Ok! Gonna address some comments here (also THANK YOU for sharing your stories, this is absolutely fascinating to read and discuss) 1. I'm not talking about being able to actually literally see images being played back like a film projected on your eyelids (though apparently through vigorous and consistent meditation, you can train yourself to do something akin to this). If you're seeing the black of your eyelids...that's just your eyelids. I'm referring to seeing images in your MIND. Friends who can visualize describe it as being in the back of their mind? Though, again, some of them have said it's so vivid it could be real. I wouldn't know, because I can't conceptualize it whatsoever! The image streaming example (for those that can't visualize at all) only relies on the patches blackness of your eyelids because it gives you a base to try and sculpt an image around... almost like cloud gazing! You can also try doing it with your eyes open. 2. The apple example might not be ideal here, mainly because I'm talking over it and directing it a little too quickly. The point isn't specifically imagining an apple, it's visualizing absolutely anything. It could be a plastic blue cube, a china mug, stormy skies, a magical flying cat with long wispy purple fur and bright pink stripes, the subject doesn't matter, just focus on the level of clarity when imagining anything. 3. The purpose of this video was never intended to be a 'woe is me' story (not that many people have interpreted it that way). It was primarily to open up discussion about this topic. Aphantasia is difficult to diagnose because nobody see inside your visual mind. It's highly subjective. However, I think attention needs to be brought to the variety of clarity that we individually experience. It's and ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING topic! I've been asking everyone I know how they think and see in their mind, because it's such a contrast to how I work without images. I wanted to prove to you all that you can just find other ways to problem solve rather than giving up. I wouldn't be where I am today with my career in concept art and animation if I didn't push through the barriers. 4. Thank you so much for sharing such personal responses. It's a great topic to open up to with family, friends, coworkers, classmates, teachers, anyone! So go out there and find out for yourself how you compare to others! it might help you to help yourself if you need to approach creative work...or anything that requires visualization. 5. Dropping links in the description of interesting articles to check out! There's also the Aphantasia sub reddit. (will update this with anymore info if required) :)
With the apple and the the Scala from 0-10 I was at 0 but sometimes when I concentrate really hard I can see the image I'm trying to see with not many details but it's there for a half of a second .I think I trained it because I couldn't see in my mind either. So I'm happy. 🎉
I THOUGHT TEACHERS WERE JOKING WHEN THEY SAID CLOSE YOUR EYES AND IMAGINE IT AND I COULD NEVER SEE ANYTHING I THOUGHT IT WAS NORMAL WHY HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF THIS
Brittany McKeage I’m so confused. Say the teacher told you to imagine an Apple. Are you actually supposed to SEE it??? Because all I see is darkness, but I can still picture the Apple I’m so confused rn
@@DietDrKelp-ty3fh Think the people here are confused. I think it's just imagine not actually see. So it's normal to not see it but imagine it. Edit: just to clarify, normal people can't see behind their eyelids, but can imagine stuff, so it's normal to not be able to see images with your imagination. People with Aphantasia can't imagine stuff.
Years ago I worked with a director to produce a theatre show. She also had aphantasia, and that's where I first found out about it. She would bring a big pen, pencils and a pad and anything she wanted to describe or visualise she had to draw it, and we had to draw settings, props and storyboards out on paper for her to see it to get her approval. She couldn't run things through in her head, not even scripts. But she was the best director I've ever worked with.
I can‘t see anything when I have my eyes closed and try to imagine something. But when i open my eyes then I can see it. The imagined object is right in front of me but transparent. I would say 5-7. But it’s not actual seeing. It’s so hard to explain.
U r not alone. Its probably coz of daydreaming. I always daydream with my eyes open. And besides the only time i can visualize stuff is when im either dreaming or daydreaming. But i can't for the life of me do it on demand
Alica Tomešová I’m he same way. I can’t even figure out what’s happening. What I see is so subtle and mixed with darkness that I’m not really sure if it’s there. When I think about picturing things in my head I can’t do it, but I can sometimes picture things. It’s really confusing and I’m not totally sure if I’m seeing anything
@@IgnitionP Yeah.. but.. it's not like I'm "seeing" it. It's like an abstract forming of familiar concepts. Hard to explain. Brains are weird dude, don't pretend like you know all about em!
I made your comment have 69 likes, unlike these fools. Also I didn't think about an apple, I thought about a soldier with a gun fighting aliens, because apples are boring.
People watching this fall into 2 groups: Group 1: Realizes some people can't see stuff and imagine it. Group 2: Realizes some people can see stuff and imagine it.
And people like me who thinks everyone is confused about the fact that imagination comes from memories and if you’ve never seen something before then you will obviously never be able to imagine it up in your head. People are all over the place in the comment section agreeing on different definitions of what imagination means. You can’t imagine what a doufsdh is because you’ve never heard of or seen a doufsdh before. Same difference of why you can imagine only what you’ve ever seen before. Y’all are discrediting yourselves by thinking that recalling images isn’t the same thing as using your imagination.
Emmi17 SAME, my Buddhist friend who was trying to teach me meditation would get SUPER mad at me because during meditation, I couldn’t sit still, my attention span was short, and I couldn’t visualize anything she was telling me to see. Now I know why. People tell you to focus on your breathing so I guess I just focus on the sound? Idk if other people are actually picturing in their mind the rise and fall of their breathe. But when I can no longer hear my breathing because it’s so quiet, I feel like I’m meditating wrong. Open my eyes to check if I’m actually breathing, get distracted by something else, remember I’m supposed to be meditating...so on and so forth 😂
@@Euphoryaaa It's totally fine to get distracted and then remember you're meditating and then go back to focusing. That's the very thing mindfulness meditation is training. If you want to minimize that particular distraction, you can try keeping your hand on your stomach or wherever you can feel the rise and fall of your breath. I have a vivid visual imagination, but when I do mindfulness meditating, I'm trying to focus on what's actually there through my senses. The ideal for me is to sort of lazily observe the things that go on in your mind, whatever the form, but you get distracted by them, noticing it and regaining focus. If breathing is not something you can focus on, you can also try to find some other focus point.
I recently found out that this inability to visualize is not normal, and since I found out, I’ve found explanations for so many things I’ve always struggled with. I realized why I hate reading or why I am so terrible at character designs or just creating anything original. being an artist as well, I can confirm that this is REALLY frustrating, and the only good thing about it is that I don’t have to worry about remembering or seeing a visual that I didn’t want to see. Either way, I really envy those who do have the ability to visualize things.. (also I know that nobody cares, and that nobody is gonna read this, I just wanted to get my thoughts out.. thanks :>)
That's actually super interesting to me. I can't visualize stuff either, but I've always loved reading. I've always been super fast at it (maybe because I'm not slowing down to picture what I'm reading?), but I've always struggled to do mental math.
It's the complete opposite for me. Instead of being unable to form images in my head, my mind is producing too many images all the time! I get lost in them!
Everybody sees darkness. You're normal. It's just that some people can't briefly imagine something. If you're so confused, here's an example: think of your dad. No need to close your eyes. If you see him, you're making a fuss over nothing.
ALIcIA fAE …I cant. I know the day I had a professor who looked like him, I freaked the fuck out because I was terrified he had found me, but it took me pulling up his Facebook profile through my brother’s acct to visually look at his face to reassure myself he didn’t fly here just to scare me and masquerade as my ethics professor. Though that class gave me a LOT of panic attacks because of it.
@@sterlingklein5626 I'm sorry that happened to you, but again, anyone would do the same in your position. It's actually quite rare to have a spot on image of someone in your mind,and it makes sense for you to want to see your dad's account for physical reassurance.
It's not necessarily an image like you would see in a picture or on your phone. For me, it's in the back of my head and I know it's there but it's not a literal picture. I can't literally see it with my eyes.
@@faye7199 i don't think you understand. It's like the video says, if I see my dad in person or in a picture I can *recognize* him, but if you want me to *think* about him I can't think of anything apart from 'black hair' because I just know the fact he has it but I can't see it. Its so weird because it's like thinking visual things the same way we think abstract things? Like if you tell me to think about empathy I can tell you things about it but I can't *see* empathy, the same way I can't see a triangle but i can tell you it has 3 sides. Another example: when I draw I don't know how a line will look like till I've already drawn it, which makes things frustrating because you can't really visualize where you need to put the next line and you gotta just gamble that it's in the right place.
Now that I realize...that’s me. I cannot see it but I can picture it in my head. It’s only if I stare at something JUST something or light for too long when I look away it shows it in a transparent color or blue red or black. I think it’s because my bad eyesight tho :|
y’all have to understand that people without aphantasia still see black when they close their eyes and visualize, they see the images IN THEIR HEADS not on their eyelids
I finally found that this is why I cannot get hypnotized or follow guided meditations despite trying many times. We are told to picture things, and just like the video shows, I get highly stressed because I cannot do so and the meditation or hypnosis moves on leaving me struggling and feeling tons of anxiety. The video is spot on.
OMG ALL OF THIS! I even play them with a black screen on TH-cam to fall asleep, and I've never been able to do it, which does the opposite effect, making me even more stressed that I can't picture it. This is MINDBLOWING TO ME that I'm not alone! I am left-handed and musically creative, but with all the spiritual things and personality tests, the idea of being a "daydreamer" is something I thought maybe 2% of the population could do. I guess it turns out everyone can and I'm the 2% 😂
I literally found out YESTERDAY that my BF of 5 years has aphantasia, bc we’re in the process of buying our first house and while talking about paint he casually mentioned that he’d have to see swatches bc he couldn’t picture it in his head, chuckled softly, and finished with “I can’t picture anything in my head actually.” He said he knew most people weren’t like that but he had no idea there was a name for it.
I found out yesterday i had it after 19 years. In some way i thought it was the norm i thought when people said imagine something in your head it was more like a metaphor or telling you to think about it. I did not realise that most people can actually visualise in their head.
50 years of life, never knew anyone could do this because black is all I've ever seen. To me, this is a superpower. I'd give anything to be able to picture stuff in my mind, instead, I pull from memory, choices and experiences. When people said things like... picture yourself on the beach...I automatically assumed they meant think about it....not literally see it
Yeah, this is why it is very underdiagnosed. It is a difference, not a disorder, meaning it doesn't really pose substantial harm to people with aphantasia. And it is one that nobody can tell unless they talk about their own internal experiences that they would otherwise assume are the same as everyone else's.
My teacher got mad at me because he said "IT'S NOT THAT HARD THINK HARDER" and I was crying the whole time because I couldn't imagine the image he talked about
I actually have the polar opposite to this: hyperphantasia. I can see, hear, taste, feel, and smell anything just within my mind. A close friend of mine has aphantasia so she and I talk about the differences in our minds all the time.
LeviHasNoRespect not really. It sounds better than it is. Losing focus happens way too quickly, and falling asleep takes forever. Plus it can develop when depression levels go up fairly quickly so there’s that ://
You say but I feel that the inability to visualize is also a major learning disability. I'm in the field of engineering, and you need to visualize how you can solve problems. I have major problem on that, I just memorized and study the concepts, and I instead memorized problems similar or related to that. Can you easily learn and solve mathematical problems, or easily remember things? Do you think your hyperphantasia doesn't have any influence in your learning ability? What are your habits though? Are you an outgoing person that visualize things, and tend to daydream? Or are you also addicted to social media such as facebook, instagram, youtube, reddit, etc? I think that is one of the major factors what most people like me have aphantasia. Most of us are busy seeing images that we no longer have time to "imagine" image in our head. Did you tend to daydream when you were young or a kid? Maybe that's the reason why you can "hypervisualize"... you've max out your visualization skill in video game terms through doing it repeatedly in the past that it now became second nature or maybe not.
Personally, I can see things in my mind for just a second and it just fades out of my memory slowly and I can’t remember it without looking at it again. I’VE TRIED to explain his to my teachers but they still move reallly quickly :,)
Same. An image can pop into my mind for a split second, but it's like the moment I try to focus on it "see the details" it just all turns to mush. The closest I can relate it to is like having a strong eye glasses prescription, where you get to wear your glasses for half a second but then have to take then off whenever you start to focus on something.
when I close my eyes, I cannot really see the details or make it go forward in time it is just a frame. But when I do it with my eyes open like imagining a rotating Rubik's cube in my hand I can do it with only slight difficulties.
I don't know whether I can visualize or not... that's so weird. I can like imagine things in my head, but I'm not sure if I really "see" them? It feels like they are far away, but still there. Idk.
Same, I have no problem whatsoever imagining and thinking about things, details as well. But I don't actually *see* them when I close my eyes. I literally just 'imagine' seeing it. I thought everyone else did the same and reading that other people actually see pictures and movies in their heads scares me....
As someone that lived life in fantasyland and being a daydreamer I had no idea that this type of condition existed and I am so fascinated! Thanks for sharing!
You can still daydream and have this condition. It can take on a different form tho such as sound, motion, story or sequence of events, basic concepts and other senses other than sight, some other form than image. You might not be able to see an image but you can role play a scenario, voice a conversation, gesture the act of throwing a weapon or fireball or shooting it. Also not seeing it =! not experiencing it. I absolutely love fantasy books and while i can't see knights and goblins in my head or any image clearly the books still elicit similar emotions and where the worldbuilding is good and succint allow me to imagine the concept of something even if i can't see the image. I can understand the concept of a line of charging knights, a mage's fireball , a nasty deamon or some other story climax and have that give me the chills without being able to imagine the image of it. I can imagine the concept of a fireball sizzling in the air it's just "invisible" ? I suppose that's a good way of explaining it. And my ability to imagine these invisible objects is limited to what i can keep in my head at any one time because you have to keep track of invisible edges, effects or features that make up a whole. Closing my eyes or not doesn't improve my ability to imagine at all but hand gestures, movements do, anything that simplifies what i need to keep track of. Imagining a voleyball is rather simple. It's a round object with a pattern of various color polygons. Doesn't mean i can see it but i can still experience the satisfaction of said volleyball hitting an unlikable imaginary character's face should that occur in a book or my head. I can imagine the throw was super fast, it's just a round volleyball with a jetstream and i can imagine it hitting the jaw area. Lets call it a comic character and have the round head deform on impact so his cheek turns into a concave plane. It's difficult and it helps if i write it down as an aide or playact it with body gestures but i can still experience it all the same even if in a diminished or alternate version.
