I only just discovered the word hypophantasia and this subreddit today. After years of feeling uneasy and doubtful about aphantasia, I wanted someone to validate for me that visualization capacity was on a spectrum of sorts. I felt strongly that if so, I was on the end of the spectrum near to people who cannot visualize at all, but not quite there. For the first time I feel "seen" (if not "visualized").

It also helped alot to respond to the research questionnaire posted elsewhere in this group. Doing that questionnaire made me think more about my mental and cognitive strengths, not just the deficit around visualization. I think of myself as a strong conceptual and abstract thinker. I also think I have a great imagination. and this always felt in conflict with the sense that I could not visualize the way other people did. But now I think that not visualizing things frees me up to be more inventive, especially conceptually. Does anyone else feel similarly?

I had an interesting dream that has led me to wonder about the relationship between dreams and hypophantasia. Basically, me and my dad are driving, and suddenly we go over a cliff and fall hundreds of feet. I remember being scared but not terrified, and just hugging my dad and waiting for the end. After what seemed like an eternity, the fall stopped and I remember being confused and looking around to see what happened, but not actually seeing anything. Eventually, I realized "this is a dream, idiot - you can't die in a dream" and woke up. I imagine this was supposed to be one of those "jump scare" nightmares where you wake up screaming / heart pounding, but my reaction was unexpected and I ended up hitting the "Game Over" screen instead. I mention all of this because I can recall the dream "vividly" - except that word doesn't really fit. I remember my mental state very clearly, and I remember what happened at that point in the dream equally clearly, but I have very little or no recall of imagery from the dream ... just like I have very little or no recall of imagery from events in my own life.

So I started wondering why that would be. Am I just not remembering the images from the dream, or were those images never really there to begin with? I can break down the way my brain processes images (from sight) as follows: 1) light hits my retina, 2) nerve impulses travel along my optic nerve to the visual center of the brain, 3) images "appear" in my brain, and 4) my mental state changes as a result of what I have seen. So, call parts 1-3 "seeing" and part 4 "having seen". As an exercise, look around at your surroundings and then close your eyes. You still know where everything is because you have literally just seen it. Yet even in that situation, I can't pull up more than a flicker or flash of imagery. My thought is that I am pulling up memories not of "seeing" things, but of "having seen" them.

Our experience with computers tells us that video is both the most information dense medium and the biggest memory hog. So wouldn't it make sense that our brains would compress this video memory to save space? Maybe other people (without aphantasia or hypophantasia) are able to recreate the images and other sensory experiences based on the compressed memories, but we (or at least some of us) cannot do so, and so we are left with the "having seen" data alone? Maybe that's what the flicker or flash is - just the compressed video that we can't "unzip" and see in its entirety, but which is still sufficient for us to understand what it is we saw. And maybe that is how most people see in dreams - and it is why so many of them describe their memories of dreams as being hazy and vaguely unreal, while to me the dreams seem just as real as any other memory.

Or maybe my experience is idiosyncratic. I was diagnosed as a child with a "lazy eye", which I only found out decades later meant I have basically no depth perception. My brain never learned to combine the images from both eyes into one composite image because my eyes are out of sync. I live in a video world, while most people are in a 3-D movie. So there's an entire component of normal vision that I am missing, and have a hard time even imagining. So it's possible this visual processing deficit has also led to me having difficulty processing visual memories.

So I post here in case any of you can shed light on this.

I'm trying to get into reading books more. As a kid, I wasn't really into regular books so I liked the illustrated ones like "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" or "Captain Underpants" because they kept me hooked. But as I got older, I slowly started to fall out of reading story books and would rather watch the movie adaptation. Whenever I tried reading books that were purely text, I found it difficult to visualise what was happening, which became really frustrating as it made it harder for me to be engaged in the story. As a result, I never read books for enjoyment and only did so when I needed to study for school.

I'm a big fan of the Harry Potter movies and have heard the books are even better, so I bought them hoping to motivate myself to read. I was doing well and almost finished the first book, but then I took a break, and now it’s been months. I don't want to start from where I left off since I forgot some details from the book version of the story, so I'm re-reading it but it feels tougher this time. I realised I was using my memory of the movie to fill in the gaps. Now, I want to visualise things differently. I don’t want to just rely only on my memories of the films. This makes it harder for me to visualise the scenes from the book.

I've been checking out Reddit for advice, and some people mentioned the topic of aphantasia, hyperphantasia, and hypophantasia. When I read about the characters, I usually picture the movie versions. For characters I don’t know, their faces seem blurry in my mind. Is there a way to make this whole reading thing easier? I'm not entirely sure if I have hypophantasia, so for those who do, what has helped you visualise things while reading?

