I'm a die hard skeptic, who doesn't even remotely believe in psychic abilities. Age (and marriage to a believer...) has taught me to be more accepting when people do believe, but I only contain my skeptical face for those I love. Bad situations and I are BFFs. I had this problem for a good 10 years where if I got too happy, I immediately…
I'm a die hard skeptic, who doesn't even remotely believe in psychic abilities. Age (and marriage to a believer...) has taught me to be more accepting when people do believe, but I only contain my skeptical face for those I love.
Bad situations and I are BFFs. I had this problem for a good 10 years where if I got too happy, I immediately needed to find a way to burn my whole life to the ground. Found a good therapist, fixed it, and now I spend all that anxiety on planning ahead for bad situations so I'm rarely in them.
I'm really jealous of people who have a "mind palace." I discovered recently that when people talk about picturing something in their head, they can actually SEE the picture with their mind's eye, not just know they're thinking about it. Looked it into it, and it's called aphantasia when you don't have a mental picture. I'm always curious about it, so if anyone reads this far: if you do artsy things, do you have a mental picture? I haven't met an artist yet with aphantasia, so I'm super curious to know how many of them there are in the world, and how it works for them.
Bonus challenge: My psychic abilities tell me that I will be unable to come up with a single witty answer for this question, until I wake up at 2am, with an absolutely genius answer, which will be forgotten by the time I get out of bed, and the loss of that answer will bug me for days.
So you and your partner are like a real life Mulder and Scully? I love that you can look past your differences on things... just like Mulder and Scully did.
I know folks who self-sabotage. So glad you worked through it with a therapist and you’ve found a new way to deal with anxiety. Yay therapy! It helped me work through anxiety, too.
Aphantasia! You learn something new every day (and a heroic Scrabble word). I have a mental picture, but it’s murky, nothing like a Sherlockian mind palace. Amplifying your call: Who’s got a mental picture?
+50 Points! Have you tried a notebook by the bed? It’s worked well for me.
I'm in a similar boat. Not full-on aphantasia, but there's almost nothing there when I try to conjure a mental picture, and even the faint shadow takes a lot of effort. A mind palace full of vivid images would be super handy, but I still manage to (more or less) write and paint without it...
It seems to be genetic. My mom and son both have it. It's also more common among people on the spectrum. If you really want to break your brain a little, my son has both aphantasia AND anauralia, so he has no mental picture and he doesn't have a mental voice. So if he wants to think something out, it pretty much has to be out loud.
wait ok I would very much like to join this discussion. I'm not sure if I have this thing but I can tell you one thing that I've always found very weird - when I read books or stories, I don't have a mental picture of the characters in my head like AT ALL. I sort of picture their vibe, like their energy and how I feel about them, but even that I don't know how much I picture? I dont know. But I do feel like its weird that I have no real image of basically all the characters that I read about. Is this the thing you're talking about lol?
That sure sounds like it! If you're asked to picture a peaceful place in your mind, or describe your childhood home, can you visually see the details in your mind, and your verbal description is based on what you can see in your head?
Hmmmm I mean...I can definitely see my childhood home, and I could like float around it, and describe the big picture things, but not much beyond that..
That sounds just like it is for me. My usual way to explain it to people is to have them picture an apple. Are you able to see it, rotate it, change the color? Or do you know you're thinking of an apple, but unable to actually envision it? There's degrees of it, too. Some people get flashes of images, or hazy images.
What are the odds of a small bunch of people on a random Substack thread having or knowing someone who has this condition? Only an estimated 2 to 5 percent of people have aphantasia .
I suspect the number of people who have it is considerably higher, it's just not something most people think to wonder about.
Aphantasia got named as a condition pretty recently, in 2015. It also doesn't stand in the way of doing anything really, so who would think to look for it as something different about themselves?
All my life, I assumed no one else has a true mental picture either. If my husband wasn't so aggravatingly visual, I'd probably never have noticed. A heated conversation about rearranging the living room furniture started it, because he said he could see a mental picture of how the furniture would look, and I told him that was total BS. 30 minutes of arguing later, I pulled out my phone to Prove Him Wrong and discovered that he was indeed right.
That's a great story. How would you or anyone know? It's surprising that no one was looking, and the condition was given a name only 8 years ago. The assumption that all brains have the same fundamental capabilities within them, despite being comprised of 86 billion neurons, is a leap. With such a complex machine, and so many humans, and based on probabilities, you'd expect there to be a great many quirks and glitches and variances between brain operations. (Some people only see in black and white, for example. Color comes from the brain, not from the eye.) Yet, we all get by with the notion that we kind of, sort of, have the same starting point for how our brains work. Your own realization must have made quite a difference to how you and your husband now understand and communicate with each other,.
right so I can see an apple...sort of, though its more the idea of an apple, and a broad image of an apple. I can't rotate it though, or change the color really. I mean i could but it'd look dumb and stuff
I'm a die hard skeptic, who doesn't even remotely believe in psychic abilities. Age (and marriage to a believer...) has taught me to be more accepting when people do believe, but I only contain my skeptical face for those I love.