@@KidRage visualizing isn't like doing telekenesis :O it's not a supernatural skill, it's just a mundane thing most people can do to some extent. It's useful but obviously not necessary to function properly, since so many people with aphantasia get by, even have sucessful careers in Art / design without even realizing they are "missing" something that most people can do.
@@Luculencia no where near what the fuck what Im talking about. Try again chik 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼. Where does that education come from? The public school system. Fuck with that shit. Get out learn more. Theres more to lifes than their bullshit. Im studying quantum physics. And real shit. Our thoughts and visualizations are the power house of our existance. Every step we make every shit we take all begins with a thought. So if youre using this power to think about bullshit, its gona get you mowed down by booty hole bandits. S e e k 911 immediately. -Love Nike. 😘
Jamie really chose nightmare difficulty for her career without realizing. Animation's great though, can't imagine how she does it without previewing the frames in the mind.
One time in school, a biology teacher showed us some chaotic patterns and asked what we see. It was some sort of test. Everyone in the classroom had the same answer, but I couldn't see anything. She told me I had a bad fantasy. It got stuck in my head for some reason. And it also took me off guard, because I remember having a rich fantasy when I was younger - creating stories, character designs, making up interactions that never existed, sometimes even having a hard time distinguishing the real world from the imaginary world.
I feel this way right now. I'm trying to imagine an apple and like I know what apples look like but like I don't understand if I can visualize it or not. Which I'm guessing means I can't lol. But in like elementary and middle school I used to daydream a lot. Now I wonder, did I lose that ability or maybe I just practiced with it more and could do it better? I loved fantasy books, read them as recent as last summer, but I wonder if I'll still enjoy them now. I really want to try although I'm too busy right now.
...are you telling me there's people who can actually *SEE* images in their mind when they think about it??? i always thought that was just like. what you call it, but that no one was *actually* able to do it. what the heck.
i thought that when we would do that at school they would just say it, but know you actually couldn't. i didn't know you could actually see things, that's pretty wack. now lowkey i wish i could. :/
Sometimes I get so lost in it I zone out and cant see my surroundings or hear them. Dont have to close my eyes though. Used to replay movies in my head as a kid to put myself to sleep.
The fact that people can’t visualize things in their mind is crazy to me. I can literally picture myself walking through places I’ve been as if I was actually there.
You know... For a long time ive always wondered why I couldnt visualize things. My dad always talked about books being a movie in his head and I so desperately wanted that. To imagine myself in such vivid places instead of where I was at. Knowing that a lot of people have it makes me feel better that I'm not alone in it, but makes me sad because I always thought that I could try harder. I still can't, but instead have a long personal story that I hope to one day visual. And when I do I know its gonna be epic.
Voice-activated AI-assisted creation tools such as Star Trek type holodecks (or at least the bare bones version displayed on computer monitors) are going to be fun.
I find it so interesting that this is just starting to be talked about, I always assumed everyone visualized things the way I did. I can see a 10 clearness picture but it disappears within a second. I would love to meet someone with aphantasia and hear their personal experience!
I think i have aphantasia i also just learned about it. I’m very good at math and not very creative at all and now I realize it’s probably because of that. When i was young in my school we would do relaxation exercises and most of them told us to imagine something and I thought that you might be able to see something very vague but not much normally. I now realize they actually wanted us to do that and it feels weird looking back on it. Also I was into lucid dreaming for a bit and that uses a lot of visualization that I just don’t have. It was very frustrating but I’m I learned about it bc it helps me realize why I’m not creative
I am a creative person, my whole life it's dedicated in both drawing and creating stuff... But I just realized, that I can create the concept but I have only shades so I the scale she make, I'm in a 1/2 (?). And I'm completely bad at logical stuff
So here I am, a neat 0. For me it's pretty hard to understand how you guys see into your mind. And I guess you have the opposite question so let's explain it. When I close my eyes and try to see an apple I don't see it, I think it. This means that there is no image. First of all, whenever I close my eyes I see nothing, pure black. Wven when I try to imagine it keeps being black. This also happens which memories, I know what happened and how it happened, however I can't see it. Let's talk about counting the sheep before sleeping. I want you to imagine it, now describe it with words. This description that you just made is what afantasia feels like. There is no image, however we can think. "So there is a place where sheeps jump over a fence, there is the first sheep, now the second one etc". To put the example of the apple, I know that it's green, I know that it's round etc. Therefore I know what an apple is like but not what it looks like. There are however some compensation mechanisms that at least ai use. Whether my eyes are closed or not I am gonna do as if I was looking at an apple by making my eyes follow the perimeter of the apple. This is also how I hear sounds. (This isnt aphantasia, it has another name that I can't remember). When trying to imagine a sound I am gonna move my throat as if I was doing it. No air passes but this allows me to have a close fell of what the sound is like. However this also has its issues. Let's say I try and imagine a bark. I don't hear a bark but myself doing the sound of a bark.
If you tell me "close your eyes and visualize an apple" I can't do it. But I'm a huge reader and can visualize novels really well. And I daydream all the time.
@antiami I can see a vague shape but it's not clear. Seeing things on command doesn't come naturally to me. It's almost like (excuse the pun) my mind has a mind of its own.
Same! when I close my eyes I just see black and when she said to think of "apple" I only thought of the word because I'm dyslexic and they NAILED that knowledge into me.
I have aphantasia. If I'm asked to imagine something, a list of words come to mind that describes said thing. For 'apple', words like red, juicy, shiny, round, etc. come to mind. What I find quite interesting is if you ask me to imagine something (we'll go with apple again because why not) and then ask me to draw what I imagined, I'll draw the same exact picture every time, despite not actually imagining that picture.
You need more fantasy. I see a dark black apple in front of a dark black wall. Looks like black is my happy color? 🖤 On the other hand I'm hyper creative perfectly using CAD systems. I create a lot of stuff with 3D printing. I can think in 6 dimensions. I just cannot see with closed eyes. I thought that's more than logic to see nothing when your eyes are closed. Makes sense? Huh? I would give my left hand to be able to visualize.
I knew i wasn't the only one!!!! i cant picture anything either, but the way you describe knowing what something looks like, but not REALLY see it is exactly what I see(or dont haha)
This is quite shocking to me. As a maladaptive daydreamer, I can't imagine a world where I couldn't see images in my head of whatever I want to think about. When the earplugs go in, I feel like I've opened a new part of me. I'm sure there's other ways of self reflection even when you have Aphantasia. It just feels so sad that some people wouldn't be able to express themselves with little pictures in their heads.
Same! I have literally the opposite problem. I often have trouble functioning in the physical world because my mind wanders too much. I could sit in a car next to you with my eyes fixed on the road for the entire duration of the drive, and I would still not be able to find my way back, because most of that time will have been spent unwillingly playing all sorts of scenarios through my mind's eye. I've just come across the term 'hyperphantasia', I may have to look into it.
@@csn583 Sorry, I don't really understand how that word relates to anything I said, in any way. I did not mention talking or language (which is what 'verbal' means) at all, and I 100% guarantee you that those things have nothing whatsoever to do with what I was saying. I was talking about me, fantasising, in my head. No verbal component whatsoever to that situation So what do you mean? I'm super confused, lmao
SAME! I read so much and I can make stuff so vivid (it sometimes scars me 😳) but when I shut my eyes, I see darkness and just an apple. No background...nothing...and it’s also super far away like instead of this big: O it’s this big: o
When the teacher said to "Picture/Imagine this..." I always just went along with it but the entire time thinking."No one actually sees this stuff, right?"
Yeah, that's a common thing. You'll see lots of comments almost exactly like yours. You'll see people with aphantasia coming to this realisation: "I always thought they were speaking metaphorically" or "I thought they wanted us to act and move as if we were seeing that" or things like that. Yeah in fact, they do mean form a visual image in the mind. For some it's fuzzy and just has geometry and movement, for others there's detail, texture, color. I'm more in the former group, though I can imagine two contrasting colors; I just can't really imagine a color by itself with no way to compare it.
I finally found another artist with Aphantasia! Ive been diagnosticed since i were 5 years old, i think its cool to find more persons like me and better if theyre also artists!
Hello! I'm pretty sure I have aphantasia if not hypophantasia. I've found drawing everyday has really helped with being able to just start forming things on paper. Like it's a habit now that my brain is trained to perform, despite having no visual starting point for a drawing. Seeing so many on here with the same thing is... refreshing?
Ok so this video made me realize I wasn't visualizing things at all. But I always thought I was. Like the apple thing, at first I was like yeah I see it perfectly clearly. Then the more you explained the more I was like "wait you mean actually see it? Like it's there in your head? People can do that? What!?". When I was trying to visualize an apple it was just descriptive words I was literally just thinking " its red, its round, its fruit, it grows on trees". So I'm now just realizing that that's not how everyone else thinks. Good to know. Also I've always been super into fiction but only super descriptive books and maybe this is why.
I have this and I love to read , but I cant see anithing I read, Its like an audio book but I can feel things?😅 I don't know how to explain it. I have maladaptive daydreaming too, I have a lots of story in my head when Im daydreaming, but I cant visualize it. I have never thought about people can really see things in their minds. It can be soo amazing to actualy see imaginary things!
It's not this fault he doesn't know such a condition exists. Close to if not 100% of the people who watched this video didn't! To me and others without aphantasia it's perfectly natural and taken for granted. Up until now the thought of someone not being able to see images in their mind has never gone through my head, so without this video I'd never know.
@@nathdominguezmazhari1094 idk what hyperphantasia but from what I understand if you have this you can imagine things really well, but the thing is for me is that if I read something or am being told something I can't help but imagine it and it can get really annoying because if I just here words I will imagine the word in many different ways and it can be overwhelming a lot of the time so I listen to music to help me and I always have to have something on like music or I will start to feel like I am being watched and I will feel like something is Gunna come kill me. but I hope everyone who reads this has a good day. :)
It's interesting, some of the things you're describing are familiar to me, despite having a vivid imagination. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how my brain works, and one realisation I had is that my visual imagination is built up of layers of concepts. When I imagine a street, I don't "see" every house in great detail at the same time. I just get a general visual sense of "houseness" from the direction they're located in. But if I focus my thoughts on it, more concepts come into mental focus and thus into visual focus as well. I might now get a visual sense of "windowness" from where the windows are, "brickness" from the walls, and so forth. Several of these layers are active at once. Colour, texture, lighting, shape, and so forth. I can either see more things in less detail, or fewer things in more detail. But if you set that visual element aside for a moment, it sounds pretty similar to how you say you conceptualise elements. I suppose my spatial imagination is even more vivid than my visual one. I don't know whether those are actually related. So I wonder, can you imagine a distance and direction relative to yourself? If you can, I have an interesting idea I'd like to share. Instead of trying to visualise an image, forget about the image. Just place _concepts_ in your mental space. Now you can go to those concepts and work them out in more detail. The idea here is that if you're working out those concepts in enough detail, even though they don't form an image, they could potentially _approximate_ an image by their location alone. I can imagine a window, and see its shape, reflectivity, the window frames, and so forth. But in your case, perhaps it could work to think along the lines of, "one corner of the window is in this place, another corner is there, the pane of glass is inset X distance from the edge". Once you get a feel for the key locations involved in defining an object in mental space, you can start translating that to drawing instructions. If you can go conceptually from "Here is what I want" to "Here is how I'm going to draw it" without needing visuals, it might cease being an obstacle altogether. Of course I'm saying all this knowing nothing about what it's really like to have aphantasia, so there could well be reasons this won't work for you that I'm unaware of, (or maybe you're even already doing this). I'm not saying anything about how this _should_ work, just about how I intuit that it _might_ work, knowing that I might be wrong. You know far more about this than I do. I'm sharing this idea just as much out of my own curiosity whether it'll work as anything else.
Um...no...some of us can actually picture it. Like, I see it, in detail, in the back of my mind. I see movies that I am a part of when I read books. I see details that aren't even in the writing.
@@artsyrhin8423 Only kidding xD I can visualize things in detail. I just feel like there's a misconception with aphantasia to where people misdiagnose themselves because they think everyone else sees some vivid "projection" of a full-color image on the back of their eyelids or something
I remember trying to draw when I was a kid. I asked my older brother how he can draw so good and he said you just close your eyes and picture what you want to draw, then open draw, close look at what you want to draw again, open draw ect. I thought he was joking.
Oh f**k. You just blew my mind mate. So this is why I've never been able to draw anything else than abstract stuff, although I enjoy drawing and painting. Damnit.
@@WaveMrNight slow down buddy, trust me when I tell you this, imagination can be helpful but it's nowhere near the crops if your art. I have the most imaginitve mind out of my family, I can make people talk, change their look and do anything and all the physics looks extremely realistic down to the movement of their hair, but I still suck measurably at drawing. Trust your instinct, you're not missing out that much
I kind of have the same experience but its the opposite for me I dream in 1st person and when l think about the dream later I think about it in 3rd person
I'm Strange. I cannot picture things with my eyes closed, my mind just goes black, i see nothing. But when my eyes are OPEN, i can visualize something perfectly fine.
RELATABLE. However, when I noticed this a few years ago I began practising trying to imagine things with my eyes closed. And now I'm kinda getting the hang of it. It is quite hard though, not gonna lie.
Wait- so you can like see it as if it was one of those weird Snapchat filters where they show you things in the real world?? And here I am not seeing shit ;-;
I discovered this about myself about 1 year ago. It answered a lot of questions I had about not being able to remember of describe faces when the person was not in front of me. I would never be able to describe someone to those amazing crime artists who do workup sketches of suspects. I can relate to the part about not being able to read fiction, and to not be able to deal with guided visualizations. Same thing about not being able to imagine being on a beach. I DO think that aphantasia was a tremendous handicap in my attempt to pursue a degree in art. I also go through tons of images to create art or design. I don't do much art these days, and I think that aphasia played a large role in that. I have trouble catching visual detail even when my eyes are open. Maybe it is just because I can't remember the visual details that contributes to the fact that I notice something new whenever I go for a drive or a walk. I can go down the same street hundreds to thousands of times and ask, "was that there before?" The answer from my husband is always, "yes."
