@larrymarcille
Joined over 4 years agoLarry is a 47 year old unemployed former teacher of 23 years who suffers from social anxiety disorder, persistent depressive disorder, major depressive disorder, and whose mind is blown by recently learning that visualization is not a metaphor. He also is married to a wonderful man, has three cats, and enjoys playing the piano.
Interesting. I have an intense interest in piano - specifically ragtime piano. Everywhere you look experts are telling you to "visualize" away from the piano - picture the music and your hands and what they are doing. I cannot do this. It's impossible. As a result, memorizing piano music has ALWAYS been a massive struggle for me. I also struggled with mathematics growing up until I had to teach it to children. Then everything about math made sense. I think that teaching a skill you are yourself trying to master is a super useful and effective way to develop conceptual understanding and cement knowledge. So for me, if I want to become a better piano player, it makes sense that I should teach piano to others because it would force me to look more carefully at music in a conceptual framework so that I could help someone else understand it. And no, I have no plans to teach piano anytime soon. But I know it would help me out a lot if I did.
It could be genetic or it could be the result of emotional trauma. My mother suffered severe emotional trauma from her mother, and I from my mother. That said, I have found a LOT of people I know who cannot visualize. I think this condition is much more common than current research suggests.
I'm so sorry for your loss! I undestand what that feels like, having lost my father to cancer, though it was some years ago.I never felt badly about needing to look at photographs to remember what deceased friends and family look like because I never, until this past month, even knew that "seeing" people or other things in your mind was even possible. Well, clearly it's not for you nor for me.So my memories of my father are thoughts and photo books. That's it.
I just discovered this website AND only within the past month even discovered that Aphantasia was even a thing. I totally discovered this by accident while looking at an online article that asked me to visualize a star and pick the photo that most looked like what I saw - which was NOTHING. Your question about trauma intrigues me. At 47, I have come to realize that I have suffered from acute social anxiety disorder and persistent depressive disorder since my earliest memories (which would be at 4 years old). I definitely endured a LOT of childhood trauma. Home was like walking on eggshells. I never knew if my mother would be happy or angry. She screamed at me every single day at the intensity one would use if they were trying to stop someone with headphones on from walking in the path of a moving bus. She would say things to me like, "You think this food tastes like shit? Someday you'll eat shit and then you'll know what shit tastes like," or, "You think you're better than other people? You're not! You need to check yourself!" She never beat me with her hands, but she did beat me with her words every single day. Once I started school, I was an immediate outcast and was visciously bullied by other boys from Kindergarten clear up through graduation from high school.I hated myself and would not look at anyone when speaking to them. When walking I would only look at my feet or the ground directly in front of my feet.No adults ever helped me despite my intense anxiety and fear of people.The result: as a child I had chronic canker sores. My mother believed it was because of chocolate and other acidic foods. I have since learned it was from stress and SLS containing toothpastes. As an adult, I only get canker sores if I use regular toothpaste OR have an unusually high level of stress.The result? At 47 I quit my elementar school teaching career of 23 years and have become a hermit, and am completely dependent upon my husband lest I find myself homeless.Can I visualize? Not at all. I can in dreams but even with dreams I only have a couple a year. People say that we all dream every single night but if that's true, my mind prevents me from ever being aware of it. Did trauma cause this? It's hard to say. My mother can't visualize either BUT she was also brought up in a home with an exceptionally unhappy and critical mother so she had her own childhood trauma. I'll be curious to read the thoughts of others who comment on your post in the future.