J
John
@johnheuft
Joined over 3 years agoBecause I be what I be. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, mum, but I be a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer, har har.
@johnheuft
Joined over 3 years agoBecause I be what I be. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, mum, but I be a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer, har har.
As much was said by Adam Zeman on this topic in his AMA on Youtube.https://youtu.be/z9MCrrBt-_8 But to what degree remains an open question, considering that PTSD is primarily about emotional response I would think it would not necessarily be less common but perhaps lower in intensity.
My background is from 20 years of autodidatic research on general sciences and psychology to better understand my mind and how we as humans perceive the world around us. I've been aware that I lacked visualization for 30 years which drove my desire to seek knowledge concerning the sciences and psychology to better understand how my mind worked, I discovered the research on in about 3 years ago, I have studied everything that I can find concerning it including all major research that has been done on it and have spent the last year or so conversing with other aphantasic and visualizers as well about this topic sharing experiences. If you study sensory neurology or general psychology even in a casual manner it becomes apparent quickly that our minds create many illusions that are not necessarily related to the experiences that we think we have which is why questioning the source of any question we ask is so important. We have to learn to sort out what we think from what it is actually going on because our beliefs can sometimes lead us away from connections with the reality that we live in and the only way to grow as an individual is to learn to understand the reality of our minds better. You say that you believe it may be a big part of seasonal effective disorder, but why? If you want to connect dissimilar things that's fine and great but there has to be a path between them and there is nothing in the study on pupilar response to imagined content that would have any coherent link to seasonal effective disorder, at least no connection you've tried to explain, so where does your belief come from? Why should aphantasia and SAD be connected? That's all I'm asking. Because if you can explain or demonstrate an actual link I want to know about it as I want to know everything I can about it and share it with others. I am here to learn and share all the information that I've absorbed in this time I've spent studying it. You did say it was black behind your eyes but you also said you conjure pictures in your mind so your account here is from a plain reading of the text not consistent, this is not an accusation I'm simply reading the words that you wrote and asking you for clarification. I'm just trying to get you to expand on your initial post for some clarity so that maybe I can get to the point where I can come up with or look into answering the question you're asking here in a better manner.
I listened to the podcast, I didn't get a perception of that degree of us vs them that you seem to perceive and at risk of offending you (I very much hope this does not) it may be an emotional sensitivity issue on your part at still perceiving negatives in relation to your aphantasia. Something worth talking more about with people that are a bit more understanding as I would certainly be offended if a close friend responded in the way your friend did to you so I think your sensitivity is justified and worthy of empathy and kindness as a response not that kind of disregard even if they didn't intend it they should be a little mindful of someone's feelings discussing something like this. This is also something that you might want to address with your friend, perhaps just printing your question and this response and letting them read it to see if they take on a more understanding viewpoint.
I've pondered this myself and I'm not sure but it does make sense to me especially in that I'm a multi sensory aphantasic that the quieter mind would make us more aware that our thinking is just something that happens in the background, we 'think' about something often in an unsymbolized form and the answer just pops in there, in my case usually in the form of a self answered question consisting of worded and partially worded thought and feelings but not inner speech, IE no perception of anything like sound in the mind, just language. I'm fairly sure however that all people are actually dependent on their subconscious, our conscious thoughts simply do not contain enough content to explain how we come up with answers to things, I just think that heavy visualizers are so surrounded in sensory experience within their mind that the subconscious is never 'noticed' as a source because they have the sensory visualizations that they perceive as being the source of their thoughts. The subconscious is still doing all the work they just get a free show to go along with it. This is personally the only way that I can comprehend how someone such as myself can be a fully functional human being even without any sensory content to their thought processes. That being said we do think differently from visualizers in subtle ways so the visualizations that they experience I think obviously do feed back into the subconscious to some degree so it's not a completly passive show, the show and how some may be able to manipulate it changes how their subconscious deals with it.
This would be related to proprioception which we don't seem to have any particular deficit of at least not according to any study I've seen so I don't believe a connection here is likely. Also given my back issues I assure you I know EXACTLY where it hurts :)
There are to the best of my knowledge (which is not complete) no coherently consistent behaviors that all aphantasics have, only tendencies and even those tendencies can still fall within the normal range of capacities for those specific behaviors within the general population so there is essentially no way to directly causally attribute it to any specific behavior. Aphantasia is like spice, we all have our own blend and they can be quiet varied. I have strived to try to emphasize this as one of the first things that people that find out they have aphantasia tend to do is to assign virtually every quirk or perceived abnormality to their aphantasia without any particularly grounded reason to do so. Humans love to play the blame game, and finding out you're not 'normal' tends to cause people to assign these perceived deficit that they have to an external target because "That's just the way I am" is not a satisfying answer.