Bad situations and I are BFFs. I had this problem for a good 10 years where if I got too happy, I immediately needed to find a way to burn my whole life to the ground. Found a good therapist, fixed it, and now I spend all that anxiety on planning ahead for bad situations so I'm rarely in them.
I'm really jealous of people who have a "mind palace." I discovered recently that when people talk about picturing something in their head, they can actually SEE the picture with their mind's eye, not just know they're thinking about it. Looked it into it, and it's called aphantasia when you don't have a mental picture. I'm always curious about it, so if anyone reads this far: if you do artsy things, do you have a mental picture? I haven't met an artist yet with aphantasia, so I'm super curious to know how many of them there are in the world, and how it works for them.
Bonus challenge: My psychic abilities tell me that I will be unable to come up with a single witty answer for this question, until I wake up at 2am, with an absolutely genius answer, which will be forgotten by the time I get out of bed, and the loss of that answer will bug me for days.
So you and your partner are like a real life Mulder and Scully? I love that you can look past your differences on things... just like Mulder and Scully did.
I know folks who self-sabotage. So glad you worked through it with a therapist and you’ve found a new way to deal with anxiety. Yay therapy! It helped me work through anxiety, too.
Aphantasia! You learn something new every day (and a heroic Scrabble word). I have a mental picture, but it’s murky, nothing like a Sherlockian mind palace. Amplifying your call: Who’s got a mental picture?
+50 Points! Have you tried a notebook by the bed? It’s worked well for me.
I'm in a similar boat. Not full-on aphantasia, but there's almost nothing there when I try to conjure a mental picture, and even the faint shadow takes a lot of effort. A mind palace full of vivid images would be super handy, but I still manage to (more or less) write and paint without it...
How interesting. I'm wondering if this condition is more widespread than imagined.
It seems to be genetic. My mom and son both have it. It's also more common among people on the spectrum. If you really want to break your brain a little, my son has both aphantasia AND anauralia, so he has no mental picture and he doesn't have a mental voice. So if he wants to think something out, it pretty much has to be out loud.
wait ok I would very much like to join this discussion. I'm not sure if I have this thing but I can tell you one thing that I've always found very weird - when I read books or stories, I don't have a mental picture of the characters in my head like AT ALL. I sort of picture their vibe, like their energy and how I feel about them, but even that I don't know how much I picture? I dont know. But I do feel like its weird that I have no real image of basically all the characters that I read about. Is this the thing you're talking about lol?
That sure sounds like it! If you're asked to picture a peaceful place in your mind, or describe your childhood home, can you visually see the details in your mind, and your verbal description is based on what you can see in your head?
Hmmmm I mean...I can definitely see my childhood home, and I could like float around it, and describe the big picture things, but not much beyond that..
That sounds just like it is for me. My usual way to explain it to people is to have them picture an apple. Are you able to see it, rotate it, change the color? Or do you know you're thinking of an apple, but unable to actually envision it? There's degrees of it, too. Some people get flashes of images, or hazy images.
What are the odds of a small bunch of people on a random Substack thread having or knowing someone who has this condition? Only an estimated 2 to 5 percent of people have aphantasia .
I suspect the number of people who have it is considerably higher, it's just not something most people think to wonder about.
Aphantasia got named as a condition pretty recently, in 2015. It also doesn't stand in the way of doing anything really, so who would think to look for it as something different about themselves?
All my life, I assumed no one else has a true mental picture either. If my husband wasn't so aggravatingly visual, I'd probably never have noticed. A heated conversation about rearranging the living room furniture started it, because he said he could see a mental picture of how the furniture would look, and I told him that was total BS. 30 minutes of arguing later, I pulled out my phone to Prove Him Wrong and discovered that he was indeed right.
That's a great story. How would you or anyone know? It's surprising that no one was looking, and the condition was given a name only 8 years ago. The assumption that all brains have the same fundamental capabilities within them, despite being comprised of 86 billion neurons, is a leap. With such a complex machine, and so many humans, and based on probabilities, you'd expect there to be a great many quirks and glitches and variances between brain operations. (Some people only see in black and white, for example. Color comes from the brain, not from the eye.) Yet, we all get by with the notion that we kind of, sort of, have the same starting point for how our brains work. Your own realization must have made quite a difference to how you and your husband now understand and communicate with each other,.
right so I can see an apple...sort of, though its more the idea of an apple, and a broad image of an apple. I can't rotate it though, or change the color really. I mean i could but it'd look dumb and stuff
That's a wonderful way to explain what you can and can't see in your head. 😁
Wow, that is such a different way to see and be in the world. Neurodiversity needs more attention and understanding.
My brain is a little broken, but also fascinated.
Yeah, I'm curious now, too...
I'd settle for a mind screen saver. Love those flying toasters!
I lack faith in my ability to read my 2am handwriting, but I may start talking notes on my phone! Thank you!