OMG as a true crime girl, this point could not hit more true!!! I've always wondered how people could do that! The fiction books with all the boring descriptions of the scenes I always hated and wanted to get to the dialogue....It's weird because I can recognize someone's face if I see them again..I don't know..I can tell you I am definitely less than 4 on this spectrum
When I was younger, I used to sort of visualize stories in my head before I slept. I would do this nearly every night and these fictional stories would last for months, continuing around where I left off the previous night. Is that weird? Anybody else do this too?
I used to be able to do the same thing when I was younger. I would visualize the same story and play it in my head as if it was a movie where it would pick up wherever I left off the previous night.
I did this in middle school and early high school. I still visualize and think about a lot before bed, not stories per se but about the world or events that could possibly happen.
I used to daydream before bed a lot and all the time during school. It's called maladaptive daydreaming if it like, interferes with you're life and you feel the urge to always return and daydream for hours. It doesn't happen as often for me now, but every so often I'll find myself daydreaming in a similar way when I listen to music.
I just found out about this about a week ago. Usually people find out they have it when they finally realize other people CAN see things, versus them learning they can't.
so i have a tradition: every night when i go to sleep i came up with a story, same as a movie just adjusting the story for a third character as me, or making a new one. and i try to imagine it. I've got a situation, the story go on for a minute and puff... i fell asleep. Next night I make a little recap, maybe change something happened yesterday, and when the new part should come puff I asleep. And that's happens every time, for example: I needed a month sleep to arrive to a ball (step out from the carriage and go up on a stairs) it's fun, but sometimes annoying
I kinda do that. I struggle a lot with sleeping so to help me i start playing a story in my head the last one i did and was a zombie invasion and while i imagine it it helps me fall asleep
OMG I DO THE EXACT SAME THING! I can’t fall asleep without creating some sort of story or movie to think about. But usually when I fall asleep, I dream of something completely different. I thought I was the only one who did this!
Squirrel Puffle wow that I didn’t know people would create such epic stories like that. I usually just think about going to school or hanging out with my friends. Sometimes when I actually fall asleep, I’ll dream of some crazy things, but most of the time it’s pretty normal.
I thought i was the only one who did this. I would usually take a while for small parts of a story aswell. With a busy mind and nightmares I use my imagination to fight itself to create/add to a story to keep bad thought and images my mind likes to add in.
For me, I can vividly feel, sense, and "imagine" images, create them in my mind. And it can be incredibly detailed. But it's not through my eyes. I'm not actually "seeing" anything, it's like I'm sensing the image in great detail. Like it's not like ACTUALLY seeing something, being somewhere, but it's like this feeling of the thing I'm imagining, and the visuals are a sensation.
yes that happens to me and to everyone who doesn't have aphantasia, because nobody who doesn't have hallucinations can literally see things that doesn't exist
@@raquelvillalva1406 I am just explaining my experience, so people know they don’t have aphantasia. Because some people are misconstruing what it is and how people imagine things by claiming they can actually “see” things when they close their eyes.
@@henryhorne6114 I can neither see or hear stuff in my head. I can only think them. And because thinking the words isn't so effective I talk out loud ALOT if I really try to concentrate on what ever I am doing
@@henryhorne6114 I can hear stuff in my head, just not see the words in my head. I just cannot picture anything, not even a hint. I can describe things by remembering key features, but I don't see those features in my head. There was a man who lost the ability to picture things in his head after a heart surgery. They showed him a picture of an actor to study it, then took that picture away. Then, they asked him what the actor looked like. He could say key features, like the actor having blue eyes and brown hair, but couldn't picture what the actor looked like beyond that (and really wasn't picturing the blue eyes, just remember that verbal cue as it's prominent). They found the guy's visual center of the brain wasn't lighting up while describing. I have Aphantasia, and I don't really know what I miss, so it doesn't bother me much. The only annoying thing is when I can't remember what routes look like or what tools I need look like, until I can actually see them.
@@henryhorne6114 Me too. I can't believe people go through life without images in their mind. I also hear the voice of the characters or narrator when reading and "hear" or see music in my mind. I just assumed this was how everyone thought.
I thought this was normal, I never knew you could see actual images in your head! When people said ‘close your eyes and imagine this’ I thought it meant the thought of the thing lol
You can smell IT tuch it shape IT ad whatever you wanna ..you can be on moon or home or im space you see it im your head not when you close eye..you can imagine things With eyes opened
I thought everyone was able to picture things in their head.. I was very confused when I heard some people couldn't.. I can make 3d stuff, spin them around, draw a very detailed drawing, keep pictures saved from awhile ago (even from my dreams).. I could even imagine it in my hand.. I thought this was completely normal. But you guys are lucky too, at least you don't get creepy visuals when reading a horror story and thinking about scary type of stuff.
I *don't* have aphantasia, but I've heard about it before and find it fascinating! I WISH that i could trade brains for a day with one of you who has it. I think it'd be enlightening for both of us!
This shit made my art degree WAAAAAAY harder than it needed to be. Teachers are always saying to "visualise the end result" and I've always been like FUCKEN HOW???
Ugh i hated doing the "imagine something in your head" activity, i would just never participate cause it would always frustrate me. Like i didn't know what i was supposed to see. I can think of an object and go through my memory to know what it looks like but i can never keep the mental image for more than like .2 seconds and would forget everything. I can't even tell if i'm normal or not, so i just don't participate and don't care about it. But like i do have some weird smell sense. My sense of smell is really bad and i would have to have something right up to my face for me to smell it and when you mentioned chocolate chip cookies i started smelling them and it's happened before when i would smell something and everyone would claim that they couldn't smell it
The smell thing might be boogers. I can’t breath through one nostril sometimes and it’s because there’s slot of boogers in it. And if you try to stay calm and breathe will trying to keep the mental image it’s fine,if it goes away it’s fine there’s no reason to get aggravated or frustrated
That’s exactly what I do, unsure why. I could be because it’s a very artistic thing with a beat you can bop your head to with no visuals so you have to make them yourself
i have hyperphantasia. the opposite to aphantasia. i think its so sad that people miss out on this massive part of living. i can see images so vividly in my head its like a movie or camera roll. i dont have to close my eyes to imagine anything or recall visual memories.
I have this, sometimes I can't stop it and I actually get motion sickness from seeing this movie on top of reality... Does this ever happen to you? You can't stop the movie?
@@jamiestar3339omg yes. I can rarely stop it once it gets started. I’m constantly taking painkillers to help with the headaches and motion sickness😂 but I wouldn’t change anything. I love how vivid everything is.
Wow the regular capabilities of creating self imagery and monologue inside minds are already wonderful, imagine having the hyper ultra realistic version of it, amazing
Hey! I actually had someone just like you in my art class two years ago. After finding out the girl from my class couldn't imagine what her finished drawing would look like we grouped together and researched a bit. A week later we found out she was totally badass at creating art collages and mood boards. Apparently those who lack this fantasy skills are much better at analyzing things like composition and layout. Collabs with her were always epic.
I don’t think it is actually color or seeing the object more like knowing it’s there and seeing it’s details Ex I can’t see the apple but I know what It looks like and add a bunch of things but it’s not really visible but it’s like it is correct me if I’m wrong and sorry if I am
@@missildineva7455 Except I can directly imagine the object on the table next to me and visualize that. I can't directly superimpose it in front of my eyes, but my mind can come pretty close.
I try to expand my visualization abilities by imagining impossible things, like tesseracts or the ultraviolet spectrum. I only succeeded once, getting a not-purple color. I can also perfectly see my own body in a dark room, even if I don't actually see it.
Trust me... as someone with aphantasia trying to imagine what visualizing would be like is probably just as difficult as someone who can visualize imagining the opposite...
When I read a book I kind of zone out while processing the words and it’s kind of like watching a movie, but when I try to imagine the Apple I can’t see anything my minds just black
Same here and if I think back to books I've read and chapters I dont remember words but like actual scenes I've seen even tho it's all been in my head.
THIS!!!! I was thinking each of these comments to myself. It's almost like my mind doesn't see the words of the book. Instead, it instantly translates it into a visual representation. I won't remember what I've read, but I'll remember the visualization of what I've read. Also... I can visualize things, but only with my eyes open. For example... I can visualize the apple clear as day with my eyes open, but as soon as I close them that image disappears. My brain confuses me.
Wait same Plus, for me at least, the locations described in the books are vivid and unchanging and I sometimes dream in them; plus when I reread a book I remember the location completely
Yess! I don’t know if my visions are accurate tho, since my interpretation of different events and locations can be very different from scenes in their movie adaptions if they have one
It's always super disappointing when out of nowhere a noise distracts me, I realize I've zoned out, and then because I'm aware of it, I can't go back to it. But I love getting that lost in the imagery.
I've always hated guided meditation because it's always a damn beach they talk about. I want skyscrapers with infinity pools, jungles, space. I'm tired of these damn beaches
I've done three. One led me through a jungle to a clearing with a stream. One l took me through a door to a massive library. The last led me up a stairwell with my "happy place" at the top. I did that one twice. They were all meant to relax or help unlock knowledge of myself.
I love reading, especially fantasy. And while I can play out scenes in my head it has always been limited range, like a fog on the edges of everything no matter how vivid I can focus the scene. "Lets climb that mountain". I can see the mountain, but nothing beside or behind. Like I'm in a first person shooter with the rest of the scene waiting to finish loading. And I love playing first person shooters, but I only starting playing video games in my 20s, and I've been reading since I was little. Thank you for helping me learn this about myself, that I'm not broken! This also explains why I have trouble learning art techniques, because when I try to put into action something I've just seen or heard or learned, everything seems fuzzy and transparent and far away, just on the edge of recognizing. Thank you!
I'm absolutely dumbfounded over the fact that people can actually visualise things when they close their eyes. I always thought it was a metaphor or something
@@stigs6591 for me it is! Like I can imagine a whole cat and move it around and change its color and stuff. (As well as other ppl ive asked) had no idea that not everyone could do this!
I had not considered that… I know I’m not neurotypical, not by a long shot, but what have I not noticed yet? What things could possibly be connected? Please update with anything you notice, this could be a valuable conversation for many
@@sharktos3218 I can even to the point of freaking myself out. Just tested it right after reading just to make sure and yes "internal screaming" is a thing and not just a thought. You are right that it is a thought, but one that you can still "feel" inside the head.
Best way to describe this: we use our memeory to describe things, but we can't fabricate anything new, but if we try , it's just really dark and unclear
@@krome1187 I may not have aphantasia but *god damn* is this a mood. I have these great visuals in my mind but if I were to draw it, I suddenly don't know how it goes!
Thank you for animating your experience with this! I’m in grad school studying mathematics and topology (the study of spaces) has been IMPOSSIBLE for me for years! I’ve only learned last year that my struggle is that I can’t imagine spaces! (which is a topologist’s main mode of communication) Perhaps it’s a neurodivergent thing? And isn’t a “problem” that needs to be “solved.”
I recall I always struggled with solving the logic problem which requires you to visualize a 3D structure that was cut up and laid flat on a 2D paper, and connect 2 dots through the maze of the cut to pieces and flattened out 3D dice or whatsoever... I had to draw lines which connected the shredded dice sides/surfaces... Because I couldn't visualize anything in my mind.
how vivid is the images in your head because I can remember what a beach looks like I know what a beach looks like but I cant see it. I see nothing. Can you literally see a beach when you close your eyes :o
@@Mimikyu7372 Sure can! Normal, recreation of one of the cutscenes from Death Stranding, etc. When I close my eyes it's easier to see in first person, but if I'm going for third person it works just fine with eyes open. It also helps a bit to be moving around for some reason, at least for me.
Thanks so much for making this video! Up until today, I thought this was just normal. I didn't know people could 'actually see' an image in their mind's eye. When I'm trying to visualize it's more like a vague feeling (kinda hard to describe) like you're trying to squint really hard to see it. I think now that this is the reason why I love art and colors so much because it's what was missing in my mind. Thank you again!!
Lisa I can relate soooo much... I didn’t know people could actually see things cause I only saw black, I actually thought it was normal although I can only think of images and stuff
Yeah, the concept of daydreaming has never made sense to me. Same with books - visual descriptions are always the most boring part. I love descriptions of the vibe, or metaphors linking to how something else feels (eerie, bright and fresh like the morning, etc). I can barely visualize shapes, but no color, no faces, no detail. I do dream in first person and can “see” specific visual memories for just a split-second flash.
I can just see in the church, its actually cool and i close my eyes i see random things, like one day i saw random minecraft blocks with peaplo singing in them and the other day a rat waling in moskow
For some reason I can really get lost in fantasy books and “visualize” things but my mind is always fuzzy and black. I can picture things in a weird sort of way- I can almost feel them in my head. It’s really strange and I thought that was how regular people visualized things in their heads. The closest thing I can liken my experience to is Toph’s seismic sense lol. I have no trouble with imagination, I just can’t picture things in a conventional way.
i don't think i could live without seyig things in my head, i would feel empty inside, i don't understand how people can live this way, you're all really impressive.
I have this too! I am an electrical engineering student, and sometimes it helps me understand things that other people struggle to understand, because by definition they are inconceivable to the human imagination (>3 dimensions, complex signals, etc…) and most people like to understand things visually. This is just because I have to understand things from a non-visual perspective all the time! It’s pretty unhelpful most of the time, but occasionally it comes in pretty handy! If you got this far, have a great day!
I'm also an artist, and you don't understand how much relief I feel now. I used to get extremely frustrated in elementary school when I couldn't visualize with the class, I hated closing my eyes cause all I'd see is darkness. Like it feels like I'm trying to visualize things but it never appears, like the plans in my head are through words instead of pictures. So weird. Anyways thank you, so much.
Minty V all I see are swirling reds, greens and Grey's when I close my eyes. if I picture something before drawing it, I see only a few bits like an outline. srsly, when I draw something for the first time, I'm still designing its patterns! cuz I know what I want it to look like, but I can't picture it. am I around the 4 section? cuz I only see a little bit when I close my eyes
I am a 9 on the scale. The SERIOUSLY annoying part is that even with that clarity, it's SO tough to put it onto paper, screen or even in words with explanations.
