like the control style in slider.io if that tells you anything) and I can vaguely steer it to morph into something but it morphs away soon after. It kinda feels like trying to morph a really viscus fluid, if that makes any sense?
I think it’s very genetic, my dad and sisters both have it too
You could be a very promising candidate for image streaming, I know many people get frustrated and don’t maintain the practice (guilty here) but I’ve heard from enough people having transformative effects that I’m going to give it another go.
I mean from the few minutes I tried, I doubt it will work as I use spacial imagination as a substitute for visual imagination. Ie when a scene is described, I “feel” the things being described being there, but don’t see them.