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

  • Captain Aggravated
    2•9 months ago

    Okay wait.

    My time spent in a custom job shop wondering why people are such morons may have just clicked into place. I spent a few years of my life drawing things in CAD software for clients–most of the software I used created solids in a default bland grey. And some variation of the following conversation would always happen.

    “Here’s what I got.”

    “It’s not going to be grey, is it?”

    “…No, I’m going to build it out of wood, it’ll look like wood.”

    “But it doesn’t look like wood, it’s grey.”

    “That’s the computer model, I was focused on the shapes and dimensions.”

    “I can’t see it unless it’s brown like wood.”

    I spent the whole time thinking the world was just full of retrotards who went to business school for so long they literally can’t imagine “This, but brown.” You’re telling me this is congenital?

    • @Burnt@lemmy.one
      2•9 months ago

      I was an aerospace machinist in a past life and I’m aphantasic. Never was it a hindrance in me making parts. You were just having a conversation with an idiot, which makes sense because shops seem to hire a lot of them.

    • Otome-chan
      1•9 months ago

      There’s a difference between understanding “this isn’t going to be what it looks like, it’ll look like wood” and actually being able to visualize and “see” the wood version in your head prior to completion.

      So looking at your grey version, someone with aphantasia (who isn’t a moron) might be like “I can’t visualize/imagine it as wood, could I see what that looks like?”, as in they understand it will be wood, but may have no clue what that actually looks like until it’s in front of them.

      What you’re describing just sounds like a run of the mill idiot who also may have aphantasia.