@@peachylady Can you visually reproduce in your mind a simple yet amazing scene you've seen before? Like an impactful movie scene, be it animation or live action? Or even something that happened to you? I always find it easier to reproduce 2D scenes that impressed me. That's not imagining tho, that's reproducing. We're not creating anything new. But single objects... Or landscapes... Those things alone are quite difficult to process. Even if it's familiar. It's actually very frustrating, like trying to remember a person's face and failing. But a scene, where stuff happens, where agency is involved, where things move, or even static scenes, like an imminent checkmate on a chess board. That I can visualize fairly easily.
It's hard for both parts I guess. I can see clearly things too, but from that to making them it's difficult. It's hard to 'make without seeing it' and 'see but can't make bit'. :(
so... i kinda knew i had this for a while, but i never realized PEOPLE CAN PLAN OUT WHAT THEY WANT TO DRAW????? i actually had to stop the video and sit there for a while because i was so shocked... holy moly maybe im not THAT bad at drawing, maybe it's just the fact i cant plan things out in my head!!! tysm for making me realize this tbh. WAIT THIS MADE ME REALIZE THATS WHY I "FORGET" MY CHARACTERS' DESIGNS AND I CANT DRAW THEM CORRECTLY IF I DONT HAVE ANOTHER DRAWING OF THEM AT HAND. IT'S BECAUSE I CANT IMAGINE THEM AT ALL. HOLY SHIT.
Why? If you're picturing it in your mind's eye, then it's not something that you're physically seeing with your eyes. It's something that your just visualizing in your mind, and you are completely in control of and know isn't real because you're constructing and/or changing it yourself. Hallucinations are nothing like that.
In all my 28 years I never realised that I just recall parts of an image I know to be there, in reality, instead of actually seeing the thing in my mind. I just tried to visualise an apple for a good 30 mins to no avail. This is bizarre. Thank you for opening my eyes to this.
Thank you for making this video. I don't think have full aphantasia but just like you said I can't conjure scenes or objects in my head correctly. I also happen to be a big fiction reader so it's very seldom that I'm actually able to see the character's faces and poses don''t even acsk me about action scenes. But similar to you my dreams get so vivad that I actually think they might have actually happened. But I do like coming up with character designs and art scenes but they rarely actually come to what I desired and just ends up being random Pinterest images. Sorry for the long comment I'm just happy that what's going on in my brain actually has a name.
I watched the video and was extremely relieved to know I didn't have Aphantasia. Then I read your comment, looked up what Maladaptive Daydreaming is(because I have never heard of it) and realized that is something I do have. I knew it was abnormal and that it is messing with my life , but I was didn't know it was a disorder that many other people have. I am a bit in shock now that this condition has a name, and at the same time kind of relieved to know I'm not alone.
I don't know man, looking into it, just seem normal to me. Don't see why it needs to be a "disorder". Like it's pretty normal stuff I would think. Who doesn't daydream while doing repetitive tasks? I guess not everyone has the difficulty in sleeping and every day tasks... So maybe, but really it just sounds like a symptom of ADHD.
@@garbageknights This is a very personal opinion, but from my point of view, it is a disorder when it affects your life severely in a negative way. For example, a lot of people use the term OCD lightly, claiming they have it because they like being neat, but most of us can't probably comprehend how disruptive a condition like that is. Same with ADHD. Not all people who struggle to focus have it, but only those who have it can tell how much it affects their life. So even something as seemingly innocuous as daydreaming can disrupt your normal life when you do it excessively. When you basically live in your head a lot of the time and can't get out of it, that takes up a huge chunk of your day, messes with your attention span...basically keeps you from functioning properly. If it were possible to just stop doing it at will and focus, that wouldn't be a problem. But since thats not the case, I don't see why it cant be a disorder. Hence the name 'Maladaptive' Daydreaming. Ofc I haven't been diagnosed with it, so its not right to carelessly say I have it. But just saying I relate to it.
I started to get really stressed when I couldn't see anything, I thought that was normal, I can think of an apple but I can't see it I see black but have an "idea" of what it looks like based on when I last saw one but the memory isn't visual.
Same but for things like whats happening in a book I'll zone out and.. SEE it. But for this I can imagine what it looks like but I can't really SEE it, just blackness
@Jessica Dawn Yes!!! Exactly the same as me, I was trying to think of the one in my fridge. Ugh. Its actually gotten worse over time because I remember over ten years ago I use to be able to visualize at least a little bit and I remembered my dreams and now its mainly black and fuzzy.. I wanna know the science behind all this. I can never visualize faces even of people close to me that I see daily...well kinda but, I've had super cool thoughts for drawings or paintings but I can't actually draw any of it for the life of me...makes me so mad. I have such cool ideas but I can't...picture it good enough to map out how I want it Hard to explain. Now it makes sense tho I guess..
that’s so interesting. i’m a very visual person and i also draw and on that scale i was def a 10.. i always think abt things in my mind n imagine a picture.. literally always i didn’t know some ppl couldn’t or had a harder time.
I can think of concepts and I can “see” what it’d look like but not if I close my eyes. When I close my eyes I don’t see anything. But I have some VIVID ass dreams.
Ingleserang walang pera my most vivid dream was very odd, it was about the dream team, I’d recently watched dreams video so it was in my mind, that dream was really sad and I actually cried, I don’t wanna explain it all but ye.
Ok! Gonna address some comments here (also THANK YOU for sharing your stories, this is absolutely fascinating to read and discuss)
1. I'm not talking about being able to actually literally see images being played back like a film projected on your eyelids (though apparently through vigorous and consistent meditation, you can train yourself to do something akin to this). If you're seeing the black of your eyelids...that's just your eyelids. I'm referring to seeing images in your MIND. Friends who can visualize describe it as being in the back of their mind? Though, again, some of them have said it's so vivid it could be real. I wouldn't know, because I can't conceptualize it whatsoever!
The image streaming example (for those that can't visualize at all) only relies on the patches blackness of your eyelids because it gives you a base to try and sculpt an image around... almost like cloud gazing! You can also try doing it with your eyes open.
2. The apple example might not be ideal here, mainly because I'm talking over it and directing it a little too quickly. The point isn't specifically imagining an apple, it's visualizing absolutely anything. It could be a plastic blue cube, a china mug, stormy skies, a magical flying cat with long wispy purple fur and bright pink stripes, the subject doesn't matter, just focus on the level of clarity when imagining anything.
3. The purpose of this video was never intended to be a 'woe is me' story (not that many people have interpreted it that way). It was primarily to open up discussion about this topic. Aphantasia is difficult to diagnose because nobody see inside your visual mind. It's highly subjective. However, I think attention needs to be brought to the variety of clarity that we individually experience. It's and ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING topic! I've been asking everyone I know how they think and see in their mind, because it's such a contrast to how I work without images.
I wanted to prove to you all that you can just find other ways to problem solve rather than giving up. I wouldn't be where I am today with my career in concept art and animation if I didn't push through the barriers.
4. Thank you so much for sharing such personal responses. It's a great topic to open up to with family, friends, coworkers, classmates, teachers, anyone! So go out there and find out for yourself how you compare to others! it might help you to help yourself if you need to approach creative work...or anything that requires visualization.
5. Dropping links in the description of interesting articles to check out! There's also the Aphantasia sub reddit.
(will update this with anymore info if required) :)
I think I did that image streaming thing a lot when I was a kid... On the other hand, I was bored a lot more, than I am nowadays.
Huh, I've heard of that but never really thought about it. I'm about a 4 on your scale and seem to only ever see from one eye.
Thankyou for helping people (me included) realize that they have aphantasia. You are so nice and amazing, and I fully support you!
I like raisins. Does this mean you hate me?
With the apple and the the Scala from 0-10 I was at 0 but sometimes when I concentrate really hard I can see the image I'm trying to see with not many details but it's there for a half of a second .I think I trained it because I couldn't see in my mind either. So I'm happy. 🎉
error 404 image not found
I snorted.
Me too I couldn’t see anything
o my fucking god yes
😂😂😂😂
AmyRightMeow, ahh... I almost choked hahah.
I THOUGHT TEACHERS WERE JOKING WHEN THEY SAID CLOSE YOUR EYES AND IMAGINE IT AND I COULD NEVER SEE ANYTHING I THOUGHT IT WAS NORMAL WHY HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF THIS
OMG THAT WAS ME
F
Brittany McKeage I’m so confused. Say the teacher told you to imagine an Apple. Are you actually supposed to SEE it??? Because all I see is darkness, but I can still picture the Apple I’m so confused rn
@@DietDrKelp-ty3fh Think the people here are confused. I think it's just imagine not actually see. So it's normal to not see it but imagine it. Edit: just to clarify, normal people can't see behind their eyelids, but can imagine stuff, so it's normal to not be able to see images with your imagination. People with Aphantasia can't imagine stuff.
They were all like, close your eyes and I was like... w h y
I just gave myself a headache trying to figure out whether or not I could “see”
QUEEN KINKIN’ mood
Same
Same
Exactly
Same
Years ago I worked with a director to produce a theatre show. She also had aphantasia, and that's where I first found out about it. She would bring a big pen, pencils and a pad and anything she wanted to describe or visualise she had to draw it, and we had to draw settings, props and storyboards out on paper for her to see it to get her approval. She couldn't run things through in her head, not even scripts. But she was the best director I've ever worked with.
Is it weird that I can visualise clearer with my eyes open than my eyes closed? 🙂
I have the opposite of this, it is called hyperphantasia and I find it far far far easier to create worlds with my eyes open
I can‘t see anything when I have my eyes closed and try to imagine something. But when i open my eyes then I can see it. The imagined object is right in front of me but transparent. I would say 5-7. But it’s not actual seeing. It’s so hard to explain.
yo same. Eyes closed the images are kind of wispy and translucent, but having a physical world makes them have better lighting and look more real
Dang I experience exactly the same as you
U r not alone. Its probably coz of daydreaming. I always daydream with my eyes open. And besides the only time i can visualize stuff is when im either dreaming or daydreaming.
But i can't for the life of me do it on demand
is it weird that i can’t tell if i see something or not?
Alica Tomešová I’m he same way. I can’t even figure out what’s happening. What I see is so subtle and mixed with darkness that I’m not really sure if it’s there. When I think about picturing things in my head I can’t do it, but I can sometimes picture things. It’s really confusing and I’m not totally sure if I’m seeing anything
Yeah I can't tell if I'm Iike Imagining seeing it y'know?
Same
that's exactly whats happening to me
yeah, I was questioning this the whole time as I watched this. I question what we would find if we were to use brain scans to analyze this
Wait what the hell this hurts my head I thought everyone just saw black.
Yeah
Same I think of it but then it just goes black and I lose the image
i srsly thought the same thing
Me too lol
Bruh of course you see black when you close your eyes, it’s not about seeing but imagining with your mind. We don’t just see an apple in the darkness
Aphantasia- the ability to not get pictures in your mind when you hear suspicious sounds from the bedroom of your parents. It's a superpower!
it still isn't the best ability out there. beter one is being an absolute idiot.
Well, we may not be able to "visualize" it, but one would still "know" what it looks like... unfortunately.
@@arknark If you know what it looks like then you are visualizing it
@@IgnitionP no, there's a difference betwen logically knowing a fact and picturing it visually.
@@IgnitionP Yeah.. but.. it's not like I'm "seeing" it. It's like an abstract forming of familiar concepts. Hard to explain. Brains are weird dude, don't pretend like you know all about em!
'imagine changing color of that apple"
me with red-green colourblind : * screams *
Just turn it blue lol
I made mine yellow lol
I made mine green, I like green apples
I made your comment have 69 likes, unlike these fools.
Also I didn't think about an apple, I thought about a soldier with a gun fighting aliens, because apples are boring.
@@alexsharkie4677 i can't see green :'))
here’s the thing, i can imagine things and “see” them, but i only see darkness. it’s like watching a reflection in a turned off computer/tv screen.
this
same
Omg, thisssss, someone finally put it into words
same lol
Yup
The hardest thing about this is't finding out that you can't imagine, but finding out that people can.
that's so true
Yesssss
I thought that no one could see images in there head😔
Same! i always thought everyone see black when close their eyes.
same here :(. at least there's more people in the world who can't
Here too
Wait ppl can literally see stuff in they're head?! Like you can SEE it??
I have the same question, like huh?? I see a blank void but I can image it
No, SEE IT no, but I can imagine it and it seems kinda real. Like picture myself in a park walking lol
People can't?
I can see stuff sometimes
See, taste, touch, hear, and occasionally smell.
People watching this fall into 2 groups:
Group 1: Realizes some people can't see stuff and imagine it.
Group 2: Realizes some people can see stuff and imagine it.
And people like me who thinks everyone is confused about the fact that imagination comes from memories and if you’ve never seen something before then you will obviously never be able to imagine it up in your head. People are all over the place in the comment section agreeing on different definitions of what imagination means. You can’t imagine what a doufsdh is because you’ve never heard of or seen a doufsdh before. Same difference of why you can imagine only what you’ve ever seen before. Y’all are discrediting yourselves by thinking that recalling images isn’t the same thing as using your imagination.
Audiocronic i dont, please enlighten me
I'm in group 2.
GROUP 2, IM IN GROUP TWO!!
Dang everyone be like: I am in group 2!
I was today years old when I found out people can imagine in colors and images and not just general feelings within blackness
Kare raises hand me too 🙀
Emmi17 SAME, my Buddhist friend who was trying to teach me meditation would get SUPER mad at me because during meditation, I couldn’t sit still, my attention span was short, and I couldn’t visualize anything she was telling me to see. Now I know why.
People tell you to focus on your breathing so I guess I just focus on the sound? Idk if other people are actually picturing in their mind the rise and fall of their breathe. But when I can no longer hear my breathing because it’s so quiet, I feel like I’m meditating wrong. Open my eyes to check if I’m actually breathing, get distracted by something else, remember I’m supposed to be meditating...so on and so forth 😂
@@Euphoryaaa It's totally fine to get distracted and then remember you're meditating and then go back to focusing. That's the very thing mindfulness meditation is training. If you want to minimize that particular distraction, you can try keeping your hand on your stomach or wherever you can feel the rise and fall of your breath. I have a vivid visual imagination, but when I do mindfulness meditating, I'm trying to focus on what's actually there through my senses. The ideal for me is to sort of lazily observe the things that go on in your mind, whatever the form, but you get distracted by them, noticing it and regaining focus. If breathing is not something you can focus on, you can also try to find some other focus point.
