Sophie Bernkastel

Also not an expert here, I have some knowledge in neuroscience tho, so let’s see how I can explain this.. Easiest question to answer is, if you're able to remember visuals from dreams, then your REM should generally be in picture. Not always remembering dreams is normal, cause you have to wake up during REM still running for the dream to be retained into short term memory. If you’re remembering dreams that have no visuals, that could be psychological. Your conscious experience lacks the ability to see through your “minds eye”, if you feel any way about that, your subconscious will want to process it. As for the other question, we do have the ability to process and store visual information, although our neurons responsible for recall might not be able to fire strong enough impulses so the data gets lost. They don’t know it either for sure. So yes, the data is in theory there, you just can’t access it.

Hi there, I’m an infj and when I learnt that most people think in images it was so shocking! Like, the phrase “imagine doing something” or “imagine an object”, who would have thought they meant it literally? Always thought it was a figure of speech… But alas, I have a working imagination just a tad different. I’m a kinestethic learner and my visual processing is really good too, so the way I imagine stuff is through my kinestethic memory of seeing or experiencing movement observed in reality. I don’t “see” it in my minds eye, but I have an immediate understanding of it’s 3D model, which I can draw accurately. The way my brain recalls knowledge is by groups of meaning, strengthens the recall by connecting emotions, concepts, symbolism, sounds (music stays especially). Everything is connected to my ever growing database of interconnected patterns that I build my understanding of the world of. My visual memory of reality stays in my subconscious so I wouldn’t say my brain is empty of all visual stuff, I actually can dream quite vivid life like imagery and remember it later. It’s just the awake state of my consciousness that can’t produce images, but that doesn’t mean it has to be empty or lonely at all. So my hopefully helpful bit of advice is to try and create your inner world through finding meaning if you can. Work on your introverted thinking function and make the world your puzzle. You’re an infj, introverted intuition is what you are (and it loves this stuff), extroverted feeling is how you collect data and interact with people. Use it to deepen your understanding of people’s psyche, their behavioral patterns, politics, philosophy, history, anything you like, really. Make being in the present moment a game for your intellect. I hope this at least gives someone a starting point on which you can create your own system. Remember to be kind to yourself and that you deserve love from yourself and others. ~outro~