this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023

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Aphantasia... apparently 3% of the world has it. Any aphantasists in here, who've had success improving their condition? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Transcendant to c/asklemmy

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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 @[email protected] 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

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[–] Transcendant 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

            
              Difficulty with spatial awareness (often have to put the too-small pan lid into the pan before I know it’s too small). I'll likely never learn to drive because I know I'd be a menace
finding routes in unfamiliar places, learning routes takes me a few more times than the average person
I’m a little bit faceblind (I often recognise actors by their voice instead of face)
I’ve always had a bad memory and apparently this is a common trait for aphantasic

[–] morphballganon 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Those first 3 traits are all true of me but I can imagine images quite vividly. I don't think those traits are as rare as the condition.

Imagining a pot around a lid is useless because your mental image can scale.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

can confirm because i have jackshit visual imagination but really good spatial imagination, and thus no such problems.

[–] Caesium 6 points 1 year ago

ironically, I think my spatial awareness is impeccable because of my aphantasia. Put me in a small area for ten minutes and I'll instinctively know where its safe to move and where stuff is. Also really know how to gauge effective distances in the video games I play. HOWEVER, ask me to assign a value to all this and I'll completely blank out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So when learning routes, do you turn the corner and think, “Oh, yeah. This is here.”?

[–] Transcendant 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty much hahaha. I'll get a lightning bolt realisation that I'm actually somewhere I know, especially if I'm coming in from a different route / angle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing this. I was aware of the condition, but never really thought about it or could think about how it could make life difficult for a person.

This was really interesting to read. I’m guessing their are no treatments for it. I’m going to have to read about this more.