AskBeehaw

I can imagine it :) Are there any animals?

They're quite fun! Highly recommend! There're patterns you can learn but I like just free forming it from what feels nice!

And yeah I try not to think too much about what I'm missing out on, like that meme "replaying the entirety of {Movie} in my head", or what it would be like to be able to visualize something unique and bring that to paper. But, I feel I have skills in other ways that I've developed. I feel very strong in analysis and putting together threads that not everyone seems to, so I have leaned into work that utilizes that. Like I said with performing arts, literary/media analysis, and so many of my hobbies are creatively focused. So sometimes it gets frustrating, cause it would be so nice to get a full sense of what I'm "imagining". But it doesn't mean I don't have imagination, just not in pictures. So it's effectively making up details and threading those together.

Also unlike some, since aphantasia is a range, I do have spatial and audio "imagination", and I've been playing music from a very young age so I have a learned sense of perfect pitch that's stuck with me, and my spatial sense is using relative objects and knowing the estimated dimensions of an object. Every few months I would reorganize my room and leading up to it I would think about what would best be where, which in turn was very helpful for running events in my adult life!

With that sense of spatial awareness I have found that even though I have a aphantasia it's sort of representative of how Daredevil from Marvel comics sees, because when I know a space I'm able to walk it with my eyes closed very well, even though I can't see anything in my mind I "feel" this shadowy haze that makes up my dreams and when I try to visualize things. Remembering where objects are is also fairly strong since it can be made into a simple set of boxes that represent the details. Like on my desk, pen holder, keyboard, mouse, devices, and when I go to look for the device it's usually how I last remember it. I don't have face blindness, but I can't re-picture someone's face. I "know" what it looks like but it's not helpful because there's no reference in real space (until I see them or someone who has a feature they have). The same goes for scenery, I know what it looked like just recreating it visually is not possible.

When I close my eyes and try to visualize, it's black, but static. I also have a bit of a color aura, sort of like those Mandelbrot infinite depth things. It's always circular, never perfect, and it usually comes from outside of my 2D black plane when I close my eyes, enclosing a deep dark shaded color (usually r g b, and grey only). There's not much I can do, I think somewhat slow it down or speed it up if I "try" but there's not a lot else. It's never gone side to side or anything (until hypnogogia where it gets all crazy). But, the static... It's ever so slightly affected by what I know. I know what my table looks like, so I can shift it in space to get a feel for if it fits. I'm pretty strong with this and it's the closest thing I have to visualization, but it's so far removed from it. It's like a black and white version of a magnet on an old TV... Just... Barely formed lines and depth, so faint but just barely there to be workable.

With that I like to do blueprint sketching when I come up with those ideas, since that is the closest I have to being able to put my mind on paper. It's helpful because it's permanent, and whatever I'm "working" in my mind is very, very brief. Sadly, it works well only for blueprinting, so really not anything artistic, just conceptual. Because of that I like to say I have conceptualization just not visualization, since as long as I've seen what it is we're talking about I have the sense of what it is.

It's really interesting being a detail focused mind since I can't help it, but I also don't remember everything so it's really just what happens to stick out to me, or if I'm specifically on the lookout for it.

What's interesting is that aphantasia seems fairly uncommon, and visualization seems fairly common. Most people I talk to are surprised to hear that other people do not have visualization, or that the extent of theirs may differ from someone else's -- like you said you have other senses as well, which not everyone who has it does, or some have varying intensities. I think it can also play into people's social and religious interactions as well, since some people are so heavily affected by their visualization. I've known a number of Christians who smoked weed for the first time and their social constructs that they see Jesus or demons and angels fighting which, well... That's awesome, and so far removed from my perception of reality haha.

What I find interesting is that when taking certain psychedelics, this perception is changed in different ways (obviously I guess haha). Acid had distorted visual reality, and just made the color patterns more chaotic. Mushrooms also distorted visual reality, but also made closed eye visuals more circular and colorful. Neither really did much for me other than making my "visualization" more like the random chaotic hypnogogic state. But DMT... That was a wildly different experience that actually had me experience a fraction of what you probably experience on a daily basis. From fractals in 3D with colors I've never imagined to full on visualization, it was very overwhelming! There were other reasons too, but there was really nothing like it. I literally can't imagine what it would be like to control something like that!