Adam Zeman has mentioned this briefly that if the underlying trauma that caused the aphantasia is addressed then visualization may return, but in the case of something like a concussion which can go on for years or never truly clear up it becomes difficult to say whether or not that will occur in any specific instance. There is nothing specific to recommend other than trying to get yourself as healthy both physically and mentally as best as you can and you would probably benefit greatly either way from discussing this with a therapist as the dwelling on the lack of visualization itself could be compounding the issue and getting yourself back to a healthy mental and physical state is the best thing you can focus on.
I am a multisensory aphantasic, I can experience emotional empathy regardless of my lack of ability to directly experience the specific sensations in an imaginary form. I think there's a pretty good suggestion here that we empathize less on things that are sensory based but that by no means is the only form of empathy there is and I'm not referring to sympathy, especially things like situational poverty, abuse, or any number of things I feel extremely deep empathy for people in those situations not just sympathy, it is a very real pain to me that can even be overwhelming in some situations.
Given the number of people that practice mindfulness meditation and the number of people that have aphantasia I don't think any kind of link would be sensible to suggest, there would be many more times the number of aphantasics than we observe if that were the case. There are hundreds of millions of meditators that do not have aphantasia. Human beings are absolutely horrible at determining causation and proximate cause is something we tend to assume. Meaning your loss of visualization occurred around the time you started practicing mindfulness but that doesn't mean it was the cause, totally unrelated things happen at nearly the same time all the time with no reason to connect the two in a causal manner.
You could be right as this boils down to perception, I recall my dreams exceptionally rarely, only one dream this year so far and it was not visual in nature just my typical knowledge of events. I however do recall when I was much younger specifically that I had what at the time felt like visual dreams. The images did not persist after waking but the certainty that they were visual in nature in the dream at that time was tangible in a very profound way, I can still recall the events of those dreams even long after the images were gone and that knowing that there was in that time an actual visual image is something I can only express verbally now as being certain of in that moment at least. To determine whether or not that is true would be problematic at best due to the complexity and cost of doing such a study on even a few individuals. It's one of those things you have to take on a certain amount of faith, and as there is no current reason of scientific merit that I'm aware of which would depend on establishing for certain whether or not this was occurring so I find it highly unlikely that anything like that will be done anytime soon.
The first question you have to ask is in what possible way could it be connected in the first place? If you don't have a solid hypothesis grounded in some kind of basically sound reason to think the two are linked in the first place then the question itself can not be reasonably answered as it has no basis to be asked. You also state that "If I try to remember past experiences I seem to conjure images of photographs from that time in my life??" which is not consistent with having aphantasia, if you have images in your mind then you do not have aphantasia so there's contradiction in your post, I'm guessing that's probably from inadequate explanation, maybe if you could explain better what you're talking about and perhaps provide some basic hypothesis that would reasonable link the two things you're talking about then there might be a way to move forward on justifying the question. As an example, someone asked me the other day if Aphantasia could be related to photosensitivity which I at first dismissed because that's related to actual vision, but they expanded on that by suggesting the recent paper that demonstrated that Aphantasic do not have a pupillary response to imagined dark/light scenes but visualizers do, then that means that visualizers who are anticipating bright/dark situations to occur might adapt to brightness changes faster because their imagining the bright light will cause their pupils to contract where ours won't so we might get a sharp pang during brightness more frequently because we can not anticipate it through our imagination. That's a good rational hypothesis that seems sound and could be tested. What have you to provide for a hypothesis on your question? How would you test it?
We know nothing about the mechanisms surrounding acquired aphantasia so recommending any specific treatment is impossible. Concussion itself is very poorly understood although there are plenty of commonalities each case is unique so this is a conversation you should be having with a medical Dr as far as treatment goes. In your case aphantasia is not a problem it is just a symptom of the problem the problem is what needs to be addressed if visualization is to return. The feelings and stress the lack of visualization can create after you've had it for a lifetime is something that would be best addressed by a therapist. So basically just focus on getting healthy in your current state and with any luck as your physical/mental health improves the visualization may return. Concussion can linger for quiet some time which is why I recommend possibly a therapist if you can because the additional stress can make dealing with it harder and dealing with the emotional problems that can create is very important. There are almost certainly other mental changes from the concussion that you may still be having problems processing, your mind is literally different than it used to be. One thing I would recommend is not trying to torture yourself by forcing yourself to visualize again as that could dramatically increase your stress if you're not succeeding which can make everything downspiral worse, this will take time. Barring therapy talking about it with others is a sort of therapy so that can be a route to take as well even in addition to any other assistance you are able to get.
I can't form images but I daydream sometimes to distraction quiet frequently so I think your suggestion that this is in any way directly linked to creativity is assumptive, people seem to attribute things to aphantasia that are just part of normal human variation on a regular basis it's a very easy trap to fall into. I can imagine the person I want to be, but making that happen is a totally different story.
