• queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Okay, so I had aphantasia before my TBI and afterwards I could literally picture things in my mind. It’s wild. You don’t hallucinate the picture per se, but the imagined sensation really is like seeing a picture in your mind.

    Imagine the feeling of seeing something. You get the same feeling when imagining a picture of it. You can examine the picture and look at it from different angles and perspectives, but like, there isn’t literally a ghost image floating around your head like a cartoon. It just feels like seeing.

    It’s almost like lucid dreaming while awake? You know it’s in your mind and not real, even if you also feel like you see it.

    idk you’d think having lived on both sides of the fence I could explain it but this probably sounds fucking bizarre to you lol

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Well, it’s famously kind of impossible to explain a sensation of any kind to someone who has no frame of reference for it, e.g. “red” to someone who has never seen.

    • SerLava [he/him]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      I mean, reading over your comment a few times, I think there’s a 50% chance you’re describing exactly the same thing as my perception, but it’s so hard to tell.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Okay well before, when I had aphantasia, I did not experience things I “pictured” in my imagination as a visual sensation. It was as if my imagination was 100% linguistic, so if I imagine something I would just describe it to myself. I could describe something with a lot of detail, even! However, it only ever felt like I was providing a literal description of an image, rather than feeling like I was able to picture something.

        I really do think it just comes down to how you feel your imagination.