Same
I cant imagine not being able to do this. Its just unfathomable to me.
I recently found out that this inability to visualize is not normal, and since I found out, I’ve found explanations for so many things I’ve always struggled with. I realized why I hate reading or why I am so terrible at character designs or just creating anything original. being an artist as well, I can confirm that this is REALLY frustrating, and the only good thing about it is that I don’t have to worry about remembering or seeing a visual that I didn’t want to see. Either way, I really envy those who do have the ability to visualize things.. (also I know that nobody cares, and that nobody is gonna read this, I just wanted to get my thoughts out.. thanks :>)
I read it, and I think its nice that you do art nonetheless, it proves determination and resilience imo :)
Of course, it's also frustrating to be able to visualize things wonderfully in my head, but not be able to draw a damn thing!
That's actually super interesting to me. I can't visualize stuff either, but I've always loved reading. I've always been super fast at it (maybe because I'm not slowing down to picture what I'm reading?), but I've always struggled to do mental math.
❤
I still enjoy copious amounts of reading, however as another artist it is SO frustrating
I started imagining what aphantasia is like and then quickly realized the irony of that and stopped
I FUCKING CANT
It's the complete opposite for me. Instead of being unable to form images in my head, my mind is producing too many images all the time! I get lost in them!
ironic, isn’t it
@@CaveyMoth same
My problem is I see a finished animation or project and I try to put it on an iPad or paper and it looks nothing like the one In my head
WAIT OTHER PEOPLE SEE THINGS OTHER THAN DARKNESS WHEN TOLD TO PICTURE STUFF???
Everybody sees darkness. You're normal. It's just that some people can't briefly imagine something. If you're so confused, here's an example: think of your dad. No need to close your eyes. If you see him, you're making a fuss over nothing.
ALIcIA fAE …I cant.
I know the day I had a professor who looked like him, I freaked the fuck out because I was terrified he had found me, but it took me pulling up his Facebook profile through my brother’s acct to visually look at his face to reassure myself he didn’t fly here just to scare me and masquerade as my ethics professor. Though that class gave me a LOT of panic attacks because of it.
@@sterlingklein5626 I'm sorry that happened to you, but again, anyone would do the same in your position. It's actually quite rare to have a spot on image of someone in your mind,and it makes sense for you to want to see your dad's account for physical reassurance.
It's not necessarily an image like you would see in a picture or on your phone. For me, it's in the back of my head and I know it's there but it's not a literal picture. I can't literally see it with my eyes.
@@faye7199 i don't think you understand. It's like the video says, if I see my dad in person or in a picture I can *recognize* him, but if you want me to *think* about him I can't think of anything apart from 'black hair' because I just know the fact he has it but I can't see it. Its so weird because it's like thinking visual things the same way we think abstract things? Like if you tell me to think about empathy I can tell you things about it but I can't *see* empathy, the same way I can't see a triangle but i can tell you it has 3 sides. Another example: when I draw I don't know how a line will look like till I've already drawn it, which makes things frustrating because you can't really visualize where you need to put the next line and you gotta just gamble that it's in the right place.
I feel like I can PICTURE something but not SEE it.
yes
Now that I realize...that’s me. I cannot see it but I can picture it in my head. It’s only if I stare at something JUST something or light for too long when I look away it shows it in a transparent color or blue red or black. I think it’s because my bad eyesight tho :|
y’all have to understand that people without aphantasia still see black when they close their eyes and visualize, they see the images IN THEIR HEADS not on their eyelids
Thats how its supposed to be
@@bosslady69sa the blueish light you see after stareing at a light is actualy the light burning your retina if im not mistaken
I finally found that this is why I cannot get hypnotized or follow guided meditations despite trying many times. We are told to picture things, and just like the video shows, I get highly stressed because I cannot do so and the meditation or hypnosis moves on leaving me struggling and feeling tons of anxiety. The video is spot on.
OMG ALL OF THIS! I even play them with a black screen on TH-cam to fall asleep, and I've never been able to do it, which does the opposite effect, making me even more stressed that I can't picture it. This is MINDBLOWING TO ME that I'm not alone! I am left-handed and musically creative, but with all the spiritual things and personality tests, the idea of being a "daydreamer" is something I thought maybe 2% of the population could do. I guess it turns out everyone can and I'm the 2% 😂
I literally found out YESTERDAY that my BF of 5 years has aphantasia, bc we’re in the process of buying our first house and while talking about paint he casually mentioned that he’d have to see swatches bc he couldn’t picture it in his head, chuckled softly, and finished with “I can’t picture anything in my head actually.”
He said he knew most people weren’t like that but he had no idea there was a name for it.
wow! i'm glad he's found out
i have it
I found out yesterday i had it after 19 years. In some way i thought it was the norm i thought when people said imagine something in your head it was more like a metaphor or telling you to think about it. I did not realise that most people can actually visualise in their head.
50 years of life, never knew anyone could do this because black is all I've ever seen. To me, this is a superpower. I'd give anything to be able to picture stuff in my mind, instead, I pull from memory, choices and experiences. When people said things like... picture yourself on the beach...I automatically assumed they meant think about it....not literally see it
Yeah, this is why it is very underdiagnosed. It is a difference, not a disorder, meaning it doesn't really pose substantial harm to people with aphantasia. And it is one that nobody can tell unless they talk about their own internal experiences that they would otherwise assume are the same as everyone else's.
My teacher got mad at me because he said "IT'S NOT THAT HARD THINK HARDER" and I was crying the whole time because I couldn't imagine the image he talked about
That's cruel. I'm sorry for you...
Oof dumb kid
@@televizion9962 Lmao
I’m so sorry you had to go through that.. some teachers or even parents really don’t know how to be around kids or minors. I hope you’re okay!
Tudor Vintila dumb like your fucking video
I actually have the polar opposite to this: hyperphantasia. I can see, hear, taste, feel, and smell anything just within my mind. A close friend of mine has aphantasia so she and I talk about the differences in our minds all the time.
LeviHasNoRespect not really. It sounds better than it is. Losing focus happens way too quickly, and falling asleep takes forever. Plus it can develop when depression levels go up fairly quickly so there’s that ://
𝙄 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙩𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚 𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙄 𝙩𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙙𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩
eesh that sounds annoying but also entertaining??
@@fennetheartsyenby I would trade that for my 0 - 1 any day
You say but I feel that the inability to visualize is also a major learning disability. I'm in the field of engineering, and you need to visualize how you can solve problems. I have major problem on that, I just memorized and study the concepts, and I instead memorized problems similar or related to that.
Can you easily learn and solve mathematical problems, or easily remember things? Do you think your hyperphantasia doesn't have any influence in your learning ability?
What are your habits though? Are you an outgoing person that visualize things, and tend to daydream? Or are you also addicted to social media such as facebook, instagram, youtube, reddit, etc? I think that is one of the major factors what most people like me have aphantasia. Most of us are busy seeing images that we no longer have time to "imagine" image in our head.
Did you tend to daydream when you were young or a kid? Maybe that's the reason why you can "hypervisualize"... you've max out your visualization skill in video game terms through doing it repeatedly in the past that it now became second nature or maybe not.
Personally, I can see things in my mind for just a second and it just fades out of my memory slowly and I can’t remember it without looking at it again. I’VE TRIED to explain his to my teachers but they still move reallly quickly :,)
Same. An image can pop into my mind for a split second, but it's like the moment I try to focus on it "see the details" it just all turns to mush. The closest I can relate it to is like having a strong eye glasses prescription, where you get to wear your glasses for half a second but then have to take then off whenever you start to focus on something.
nice name
@@Xendra thank you, you have such a wonderful name as well
@@OdinsSagesame
when I close my eyes, I cannot really see the details or make it go forward in time it is just a frame. But when I do it with my eyes open like imagining a rotating Rubik's cube in my hand I can do it with only slight difficulties.
I don't know whether I can visualize or not... that's so weird. I can like imagine things in my head, but I'm not sure if I really "see" them? It feels like they are far away, but still there. Idk.
Same. I see nothing but I can imagine a floor plan of a house, like where things would go easily with a lot of detail. But I still see blackness
@@jaidynp6128 Yeesh. I'm at 1 but you're at like 0.3.
Same, I have no problem whatsoever imagining and thinking about things, details as well. But I don't actually *see* them when I close my eyes. I literally just 'imagine' seeing it. I thought everyone else did the same and reading that other people actually see pictures and movies in their heads scares me....
Wait, are you supposed to see colors?
anime nerd
As someone that lived life in fantasyland and being a daydreamer I had no idea that this type of condition existed and I am so fascinated! Thanks for sharing!
You can still daydream and have this condition. It can take on a different form tho such as sound, motion, story or sequence of events, basic concepts and other senses other than sight, some other form than image. You might not be able to see an image but you can role play a scenario, voice a conversation, gesture the act of throwing a weapon or fireball or shooting it. Also not seeing it =! not experiencing it. I absolutely love fantasy books and while i can't see knights and goblins in my head or any image clearly the books still elicit similar emotions and where the worldbuilding is good and succint allow me to imagine the concept of something even if i can't see the image.
I can understand the concept of a line of charging knights, a mage's fireball , a nasty deamon or some other story climax and have that give me the chills without being able to imagine the image of it.
I can imagine the concept of a fireball sizzling in the air it's just "invisible" ? I suppose that's a good way of explaining it. And my ability to imagine these invisible objects is limited to what i can keep in my head at any one time because you have to keep track of invisible edges, effects or features that make up a whole. Closing my eyes or not doesn't improve my ability to imagine at all but hand gestures, movements do, anything that simplifies what i need to keep track of.
Imagining a voleyball is rather simple. It's a round object with a pattern of various color polygons. Doesn't mean i can see it but i can still experience the satisfaction of said volleyball hitting an unlikable imaginary character's face should that occur in a book or my head. I can imagine the throw was super fast, it's just a round volleyball with a jetstream and i can imagine it hitting the jaw area. Lets call it a comic character and have the round head deform on impact so his cheek turns into a concave plane.
It's difficult and it helps if i write it down as an aide or playact it with body gestures but i can still experience it all the same even if in a diminished or alternate version.
Its not a condition its like if someone can do fucking telekenesis. Some people achieve it and some people dont.
I am a daydreamer but I have this condition
@@KidRage visualizing isn't like doing telekenesis :O it's not a supernatural skill, it's just a mundane thing most people can do to some extent. It's useful but obviously not necessary to function properly, since so many people with aphantasia get by, even have sucessful careers in Art / design without even realizing they are "missing" something that most people can do.
@@Luculencia no where near what the fuck what Im talking about. Try again chik 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼.
Where does that education come from? The public school system. Fuck with that shit. Get out learn more. Theres more to lifes than their bullshit. Im studying quantum physics. And real shit. Our thoughts and visualizations are the power house of our existance. Every step we make every shit we take all begins with a thought. So if youre using this power to think about bullshit, its gona get you mowed down by booty hole bandits. S e e k 911 immediately. -Love Nike. 😘
Oh man I didn't even know this was a thing! I'm glad you've found ways to manage and figure it out. Keep on keepin on~
Yeah, it's certainly been a bit of a wild ride! Especially after chatting with people at work. I AM PROFOUNDLY MISSING OUT :(
Hi illy! Hi Amy! I didn’t know this was a thing either! I love you both!
wow that's so sad🙁
Illy! :3
Illymation i love your vids
Jamie really chose nightmare difficulty for her career without realizing. Animation's great though, can't imagine how she does it without previewing the frames in the mind.
This is sad, it would be horrible if i couldn't imagine a map of a resident evil 2 speedrun.
Ikr😔
@Alex The fool thats good
@Alex The fool me too, i had a srcreenshot of all passcodes of the game. But i still remember all of it
I can't
Bru
As a cartoonist, I feel sad that everyone else can just make the page up in their head, while I stare at my paper for hours:D
I cant imagine things for over 2 seconds
stretchy pants good for you, kid.
I find it hard imagining things but i can, i think. But it still prevents me from drawing well xD
S.K.A you’ll get better if you work at it!
I make a whole story in my head but I can’t write it down cause it doesn’t feel right
I don’t know how, but I can picture an apple, but I can’t see it.
Lorelei Miller studios that’s literally me i know i’m thinking of an apple i can think of what it looks like, but i can see nothing at all
That's still the same condition I think? Its like recalling a memory of it but you still can't visualize it
@@bearcce6728 same I thought it was normal but then I watched this video
I think of an apple but I can't see it.
Same
One time in school, a biology teacher showed us some chaotic patterns and asked what we see. It was some sort of test. Everyone in the classroom had the same answer, but I couldn't see anything. She told me I had a bad fantasy. It got stuck in my head for some reason.
And it also took me off guard, because I remember having a rich fantasy when I was younger - creating stories, character designs, making up interactions that never existed, sometimes even having a hard time distinguishing the real world from the imaginary world.
I don't think that teacher had to say it that way
I feel this way right now. I'm trying to imagine an apple and like I know what apples look like but like I don't understand if I can visualize it or not. Which I'm guessing means I can't lol. But in like elementary and middle school I used to daydream a lot. Now I wonder, did I lose that ability or maybe I just practiced with it more and could do it better? I loved fantasy books, read them as recent as last summer, but I wonder if I'll still enjoy them now. I really want to try although I'm too busy right now.
...are you telling me there's people who can actually *SEE* images in their mind when they think about it??? i always thought that was just like. what you call it, but that no one was *actually* able to do it. what the heck.
i thought that when we would do that at school they would just say it, but know you actually couldn't. i didn't know you could actually see things, that's pretty wack. now lowkey i wish i could. :/
Sometimes I get so lost in it I zone out and cant see my surroundings or hear them. Dont have to close my eyes though. Used to replay movies in my head as a kid to put myself to sleep.
R/notlikeotherppl
I do it all the time.
Wth same 0-0
The fact that people can’t visualize things in their mind is crazy to me. I can literally picture myself walking through places I’ve been as if I was actually there.