I’m not sure if the images I see are actually blurry. I’m trying now to see them but I think they stay there for just a moment, not enough to realize if they’re bad or good. They have colors and shapes, but that’s everything I know.

I’m not sure if I’m just being a sort of hypochondriac that actually has normal imaging. I mean, some people who think they’re sick actually feel sick even if they’re fine, right ? I was wondering if that’s the same for me, since I’m not new to ruminating and overthinking. In fact I have some OCD. It was kinda bad once. It is now better. I took medicines in the past but I stopped more than one year ago. Also, I had this problem before too.

What do you think ? Is there a way I can be certain about this ?

Hello! I've actually been searching for an answer to this issue for a long time. Since childhood.

When I was in elementary school or something, my class had this assignment for us to imagine an animal and draw it. I struggled hard. I wanted to think of a dog, and I'm pretty sure what I was going for was something akin to a golden retriever, tho' I didn't even know what they were called at the time. I was like... 6 or around that. Anyway, as I sat there trying to imagine this dog, it was very difficult. It mostly came in pulses, but the more I tried to imagine the dog, the more it kinda changed. Mutated. I couldn't keep a stable image in my head, and what I could see was questionable at best. The flashes of imagery were brief and sparse, and they wouldn't just disappear, they'd sorta... Think what it looks like for film to melt on the projector (starts lookin' like swiss cheese but worse). In the end I drew something in the vague shape of a dog but green and with antennae. I was told that we were supposed to think of something real, but that I must have a very vivid imagination. I didn't really know how to express to her that I felt the exact opposite, that I had been struggling to maintain a constant image and every attempt to see something again would give different results.

Since then, I've held a deep jealous for visual artists and always wished I could become one myself, but never could. Visual art has eluded me for years.

These days, it mostly just sticks to flashes, but I notice that it can stick around a bit longer while my eyes are heckin' open. And every time I struggle to keep the image in my head, I'm met with an uncomfortable feeling, something I can only describe as an internal disagreement, but on a physical level. It's almost like my brain disagrees with itself, like it would prefer to see through my eyes rather than something else. So literally everything I imagine is overlayed upon the backs of my eyelids; black or red or yellowish or white. There's no filtering that. If I see it with my eyes open, there's less of that discomfort feeling but that's... purely autonomic, I have no say in what I see there. And most times I don't notice it, I guess that's the way my brain works. But if I do notice it, it is an awful feeling, because I try to zero in on how it's happening and it... feels separate? And then there's that familiar feeling of my brain rejecting that and forcing focus on what my eyes see. Stronger.

The best way I can dumb it down is... my visual imagination is like a really bad slideshow projector from the mid 1900's except it only turns the bulb on when you switch the slides, it burns the slide out almost immediately, and then fizzles out before taking eons to switch to the next slide, but it also somehow works better in a lit room. Weird allegory, I know. But hopefully you get it.

This has honestly been a source of distress for me for years. I do have a creative brain at my core, and can conceptualize things very well. Thankfully I have a strong auditory imagination, but I always get stuck visually. I've looked for answers, and have constantly rejected aphantasia. Taking the VIVQ, it tells me I am "Phantasic" but I honestly didn't know how to answer the questions because my visual imagination is inconsistent and the answers are incredibly static and rigid. There's no room for individual experience. But I noticed it mentioned "Hypophantsia", and I decided to look that up and it kinda sorta lines up a bit better than Phantasic and Aphantasic. But I also don't wanna claim I'm something when I haven't exhausted every lane of learning or line of questioning.

Any help would be appreciated!

P.S. I feel it's worth mentioning I have a better time imagining faces (still brief but much clearer) with my eyes open? I also have massive issues with object permanence because I can't visually recall where I left things or even, sometimes, what exactly they look like. ADHD is also a likely contributor to that, to be fair.

When I think back to a TV episode I watched last week, I can recall several scenes, but it’s not like playing a video in my head. Instead, I see it in bits, like snapshots or better said, like images. These images aren’t vivid, but I can still see where things are. For example, I know where the main character is standing, how the person he talks to somewhat look like and the cars stacked on top of each other in the background. Then I can jump to the next scene and grab the next mental image, but it’s still not clear or continuous like a video. Just fragments of the scenes that are not detailed or vivid: like when people can imagine a red apple, I see a black and white apple (it's not even black and white, too difficult to describe). Can I imagine someone throwing the apple? Yes and no. I can't picture a whole person, instead I can picture an arm and to make it happen, I need to go through 3 pictures of an arm grabbing the apple, holding the apple, and then throwing the apple instead of a video playback in my head.