Everyone is dependent on their subconscious. Visualization itself is not necessarily thought it is just something extra that many people get that floats up from their subconscious, they attribute the thinking to the visualization even though it's actually the subconscious processes that are doing the work. Aphants having no visualization at all might be more aware of this and understand that we're just really asking the hidden mind for answers and it provides them, we get used to that. I don't think this process is substantially different in visualizers their conscious experience of it is however overpowered by the visualization so they never become aware that there must be that hidden mind doing all the actual work.
Proprioception which is our bodies awareness of it's own position in space is separate from mental visualization, this would be spatial visualization not directly related to aphantasia. People don't have many pain receptors in their body so what your'e describing is something that virtually anyone would have issues with.
There are no specific behaviors directly attributed to aphantasia, only trends in likelihood and none of them are excessively strong. That's probably not the answer you were looking for but that's what all the research currently shows. There is really no way to sort it out from typical variation in many cases. The strongest correlation you're talking about would be that of lacking the ability to remember visual details that is significantly lower among aphantaisics but it's not a cause and effect thing because there are people such as myself who are deep multi sensory aphantaisics that don't have serious issues with remembering at least most common details, fine details yes I'm horrible at but there's also the suggestion there that visualizers that report more fine details may be re-creating those details rather than recalling them, IE they're not actually part of the memory just something the brain fills in from more general experience. How all these things are related is complicated and something they're looking into but there really don't seem to be any 'smoking guns'
The only suggestions we have that this is possible is if the underlying condition which triggered it is addressed, in this case it would be your concussion most likely, there are no links to medications being a trigger that I'm aware of however there are links to psychological issues such as a bought of depression triggering it but it is rare, people tend to go on to medications when that happens so may erroneously link it to the medications due to occurring at nearly the same time rather than there being any actual causative effect. Get yourself healthy again and the visualization may return, it's a good time to take stock of the rest of your mental landscape, meditation may aid you just in general relaxing and getting more in tune with where your mental state currently is.
Ānāpānasati (breathing meditation) is one of the simplest paths of meditation, it takes time and patience to become good at though. The basic premise is simple, breathing is something we are almost totally unaware of even though we're doing it 24/7 yet it is something which we can take control of consciously almost any time we want. Bringing your breathing to your intentional awareness for long periods of time is the first step in learning to draw your attention to other things in your conciousness that you don't normally notice but have always been there. In Buddhist tradition it's one of if not the most fundamental form of meditation. Clearing the distraction is the hard part for anyone and again it takes time and patience to do that. A lot of Western guided visualization meditation I think is more about filling the mind with desired noise rather than seeing what's there for what's there. Notice the distractions acknowledge them and then let them pass as you draw your attention back to the breathe. Given than visualization is only one small aspect of our conciousness Western meditation practices focus on it way too much. Then again a lot of Western meditation is based on guided meditation which is the only way they can make money off of it. All meditation at the end of the day is an inward journey you have to take yourself. It could takes weeks or months to be able to do this for any length of time while learning to quiet the rest of the distractions that come into your mind enough to start noticing other things, note the nature of the distraction realize that it's occurring and let it pass returning your focus to the breathe over and over again until all that remains is the breathe.
My dream recall has always been almost absent, I had more when I was younger but they were almost never visual in nature, I can count the number of visual dreams I remember on one hand, maybe two and that's over the course of over 40 years. My normal dream remembrance is only vague impressions of feeling or tiny fragments of scenes with no purpose, and even then that's only ever few months. That vast majority of the time I go to sleep it's light's out, light's on, that's it nothing else. After waking I have no recollection of any images but the feeling of remembering having seen something is very distinct in my mind and remains to this day as I can still recall these dreams even after 40 years with I think a fair degree of accuracy, mostly because the dreams themselves are so short, the longest sensation of the passage of time I've felt in a dream is less than a minute, and I only know this because I've had two lucid dreams, no control over them but the knowledge I was in a dream and seeing something is about as much concrete certainty that the sun is coming up tomorrow. If it wasn't for those dreams I probably would have never realized I was aphantaisic, as it was I discovered it when I was about 15 when some very detailed visualization practices that some friends were doing popped up. I knew then that I was different but there was nothing to look up back then and I never felt it affected me so I just moved on until the rediscovery and popularity of it started to rise, and so here I am :) I'd love to hear more about your general dream experience and your general experience of aphantasia as I'm a fairly profound multi-sensory aphantaisic, about as far down whatever spectrum there is to this.
I have heard anecdotal reports from multiple people on this, I have no sense of frequency at all and these are just anecdotes but some experience no effect at all on THC or even other more serious hallucinogens, but some do. Although this is completely my opinion it seems to me that the people that have the more profound cases of aphantasia specifically total aphantaisics who lack the other sensor recall modalities as well are the least likely to experience any effect, where the folks that score a 2 with some minimal non-usable visualization ability may experience it more, but again that's only my opinion from what is probably a fairly biased pool of people in casual responses.