Molly S me too, I can also imagine what I'd currently look like from someone else's view of me at any moment.
it makes me feel down that i cant picture stuff ówò
Sarah Taylor I do this way too much because I'm insecure af lol
I feel like I can see it but it’s like a really light sketch, something far away
wtf how
You know... For a long time ive always wondered why I couldnt visualize things. My dad always talked about books being a movie in his head and I so desperately wanted that. To imagine myself in such vivid places instead of where I was at. Knowing that a lot of people have it makes me feel better that I'm not alone in it, but makes me sad because I always thought that I could try harder. I still can't, but instead have a long personal story that I hope to one day visual. And when I do I know its gonna be epic.
@Thought Criminal Thats a good point, I am so sensitiv, I like calm.
Books are movies to me as well. It's really nice, I need to start reading again
Voice-activated AI-assisted creation tools such as Star Trek type holodecks (or at least the bare bones version displayed on computer monitors) are going to be fun.
@Thought Criminal I've read all sorts but fantasy is probably my favorite
When there was no internet. Reading rainbow 🌈
I find it so interesting that this is just starting to be talked about, I always assumed everyone visualized things the way I did. I can see a 10 clearness picture but it disappears within a second. I would love to meet someone with aphantasia and hear their personal experience!
I think i have aphantasia i also just learned about it. I’m very good at math and not very creative at all and now I realize it’s probably because of that. When i was young in my school we would do relaxation exercises and most of them told us to imagine something and I thought that you might be able to see something very vague but not much normally. I now realize they actually wanted us to do that and it feels weird looking back on it. Also I was into lucid dreaming for a bit and that uses a lot of visualization that I just don’t have. It was very frustrating but I’m I learned about it bc it helps me realize why I’m not creative
Go on lass....show me your hairy HAIRY beaver!
I am a creative person, my whole life it's dedicated in both drawing and creating stuff... But I just realized, that I can create the concept but I have only shades so I the scale she make, I'm in a 1/2 (?). And I'm completely bad at logical stuff
So here I am, a neat 0.
For me it's pretty hard to understand how you guys see into your mind. And I guess you have the opposite question so let's explain it.
When I close my eyes and try to see an apple I don't see it, I think it. This means that there is no image.
First of all, whenever I close my eyes I see nothing, pure black. Wven when I try to imagine it keeps being black.
This also happens which memories, I know what happened and how it happened, however I can't see it.
Let's talk about counting the sheep before sleeping. I want you to imagine it, now describe it with words. This description that you just made is what afantasia feels like. There is no image, however we can think.
"So there is a place where sheeps jump over a fence, there is the first sheep, now the second one etc".
To put the example of the apple, I know that it's green, I know that it's round etc. Therefore I know what an apple is like but not what it looks like.
There are however some compensation mechanisms that at least ai use. Whether my eyes are closed or not I am gonna do as if I was looking at an apple by making my eyes follow the perimeter of the apple.
This is also how I hear sounds. (This isnt aphantasia, it has another name that I can't remember). When trying to imagine a sound I am gonna move my throat as if I was doing it. No air passes but this allows me to have a close fell of what the sound is like.
However this also has its issues. Let's say I try and imagine a bark. I don't hear a bark but myself doing the sound of a bark.
If you tell me "close your eyes and visualize an apple" I can't do it. But I'm a huge reader and can visualize novels really well. And I daydream all the time.
Me too! That’s so weird
@antiami I can see a vague shape but it's not clear. Seeing things on command doesn't come naturally to me. It's almost like (excuse the pun) my mind has a mind of its own.
JONAH SPECK Welcome to the Hyperphantasia club
Me too !!!!
Same! when I close my eyes I just see black and when she said to think of "apple" I only thought of the word because I'm dyslexic and they NAILED that knowledge into me.
My brain is telling me what the apple looks like like for example: Red,round,in a fruitbowl- but I can’t see it in my head
Mel’s Angel that’s so crazy.....:0
I have aphantasia. If I'm asked to imagine something, a list of words come to mind that describes said thing. For 'apple', words like red, juicy, shiny, round, etc. come to mind. What I find quite interesting is if you ask me to imagine something (we'll go with apple again because why not) and then ask me to draw what I imagined, I'll draw the same exact picture every time, despite not actually imagining that picture.
I can like remember what an apple looks like but I couldnt see it
Yeah same
Me as well! My brain tells me what it looks like but doesn't show images, I can see outlines but I can't see colours
"imagine an apple, where is that apple?"
my mind: ⬛️
You're imagination is not strong.
@@7thheaven601 it's not a condition that we can control or change 😀
Is that your eyelids, or your mind's eye? Idk about her friend saying it's in the back of their mind, it's like on your forehead.
You need more fantasy. I see a dark black apple in front of a dark black wall.
Looks like black is my happy color? 🖤
On the other hand I'm hyper creative perfectly using CAD systems. I create a lot of stuff with 3D printing. I can think in 6 dimensions.
I just cannot see with closed eyes. I thought that's more than logic to see nothing when your eyes are closed. Makes sense? Huh?
I would give my left hand to be able to visualize.
@@7thheaven601 y’a we know
I knew i wasn't the only one!!!! i cant picture anything either, but the way you describe knowing what something looks like, but not REALLY see it is exactly what I see(or dont haha)
This is quite shocking to me. As a maladaptive daydreamer, I can't imagine a world where I couldn't see images in my head of whatever I want to think about. When the earplugs go in, I feel like I've opened a new part of me. I'm sure there's other ways of self reflection even when you have Aphantasia. It just feels so sad that some people wouldn't be able to express themselves with little pictures in their heads.
Same! I have literally the opposite problem. I often have trouble functioning in the physical world because my mind wanders too much.
I could sit in a car next to you with my eyes fixed on the road for the entire duration of the drive, and I would still not be able to find my way back, because most of that time will have been spent unwillingly playing all sorts of scenarios through my mind's eye.
I've just come across the term 'hyperphantasia', I may have to look into it.
@@DaveGrean I do that too, it's just verbal-centric.
@@csn583 Sorry, I don't really understand how that word relates to anything I said, in any way.
I did not mention talking or language (which is what 'verbal' means) at all, and I 100% guarantee you that those things have nothing whatsoever to do with what I was saying. I was talking about me, fantasising, in my head. No verbal component whatsoever to that situation
So what do you mean? I'm super confused, lmao
I have aphantasia and I maladaptive daydream, it’s mostly script/dialogue based and I can see it, but I can’t if that makes sense?
Are you an infp?
What's weird is when my eyes are open I can imagine perfectly anything. But when I close them I see nothing, nothing.
Same here.
SAME! I read so much and I can make stuff so vivid (it sometimes scars me 😳) but when I shut my eyes, I see darkness and just an apple. No background...nothing...and it’s also super far away like instead of this big: O it’s this big: o
Same
I can do both but sometimes it's easier with my eyes open
I know right?! Why is the brain like that?
When the teacher said to "Picture/Imagine this..." I always just went along with it but the entire time thinking."No one actually sees this stuff, right?"
Yeah, that's a common thing. You'll see lots of comments almost exactly like yours. You'll see people with aphantasia coming to this realisation: "I always thought they were speaking metaphorically" or "I thought they wanted us to act and move as if we were seeing that" or things like that. Yeah in fact, they do mean form a visual image in the mind. For some it's fuzzy and just has geometry and movement, for others there's detail, texture, color. I'm more in the former group, though I can imagine two contrasting colors; I just can't really imagine a color by itself with no way to compare it.
So when someone says “I can’t get the image out of my head” they actually meant it!?
Yes
Yep
yup
Yea
Yes..
I finally found another artist with Aphantasia! Ive been diagnosticed since i were 5 years old, i think its cool to find more persons like me and better if theyre also artists!
Hello! I'm pretty sure I have aphantasia if not hypophantasia. I've found drawing everyday has really helped with being able to just start forming things on paper. Like it's a habit now that my brain is trained to perform, despite having no visual starting point for a drawing.
Seeing so many on here with the same thing is... refreshing?
Ok so this video made me realize I wasn't visualizing things at all. But I always thought I was. Like the apple thing, at first I was like yeah I see it perfectly clearly. Then the more you explained the more I was like "wait you mean actually see it? Like it's there in your head? People can do that? What!?". When I was trying to visualize an apple it was just descriptive words I was literally just thinking " its red, its round, its fruit, it grows on trees". So I'm now just realizing that that's not how everyone else thinks. Good to know. Also I've always been super into fiction but only super descriptive books and maybe this is why.
Same
Same
Ok thx for explaining it i couldnt understand it at first
Same
i felt exactly the same
I now understand why people like books I guess they can imagine pictures but I can't see anything while I am reading I just see words
I find that really fascinating... idk y?
tony i can see stuff, buff it all is kinda dark... Im sure Thise who can see Colours are just some lucky bitches
I can't see when i close my eyes and try but when I read its like im in their world
I have this and I love to read , but I cant see anithing I read, Its like an audio book but I can feel things?😅 I don't know how to explain it. I have maladaptive daydreaming too, I have a lots of story in my head when Im daydreaming, but I cant visualize it. I have never thought about people can really see things in their minds.
It can be soo amazing to actualy see imaginary things!
Korinna Kovács yeah same
My dad asked me to imagine something and I said I can’t and he’s said “yes you can you’re just not trying”
It's not this fault he doesn't know such a condition exists. Close to if not 100% of the people who watched this video didn't! To me and others without aphantasia it's perfectly natural and taken for granted. Up until now the thought of someone not being able to see images in their mind has never gone through my head, so without this video I'd never know.
My dad has hyperphantasia, my mom is on sort of a 3 in the scale and I have aphantasia, my Dad always tells us that we just "don't try enough".
Lmao It happened to me a few years ago
@@nathdominguezmazhari1094 idk what hyperphantasia but from what I understand if you have this you can imagine things really well, but the thing is for me is that if I read something or am being told something I can't help but imagine it and it can get really annoying because if I just here words I will imagine the word in many different ways and it can be overwhelming a lot of the time so I listen to music to help me and I always have to have something on like music or I will start to feel like I am being watched and I will feel like something is Gunna come kill me. but I hope everyone who reads this has a good day. :)
I can barely imagine things, things often look shitty whenever I think about them
It's interesting, some of the things you're describing are familiar to me, despite having a vivid imagination. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how my brain works, and one realisation I had is that my visual imagination is built up of layers of concepts. When I imagine a street, I don't "see" every house in great detail at the same time. I just get a general visual sense of "houseness" from the direction they're located in. But if I focus my thoughts on it, more concepts come into mental focus and thus into visual focus as well. I might now get a visual sense of "windowness" from where the windows are, "brickness" from the walls, and so forth. Several of these layers are active at once. Colour, texture, lighting, shape, and so forth. I can either see more things in less detail, or fewer things in more detail. But if you set that visual element aside for a moment, it sounds pretty similar to how you say you conceptualise elements.
I suppose my spatial imagination is even more vivid than my visual one. I don't know whether those are actually related. So I wonder, can you imagine a distance and direction relative to yourself? If you can, I have an interesting idea I'd like to share. Instead of trying to visualise an image, forget about the image. Just place _concepts_ in your mental space. Now you can go to those concepts and work them out in more detail. The idea here is that if you're working out those concepts in enough detail, even though they don't form an image, they could potentially _approximate_ an image by their location alone.
I can imagine a window, and see its shape, reflectivity, the window frames, and so forth. But in your case, perhaps it could work to think along the lines of, "one corner of the window is in this place, another corner is there, the pane of glass is inset X distance from the edge". Once you get a feel for the key locations involved in defining an object in mental space, you can start translating that to drawing instructions. If you can go conceptually from "Here is what I want" to "Here is how I'm going to draw it" without needing visuals, it might cease being an obstacle altogether.
Of course I'm saying all this knowing nothing about what it's really like to have aphantasia, so there could well be reasons this won't work for you that I'm unaware of, (or maybe you're even already doing this). I'm not saying anything about how this _should_ work, just about how I intuit that it _might_ work, knowing that I might be wrong. You know far more about this than I do. I'm sharing this idea just as much out of my own curiosity whether it'll work as anything else.
YES I HAVE THIS TOO
I just assumed when people said “picture x thing” they meant like.... metaphorically
They do
A metaphors for what? What do you think they actually meant?
Um...no...some of us can actually picture it. Like, I see it, in detail, in the back of my mind. I see movies that I am a part of when I read books. I see details that aren't even in the writing.
@@artsyrhin8423 Only kidding xD
I can visualize things in detail. I just feel like there's a misconception with aphantasia to where people misdiagnose themselves because they think everyone else sees some vivid "projection" of a full-color image on the back of their eyelids or something
@@TracksWithDax which I do in a way. Like the image fill my mind enough that I don't see the back of my eyelids anymore.
When she said change the colour of the apple
My dumass brain: maGeNtA appLe
Mine: _Blue apple_
*they
Amy uses they/them
Mine: **colorless cause I have aphantasia**
mine: *v o i d*
dude i made the red apple to green then to purple 😂
I actually have this and never knew and thought it was normal
can u get it diagnosed or do u just know
@@beansontoast1759 For this, I think it's safe to say people who literally see nothing when asked to imagine something can self diagnose.
when i'm really inspired i can imagine a whole scene the set and all the characters so i think it could be 10! What about you?
Emily S damn it lucky. i can’t see a damn thing :(
@@beansontoast1759 sorry for you but sometimes that's not a great think you know ?
You have changed my life.
I had no idea I had aphantasia.
My life makes so much more sense now. Thank you.
I remember trying to draw when I was a kid. I asked my older brother how he can draw so good and he said you just close your eyes and picture what you want to draw, then open draw, close look at what you want to draw again, open draw ect. I thought he was joking.
Ngl I can picture stuff vividly and my drawings still look like they're in a fun house mirror so not missing out on too much for that issue
Oh f**k. You just blew my mind mate. So this is why I've never been able to draw anything else than abstract stuff, although I enjoy drawing and painting. Damnit.
@@WaveMrNight slow down buddy, trust me when I tell you this, imagination can be helpful but it's nowhere near the crops if your art. I have the most imaginitve mind out of my family, I can make people talk, change their look and do anything and all the physics looks extremely realistic down to the movement of their hair, but I still suck measurably at drawing. Trust your instinct, you're not missing out that much
Nope. I can draw without reference but am at zero on the aphantasia spectrum.