Hello! I'm doing a research project into aphantasia/ hypophantasia and would really love it if those from this subreddit could fill out the questionnaire (if you want to obviously), it would be really appreciated! Here's the link to the questionnaire! Thanks ahead of time!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdOkyDTf9q0aYQpPmyoguHdrrlhrT1V8W96l6M6_IKGdYaddg/viewform?usp=sf_link

Hello! About two weeks ago I made a post about my website for aphantasia, Mind-Void.

As a reminder, it’s a website to share some information about aphantasia and also SDAM, show some research, and act as a resource.

I just made some new posts that I wanted to share with you all! One is about how often Visualization Seems to Come Up, and the other on Memory and AI.

Finally, thank you so much for your responses to my surveys on Both Aphantasia and SDAM. I’ve gotten a lot of interesting responses, and will share the results in a couple weeks after a few more.

Appreciate all you guys, hope you find something interesting! Thanks for the support!

So I've always had pretty vivid dreams so it took me a long time to realize that I was suffering from hypophantasia. But something weird happened this morning as I was waking up from a dream. I was lucid and realized I was waking up and had an idea for a character design, and I could see them! I could make changes and imagine what they should look like without having anything physically there. But as I got more awake the design vanished into the nothing white outline on a gray background it normally is. So is there a way to overcome it? Like is there some kind of training I need to do?

Hello! About two weeks ago I made a post about my website for aphantasia, Mind-Void.

As a reminder, it’s a website to share some information about aphantasia, research, and act as a resource.

This is an update on some additions to the site. There is now an advisory page, where the 4 advisors that have given their thoughts on the surveys and potential diagnostic are credited.

I’ve also posted on Mind-Void’s blog, discussing visualization ability variations in more depth. I’ll try to continue to make posts every few weeks, and I’ll post here when I do.

Finally, I have also finished creating surveys to learn more!

I made one for aphantasia

And one for SDAM

Just like last time, share your thoughts or recommendations on the changes, visit, and maybe make a post or comment or two! Also remember to fill out the forms! Thanks!

So, same as most of you on this subreddit who would be reading this, I have hypophantasia, so no need to describe that.

Not sure how much this relates to others, but I also don't get very vivid dreams ever, and bad dream recollection. I also don't just nightmares, not since I was a toddler from what I can remember. Although I am open to the idea that I do have nightmares, just that I have a bad enough recollection that I always just forget about them immediately.

Now my best friend on the other hand, he has extremely vivid dreams, but he also gets nightmares and has even had recurring nightmares. There was a time that I was envious of the experiences that others got to experience in dreams, but overall I might have the better deal not getting nightmares.

**Mention of drugs and drug use**

!Now last year in September and December, me and my best friend went to some festivals where we tried acid. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but my best friend experience a very different high than me.!<

!When not moving around a bunch or dancing, I could see some pulsating colours and a little bit of morphing. My best friend on the other hand, it's like he was transported to a whole different world, completely detached to this one.!<

So I've been wondering to myself if our different experiences, like how difference in dreams, might be related to my hypophantasia.
Could be unrelated, maybe affected by a natural tolerance or other factors, but I don't think its too much of a stretch for the power of imagination to be related to the potency of hallucinations.

I've never really been able to imagine things my entire life. I always thought this was normal. When I imagine a red apple, I can hardly see it. When I think, my thoughts are very quiet.

Hi everyone! Ever since I learned about aphantaisa, I was interested in how it worked, and what it meant. I’ve learned a ton about it through online communities, research papers, and the various articles that have investigated aphantaisa in unique ways.

I decided to create a website to share some information about aphantaisa, research, and maybe start some discussion with a few posts. It also has information about SDAM.

I have also created surveys to learn more! I made one for SDAM And one for aphantasia

I have a couple other additions that are still work in progress, such as questionnaires/surveys, some ideas for different types of diagnostic quizzes, and a page for crediting some professionals that have given me some advice on how I might go about this.

I’ve been working on it for quite a while, and wanted to share it with you all!

The website is Mind-Void. Share your thoughts or recommendations, and maybe make a post or comment or two! Thanks!

I've started building a habit of practicing my drawing skills. I noticed it helps me become more detached to the visuals I get, which makes it more vivid.

I noticed that detachment really works for improving the quality of my mind's eye. Drawing and looking at my own art helps me not to get too attached to visuals I get in my mind's eye.

So I figured out a few days ago that I have associative chromasthesia (for me, I hear a song and it shows a color in my head). Except it was a flash and then it is gone. Then I was like "well that sucks I can't see this sick stuff", like I can, but it is so breif I can basically only say the color, not necessarily see it. I can a little if I am relaxed, not stressed, and not thirsty, but I have to kind of imagine a string and then (especially on loud downbeats) I can sometimes see color.