Oddly enough I also dream in third person, but when I recall the dream, I visualize in first person.
Huh.
Same ....
I kind of have the same experience but its the opposite for me I dream in 1st person and when l think about the dream later I think about it in 3rd person
@@juliettenofziger5841 that's how I remember my memories.
Same
oml! same!
I'm Strange. I cannot picture things with my eyes closed, my mind just goes black, i see nothing. But when my eyes are OPEN, i can visualize something perfectly fine.
Same
Same here
RELATABLE. However, when I noticed this a few years ago I began practising trying to imagine things with my eyes closed. And now I'm kinda getting the hang of it. It is quite hard though, not gonna lie.
I physically CAN, but only unintentionally. Like, I’ll close my eyes and see something random, but the second I try to focus in on it, it disappears.
Wait- so you can like see it as if it was one of those weird Snapchat filters where they show you things in the real world??
And here I am not seeing shit ;-;
I discovered this about myself about 1 year ago. It answered a lot of questions I had about not being able to remember of describe faces when the person was not in front of me. I would never be able to describe someone to those amazing crime artists who do workup sketches of suspects.
I can relate to the part about not being able to read fiction, and to not be able to deal with guided visualizations. Same thing about not being able to imagine being on a beach. I DO think that aphantasia was a tremendous handicap in my attempt to pursue a degree in art. I also go through tons of images to create art or design. I don't do much art these days, and I think that aphasia played a large role in that. I have trouble catching visual detail even when my eyes are open. Maybe it is just because I can't remember the visual details that contributes to the fact that I notice something new whenever I go for a drive or a walk. I can go down the same street hundreds to thousands of times and ask, "was that there before?" The answer from my husband is always, "yes."
OMG as a true crime girl, this point could not hit more true!!! I've always wondered how people could do that! The fiction books with all the boring descriptions of the scenes I always hated and wanted to get to the dialogue....It's weird because I can recognize someone's face if I see them again..I don't know..I can tell you I am definitely less than 4 on this spectrum
When I was younger, I used to sort of visualize stories in my head before I slept. I would do this nearly every night and these fictional stories would last for months, continuing around where I left off the previous night. Is that weird? Anybody else do this too?
Thats beautiful!
I used to be able to do the same thing when I was younger. I would visualize the same story and play it in my head as if it was a movie where it would pick up wherever I left off the previous night.
I did this in middle school and early high school. I still visualize and think about a lot before bed, not stories per se but about the world or events that could possibly happen.
omg yes. and i kind of still do it.
I used to daydream before bed a lot and all the time during school. It's called maladaptive daydreaming if it like, interferes with you're life and you feel the urge to always return and daydream for hours. It doesn't happen as often for me now, but every so often I'll find myself daydreaming in a similar way when I listen to music.
I didnt even know that people CAN see something when they say they imagine.
Jenny Otaku SAME
I just found out about this about a week ago. Usually people find out they have it when they finally realize other people CAN see things, versus them learning they can't.
Some times I think of something so hard I can not only see it but smell it or taste it
I thought that people couldn't actually see stuff it just kind of remembered stuff and thought it if that makes sense
I literally just realised that the way I read i remember stuff from movies and use that.
I nearly cant imaging things when sombody tells me, but when i just think, i see the most real life looking things!
Same bro. Same.
Same it's super weird
That's a big symptom of adhd.
@@jdkaffun1196 what? For real?
@@jdkaffun1196 oh geez I was literally thinking about how I am the same way. And also recently found out my sister & dad have ADD.
Oh my god i thought it was normal to not see anything in my mind thank you so much for teaching me a bit of on myself!
Legend has it that I’m still trying to visualize that apple
Lol
Same :(
Still trying? Wish you luck!
Penelope Wilkinson same 😂
Same
so i have a tradition: every night when i go to sleep i came up with a story, same as a movie just adjusting the story for a third character as me, or making a new one. and i try to imagine it. I've got a situation, the story go on for a minute and puff... i fell asleep.
Next night I make a little recap, maybe change something happened yesterday, and when the new part should come puff I asleep.
And that's happens every time, for example: I needed a month sleep to arrive to a ball (step out from the carriage and go up on a stairs)
it's fun, but sometimes annoying
I kinda do that. I struggle a lot with sleeping so to help me i start playing a story in my head the last one i did and was a zombie invasion and while i imagine it it helps me fall asleep
I do that and mine change all the time! My last one was a story when I was an airbender and I went on cool journeys with my waterbending friend
OMG I DO THE EXACT SAME THING! I can’t fall asleep without creating some sort of story or movie to think about. But usually when I fall asleep, I dream of something completely different. I thought I was the only one who did this!
Squirrel Puffle wow that I didn’t know people would create such epic stories like that. I usually just think about going to school or hanging out with my friends. Sometimes when I actually fall asleep, I’ll dream of some crazy things, but most of the time it’s pretty normal.
I thought i was the only one who did this. I would usually take a while for small parts of a story aswell. With a busy mind and nightmares I use my imagination to fight itself to create/add to a story to keep bad thought and images my mind likes to add in.
For me, I can vividly feel, sense, and "imagine" images, create them in my mind. And it can be incredibly detailed. But it's not through my eyes. I'm not actually "seeing" anything, it's like I'm sensing the image in great detail. Like it's not like ACTUALLY seeing something, being somewhere, but it's like this feeling of the thing I'm imagining, and the visuals are a sensation.
THIS
same
same
yes that happens to me and to everyone who doesn't have aphantasia, because nobody who doesn't have hallucinations can literally see things that doesn't exist
@@raquelvillalva1406 I am just explaining my experience, so people know they don’t have aphantasia. Because some people are misconstruing what it is and how people imagine things by claiming they can actually “see” things when they close their eyes.
rewatching this is makin me realize how well the transition is goin congrats my man
wait wait wait wait a minute
are you telling me that not everyone is like this and people actually can visualize things on their minds?
I'm speechless
Yeah it's really cool
I thought everyone could. I have a question, do you hear words in your head when you read?
@@henryhorne6114 I can neither see or hear stuff in my head. I can only think them. And because thinking the words isn't so effective I talk out loud ALOT if I really try to concentrate on what ever I am doing
@@henryhorne6114 I can hear stuff in my head, just not see the words in my head. I just cannot picture anything, not even a hint. I can describe things by remembering key features, but I don't see those features in my head. There was a man who lost the ability to picture things in his head after a heart surgery. They showed him a picture of an actor to study it, then took that picture away. Then, they asked him what the actor looked like. He could say key features, like the actor having blue eyes and brown hair, but couldn't picture what the actor looked like beyond that (and really wasn't picturing the blue eyes, just remember that verbal cue as it's prominent). They found the guy's visual center of the brain wasn't lighting up while describing. I have Aphantasia, and I don't really know what I miss, so it doesn't bother me much. The only annoying thing is when I can't remember what routes look like or what tools I need look like, until I can actually see them.
@@henryhorne6114 Me too. I can't believe people go through life without images in their mind. I also hear the voice of the characters or narrator when reading and "hear" or see music in my mind. I just assumed this was how everyone thought.
I thought this was normal, I never knew you could see actual images in your head!
When people said ‘close your eyes and imagine this’ I thought it meant the thought of the thing lol
me too! my teachers would tell me that but i rely on memories.
samee
@Reee Flex I have an iq of 132 but I like tiktok and snap, am I a freak?
You can smell IT tuch it shape IT ad whatever you wanna ..you can be on moon or home or im space you see it im your head not when you close eye..you can imagine things With eyes opened
I thought everyone was able to picture things in their head.. I was very confused when I heard some people couldn't..
I can make 3d stuff, spin them around, draw a very detailed drawing, keep pictures saved from awhile ago (even from my dreams).. I could even imagine it in my hand.. I thought this was completely normal.
But you guys are lucky too, at least you don't get creepy visuals when reading a horror story and thinking about scary type of stuff.
0:35 um... my apple grew spider legs and is walking around a park now
Help?
Set a trap for it
I am not a girl and yes you need help and I am sorry but it was funny to me to imagine that
But you are able to imagine better than me
This some Santa Clarita diet type shit
@Gacha Emilia I imagined it, like, 6 feet tall help
I *don't* have aphantasia, but I've heard about it before and find it fascinating! I WISH that i could trade brains for a day with one of you who has it. I think it'd be enlightening for both of us!
the difference between us is that we want to change it for a lifetime, not just for a day lol
I've went from being like a 9 on the scale to around a 3 from the pre-pubescent age to late teens. I'm not sure why and I hate it.
This shit made my art degree WAAAAAAY harder than it needed to be. Teachers are always saying to "visualise the end result" and I've always been like FUCKEN HOW???
So ... okay. You'd know what the McDonald's sign looks like if you saw it, but you can't remember it right now???
@@GlennDavey I don't know bout his side but to me
I can remember it but can't see it if that makes any sense
It's process of creating, you don't know exactly what you will end up with, exactly, but you have a vague direction.
At least what happens for me.
@@GlennDavey for me I can draw it but when I close my eyes and try to imagine it in my head it's just the black void
I thought "visualize" was a figure of speech. :(
Ugh i hated doing the "imagine something in your head" activity, i would just never participate cause it would always frustrate me. Like i didn't know what i was supposed to see. I can think of an object and go through my memory to know what it looks like but i can never keep the mental image for more than like .2 seconds and would forget everything. I can't even tell if i'm normal or not, so i just don't participate and don't care about it.
But like i do have some weird smell sense. My sense of smell is really bad and i would have to have something right up to my face for me to smell it and when you mentioned chocolate chip cookies i started smelling them and it's happened before when i would smell something and everyone would claim that they couldn't smell it
Yeah, I actually started developing something similar to that. It's only been in the last few years that smell thing has been happening to me though.
The smell thing might be boogers. I can’t breath through one nostril sometimes and it’s because there’s slot of boogers in it. And if you try to stay calm and breathe will trying to keep the mental image it’s fine,if it goes away it’s fine there’s no reason to get aggravated or frustrated
same i also cant keep the mental image for .2 seconds
I have that problem too
I can’t imagine it when someone tells me to but I can listen to music and have a whole entire war in my head with my eyes open
That’s exactly how I am! I basically make up my own music videos in my head.
Do you know what it means🤨🤨🤨
Yesss.
That’s exactly what I do, unsure why. I could be because it’s a very artistic thing with a beat you can bop your head to with no visuals so you have to make them yourself
Ohhh
i have hyperphantasia. the opposite to aphantasia. i think its so sad that people miss out on this massive part of living. i can see images so vividly in my head its like a movie or camera roll. i dont have to close my eyes to imagine anything or recall visual memories.
All I can say is I’m jealous. :(
I have this, sometimes I can't stop it and I actually get motion sickness from seeing this movie on top of reality... Does this ever happen to you? You can't stop the movie?
@@jamiestar3339omg yes. I can rarely stop it once it gets started. I’m constantly taking painkillers to help with the headaches and motion sickness😂 but I wouldn’t change anything. I love how vivid everything is.
Wow the regular capabilities of creating self imagery and monologue inside minds are already wonderful, imagine having the hyper ultra realistic version of it, amazing
Hey! I actually had someone just like you in my art class two years ago. After finding out the girl from my class couldn't imagine what her finished drawing would look like we grouped together and researched a bit. A week later we found out she was totally badass at creating art collages and mood boards. Apparently those who lack this fantasy skills are much better at analyzing things like composition and layout. Collabs with her were always epic.
Ha, that sums me up too! It never stopped me being vice president of a national arts group...
I didn't know people could see colors and images in their head.
I don’t think it is actually color or seeing the object more like knowing it’s there and seeing it’s details Ex I can’t see the apple but I know what It looks like and add a bunch of things but it’s not really visible but it’s like it is correct me if I’m wrong and sorry if I am
For me it is like an object that you can see but it’s not there like she said in the video like it’s in the back of your mind
@@missildineva7455 Except I can directly imagine the object on the table next to me and visualize that. I can't directly superimpose it in front of my eyes, but my mind can come pretty close.
That's sad, I dont know what I would do without my images
yea lol
I think I’m losing brain cells trying to imagine what this would be like.
Take an object and stare at it. Then take it into a dark room and try to see it without imagining it
I try to expand my visualization abilities by imagining impossible things, like tesseracts or the ultraviolet spectrum. I only succeeded once, getting a not-purple color. I can also perfectly see my own body in a dark room, even if I don't actually see it.
Trust me... as someone with aphantasia trying to imagine what visualizing would be like is probably just as difficult as someone who can visualize imagining the opposite...
Imagine darkness and that is what’s its like for us
I cant :( lmao haha get it bc i have this
OHHHHH I REMEMBER YOU! I JS GOT RECOMMENDED UR COMING OUT VID I was tryna figure out why I remembered ur animating style.
When I read a book I kind of zone out while processing the words and it’s kind of like watching a movie, but when I try to imagine the Apple I can’t see anything my minds just black
Same here and if I think back to books I've read and chapters I dont remember words but like actual scenes I've seen even tho it's all been in my head.
THIS!!!! I was thinking each of these comments to myself. It's almost like my mind doesn't see the words of the book. Instead, it instantly translates it into a visual representation. I won't remember what I've read, but I'll remember the visualization of what I've read. Also... I can visualize things, but only with my eyes open. For example... I can visualize the apple clear as day with my eyes open, but as soon as I close them that image disappears. My brain confuses me.
Wait same
Plus, for me at least, the locations described in the books are vivid and unchanging and I sometimes dream in them; plus when I reread a book I remember the location completely
Yess! I don’t know if my visions are accurate tho, since my interpretation of different events and locations can be very different from scenes in their movie adaptions if they have one
It's always super disappointing when out of nowhere a noise distracts me, I realize I've zoned out, and then because I'm aware of it, I can't go back to it. But I love getting that lost in the imagery.
I can imagine an apple but I also see the darkness behind my eyes. I can image the apple but also see the darkness of the underlying eyes.
Me too
Me too
Hello there Asperger or Schizoid fellows!!! Hahaha
All of us
Glasses Gru same!
I've always hated guided meditation because it's always a damn beach they talk about. I want skyscrapers with infinity pools, jungles, space. I'm tired of these damn beaches
I've done three. One led me through a jungle to a clearing with a stream. One l took me through a door to a massive library. The last led me up a stairwell with my "happy place" at the top. I did that one twice. They were all meant to relax or help unlock knowledge of myself.
Sounds awesome.
Iv never heard one with a beach XD
usually its a forest, a lake, or an open space, maybe like an empty room or a dessert, or inner body imagery
DAMNED BEACHES ARE RUINING AMERICA-
Gahaha ikr
I love reading, especially fantasy. And while I can play out scenes in my head it has always been limited range, like a fog on the edges of everything no matter how vivid I can focus the scene. "Lets climb that mountain". I can see the mountain, but nothing beside or behind. Like I'm in a first person shooter with the rest of the scene waiting to finish loading. And I love playing first person shooters, but I only starting playing video games in my 20s, and I've been reading since I was little. Thank you for helping me learn this about myself, that I'm not broken! This also explains why I have trouble learning art techniques, because when I try to put into action something I've just seen or heard or learned, everything seems fuzzy and transparent and far away, just on the edge of recognizing. Thank you!
I'm absolutely dumbfounded over the fact that people can actually visualise things when they close their eyes. I always thought it was a metaphor or something
MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY.
I dont think its like actual fixed images. I think?
@@stigs6591 for me it is! Like I can imagine a whole cat and move it around and change its color and stuff. (As well as other ppl ive asked) had no idea that not everyone could do this!
I'm curious. What do you see instead? Just the inside of your eyelids?
So, can you teach me how to turn mine off?
This raises another question for me: What are things other people can do mentally which I can't?
I had not considered that… I know I’m not neurotypical, not by a long shot, but what have I not noticed yet? What things could possibly be connected? Please update with anything you notice, this could be a valuable conversation for many
The memes about *Internal screaming* brought to my mind a realisation that i cannot change the volume of my inner voice
@@Astareia7312 I mean, if course you can't. It has no sound. It's a thought.
actually, some prople can hear sounds on their heads as well as they can picture images
@@sharktos3218 I can even to the point of freaking myself out. Just tested it right after reading just to make sure and yes "internal screaming" is a thing and not just a thought. You are right that it is a thought, but one that you can still "feel" inside the head.
Best way to describe this: we use our memeory to describe things, but we can't fabricate anything new, but if we try , it's just really dark and unclear
So you mean it's harder to be creative if you have this?
Me(an oc creator): are you sure about that? :l
That's funny bc when I make up scenarios in my head I can actually see it vividly
I'm the complete opposite, with the apple it looked like I was in a REALLY dark room (2), but with something "new" it's aournd a 5
@@krome1187 I may not have aphantasia but *god damn* is this a mood. I have these great visuals in my mind but if I were to draw it, I suddenly don't know how it goes!
Thank you for animating your experience with this! I’m in grad school studying mathematics and topology (the study of spaces) has been IMPOSSIBLE for me for years! I’ve only learned last year that my struggle is that I can’t imagine spaces! (which is a topologist’s main mode of communication)
Perhaps it’s a neurodivergent thing? And isn’t a “problem” that needs to be “solved.”
I recall I always struggled with solving the logic problem which requires you to visualize a 3D structure that was cut up and laid flat on a 2D paper, and connect 2 dots through the maze of the cut to pieces and flattened out 3D dice or whatsoever... I had to draw lines which connected the shredded dice sides/surfaces... Because I couldn't visualize anything in my mind.
People here are shocked that others can see images in their head
But here I'm like "What?! They can't see anything?"
how vivid is the images in your head because I can remember what a beach looks like I know what a beach looks like but I cant see it. I see nothing. Can you literally see a beach when you close your eyes :o
@@Mimikyu7372 I mean I don't see anything when my eyes are closed but my head can create images.
@@Mimikyu7372
it's not that we see it with our eyes, we "see" it in our minds/brain, in the back of our head, if that helps.
@@Mimikyu7372 Sure can! Normal, recreation of one of the cutscenes from Death Stranding, etc. When I close my eyes it's easier to see in first person, but if I'm going for third person it works just fine with eyes open. It also helps a bit to be moving around for some reason, at least for me.
Lol I can’t when it’s about 3D shapes and nets when you have to fold the net into a shape
Thanks so much for making this video! Up until today, I thought this was just normal. I didn't know people could 'actually see' an image in their mind's eye. When I'm trying to visualize it's more like a vague feeling (kinda hard to describe) like you're trying to squint really hard to see it. I think now that this is the reason why I love art and colors so much because it's what was missing in my mind. Thank you again!!
Lisa I can relate soooo much... I didn’t know people could actually see things cause I only saw black, I actually thought it was normal although I can only think of images and stuff
Omg I didn’t know this was a thing
Yeah, the concept of daydreaming has never made sense to me. Same with books - visual descriptions are always the most boring part. I love descriptions of the vibe, or metaphors linking to how something else feels (eerie, bright and fresh like the morning, etc). I can barely visualize shapes, but no color, no faces, no detail. I do dream in first person and can “see” specific visual memories for just a split-second flash.
I can just see in the church, its actually cool and i close my eyes i see random things, like one day i saw random minecraft blocks with peaplo singing in them and the other day a rat waling in moskow
For some reason I can really get lost in fantasy books and “visualize” things but my mind is always fuzzy and black. I can picture things in a weird sort of way- I can almost feel them in my head. It’s really strange and I thought that was how regular people visualized things in their heads. The closest thing I can liken my experience to is Toph’s seismic sense lol. I have no trouble with imagination, I just can’t picture things in a conventional way.
yea I can barley imagine anything from books I can see a tiny bit but not much. That's why I read manga
i don't think i could live without seyig things in my head, i would feel empty inside, i don't understand how people can live this way, you're all really impressive.
@@williams.n.9443 nah bruh, its a bit normal when you grow your entire life with that
I have this too! I am an electrical engineering student, and sometimes it helps me understand things that other people struggle to understand, because by definition they are inconceivable to the human imagination (>3 dimensions, complex signals, etc…) and most people like to understand things visually. This is just because I have to understand things from a non-visual perspective all the time! It’s pretty unhelpful most of the time, but occasionally it comes in pretty handy!
If you got this far, have a great day!
Amy: “Is the apple floating in space?”
My brain: Haha apple on spaceship
If I imagine things it appears in a black room and it rotates in a weird way and it mentally hearts
@@ad-skyobsidion4267 maybe u have a brain tumour
@@ad-skyobsidion4267 (jk)
My brain: haha apple cutted and the cut explodes
Idk man, I can't control my imagination. I have some sort of ADD
I'm also an artist, and you don't understand how much relief I feel now. I used to get extremely frustrated in elementary school when I couldn't visualize with the class, I hated closing my eyes cause all I'd see is darkness. Like it feels like I'm trying to visualize things but it never appears, like the plans in my head are through words instead of pictures. So weird.
Anyways thank you, so much.
Minty V all I see are swirling reds, greens and Grey's when I close my eyes. if I picture something before drawing it, I see only a few bits like an outline. srsly, when I draw something for the first time, I'm still designing its patterns! cuz I know what I want it to look like, but I can't picture it. am I around the 4 section? cuz I only see a little bit when I close my eyes
Minty V SAME DUDE YES
me too!
Same!
I am a 9 on the scale. The SERIOUSLY annoying part is that even with that clarity, it's SO tough to put it onto paper, screen or even in words with explanations.
Wow... so annoying. Try being a 0 lol. I would love to see images in my head, that would be amazing.
@@peachylady Can you visually reproduce in your mind a simple yet amazing scene you've seen before? Like an impactful movie scene, be it animation or live action? Or even something that happened to you? I always find it easier to reproduce 2D scenes that impressed me. That's not imagining tho, that's reproducing. We're not creating anything new.
But single objects... Or landscapes... Those things alone are quite difficult to process. Even if it's familiar. It's actually very frustrating, like trying to remember a person's face and failing.
But a scene, where stuff happens, where agency is involved, where things move, or even static scenes, like an imminent checkmate on a chess board. That I can visualize fairly easily.
It's hard for both parts I guess. I can see clearly things too, but from that to making them it's difficult. It's hard to 'make without seeing it' and 'see but can't make bit'. :(
me too... me too
Then I'm not missing anything haha
so... i kinda knew i had this for a while, but i never realized PEOPLE CAN PLAN OUT WHAT THEY WANT TO DRAW????? i actually had to stop the video and sit there for a while because i was so shocked... holy moly maybe im not THAT bad at drawing, maybe it's just the fact i cant plan things out in my head!!! tysm for making me realize this tbh.
WAIT THIS MADE ME REALIZE THATS WHY I "FORGET" MY CHARACTERS' DESIGNS AND I CANT DRAW THEM CORRECTLY IF I DONT HAVE ANOTHER DRAWING OF THEM AT HAND. IT'S BECAUSE I CANT IMAGINE THEM AT ALL. HOLY SHIT.
People rating above 10 are probably having hallucinations
@Challifer Doggo 😂 probably!
or on something (jk)
Why? If you're picturing it in your mind's eye, then it's not something that you're physically seeing with your eyes. It's something that your just visualizing in your mind, and you are completely in control of and know isn't real because you're constructing and/or changing it yourself. Hallucinations are nothing like that.
@@kimberlyhovis5864 its a joke
Yeah, if someone opens their eyes and still sees that thing in a front of them and rates a 10, I would definitely call that hallucinating.
In all my 28 years I never realised that I just recall parts of an image I know to be there, in reality, instead of actually seeing the thing in my mind. I just tried to visualise an apple for a good 30 mins to no avail. This is bizarre.
Thank you for opening my eyes to this.
I'm just glad I can make people more aware of this!
★Sedgeie★ same- I didn’t know that this was a thing
I can’t picture the apple 😭
Same! I never realized or thought about this. I figured everyone was the same with never being able to see the objects in their mind.
dude i visualized like 10 apples accidentally while watching the video, i'm not sure if i believe you even .
"Visualize an apple"
Me: *sees golden apple from minecraft*
Lol
Omg I thought it was just me
a true gamer
Same
I saw the red apple in Light's hand from the first Death Note opening.
Thank you for making this video. I don't think have full aphantasia but just like you said I can't conjure scenes or objects in my head correctly. I also happen to be a big fiction reader so it's very seldom that I'm actually able to see the character's faces and poses don''t even acsk me about action scenes. But similar to you my dreams get so vivad that I actually think they might have actually happened. But I do like coming up with character designs and art scenes but they rarely actually come to what I desired and just ends up being random Pinterest images. Sorry for the long comment I'm just happy that what's going on in my brain actually has a name.
As a maladaptive daydreamer. This sounds like hell to me
As someone who has had serious bouts of Maladaptive Daydreaming, there was a long period of time where I viewed Maladaptive Daydreaming as hell.
I watched the video and was extremely relieved to know I didn't have Aphantasia. Then I read your comment, looked up what Maladaptive Daydreaming is(because I have never heard of it) and realized that is something I do have. I knew it was abnormal and that it is messing with my life , but I was didn't know it was a disorder that many other people have. I am a bit in shock now that this condition has a name, and at the same time kind of relieved to know I'm not alone.
I don't know man, looking into it, just seem normal to me. Don't see why it needs to be a "disorder". Like it's pretty normal stuff I would think. Who doesn't daydream while doing repetitive tasks?
I guess not everyone has the difficulty in sleeping and every day tasks... So maybe, but really it just sounds like a symptom of ADHD.
garbageknights I have pretty clear symptoms of adhd as well but i don’t know how to tell them about it. Tbh this whole thing is stressing me out
@@garbageknights This is a very personal opinion, but from my point of view, it is a disorder when it affects your life severely in a negative way. For example, a lot of people use the term OCD lightly, claiming they have it because they like being neat, but most of us can't probably comprehend how disruptive a condition like that is. Same with ADHD. Not all people who struggle to focus have it, but only those who have it can tell how much it affects their life. So even something as seemingly innocuous as daydreaming can disrupt your normal life when you do it excessively. When you basically live in your head a lot of the time and can't get out of it, that takes up a huge chunk of your day, messes with your attention span...basically keeps you from functioning properly. If it were possible to just stop doing it at will and focus, that wouldn't be a problem. But since thats not the case, I don't see why it cant be a disorder. Hence the name 'Maladaptive' Daydreaming.
Ofc I haven't been diagnosed with it, so its not right to carelessly say I have it. But just saying I relate to it.
I started to get really stressed when I couldn't see anything, I thought that was normal, I can think of an apple but I can't see it I see black but have an "idea" of what it looks like based on when I last saw one but the memory isn't visual.
Same. The only time I see images is when I'm trying to sleep and then I can't control it at all.
Same but for things like whats happening in a book I'll zone out and.. SEE it. But for this I can imagine what it looks like but I can't really SEE it, just blackness
@Jessica Dawn
Yes!!! Exactly the same as me, I was trying to think of the one in my fridge. Ugh. Its actually gotten worse over time because I remember over ten years ago I use to be able to visualize at least a little bit and I remembered my dreams and now its mainly black and fuzzy.. I wanna know the science behind all this. I can never visualize faces even of people close to me that I see daily...well kinda but, I've had super cool thoughts for drawings or paintings but I can't actually draw any of it for the life of me...makes me so mad. I have such cool ideas but I can't...picture it good enough to map out how I want it
Hard to explain. Now it makes sense tho I guess..
Jessica Dawn same
that’s so interesting. i’m a very visual person and i also draw and on that scale i was def a 10.. i always think abt things in my mind n imagine a picture.. literally always i didn’t know some ppl couldn’t or had a harder time.
I can think of concepts and I can “see” what it’d look like but not if I close my eyes. When I close my eyes I don’t see anything. But I have some VIVID ass dreams.
Same same same 1000 times over!
I can kind of replay or imagine sounds and songs though... and my dreams are very visual.
Ingleserang walang pera my most vivid dream was very odd, it was about the dream team, I’d recently watched dreams video so it was in my mind, that dream was really sad and I actually cried, I don’t wanna explain it all but ye.
Ah yes, day dream.
I can't see images when closing my eyes but when I see, I SEE.
Same why does this happen