Well I took this and I was frustrated like I can barely imagine an apple it is there and then it is not. I need to figure out if this is what I'm experiencing.

I've been struggling to decide whether I have aphantasia or not. People seem to understand it right away. When I visualize something, I can get brief vague flashes of an image but it doesn't have the brightness or clarity of seeing an image in real life. I can "trick" my brain into thinking I'm imagining vivid scenes, but when I try to focus on the detail I noticed I wasn't really imagining most of it. For brief moments, I can picture the hands of a person or their eyes, but putting it together feels like it's a chore. I wouldn't say I think in just concepts, since I can still imagine what it might be like to see something. Is visualizing things supposed to be like getting visuals on psychedelics? It just kind of confuses me.

Hello everyone. I have this little persistent issue that whenever i try to imagine something, i always begin to make gestures, like if i need to imagine an apple, i raise my hand and draw a small circle. It was really weird when i was a child, but i learned to kinda suppress it, so it's really small gestures, just enough for people to find it amusing but not think i'm crazy. Or when i work on a complex programming problem, i do "schemes" in my head by moving various parts with my hands - i can't actually see anything except a extremely blurry (or rather abstract) idea of a "scheme" or a flowchart, but gesturing helps me remember where the different parts are.

Similarily, i can have familiar music playing in my head, but when it comes to people talking or some new music i can't imagine it without moving my lips.

Just want to know if anyone can relate to this. Apparently i'm also autistic (undiagnosed and in a situation that won't let me seek diagnosis for at least a couple more years), so maybe this is related somehow? I couldn't find any information about it.

I think many random things constantly. When I’m focusing the words and noise in my head get lquieter and my attention is engaged in some way. Usually I’ll start visualizing scenes or motion but I can’t necessarily recognize it. Sometimes I do but there’s never specific people, places, or things. It’s all interchangeable, like I’m piecing together masterful watercolor paintings in my mind in rapid succession, never able to lock down a detailed image. It’s located in the back of my mind and it’s like I can’t fully access it so I’m just getting blurry images and memories of sensations and colors. I’ve often told the people in my life that I summon blurry collages in my mind randomly and sometimes they reflect what I’m thinking, especially when I’m not paying attention to my surroundings. If I attempt to picture something specific it’s blurry and, well, resembles an unidentifiably abstract collage. I’ve always had trouble visualizing shapes and details. I would constantly play with toys as a child to act out scenes with people that I couldn’t visualize. I get random flashes of things I’ve already seen but most are vaguely unfamiliar and aren’t around long enough for me to figure out what’s being pictured. I think with mostly words and try to use the images I can make sense of when they pop up. I don’t see words but my mind gets noisy, if that makes sense. Does anyone experience something similar? I have trouble with recognizing faces, detailed shapes, and text/symbols. I struggle in math and require a calculator, paper and a writing tool. In English I can’t visualize the text clearly and can have a hard time keeping track of what’s happening if I don’t reflect on it. I often just sit there stuck at the beginning of essays and papers because I just don’t know what to write. Maybe I’m just messed up in the brain in some way? I have Functional Neurological Disorder and have vivid yet inconsistent, abstract, and bizarre dreams. I have some sort of “unspecified Dissociative Disorder” according to my psychiatrist. I have a referral to a specialized therapist to further evaluate and understand what I struggle with. Anyways, thank you for reading.

Here is something for you all. So, when I close my eyes, I see black. I know what people or objects look like so even if I can't see them in my mind, I can still "see" them if that makes sense. One day, I was at work at drifting off during a break. I was hyper aware of myself though because I didn't want to actually fall asleep and be late getting back to work. So, I'm aware that I'm slowly drifting off, my eyes are closed, and the blackness in my mind slowly begins to create images as I'm drifting off and the next thing I know is that I'm dreaming about old timey cartoons. I just found it cool to see. I was tired, drifting off, saw black in my mind, slowly had images come to life in the blackness, and then boom, full on dreaming!

I don't know if this has anything to do with Hypophantasia but maybe the images people can see in their minds have something to do with what makes us dream!

I can't visualize all the time, and there are long periods of time when I have no visuals at all.

Is this normal?

For me, my mental imagery is very sporadic with a few mental flashes every ten minutes or so. Does anyone else have sporadic mental imagery when you visualize?

Today has been an interesting day! I've realised there is a word for what I experience - hypophantasia. I always describe what I can visualise like an old 80s wireframe animation. But it's not 3D, only in a light shade of grey and it flashes up for maybe 1 second if I'm lucky. I joke that my brain doesn't have an up-to-date GPU.

But my main issue is with faces. I'm terrible at remembering faces since I can't picture them. I usually try and picture a face, it comes up in my head as a face-shaped oval that I know is a person. If I try to picture a loved-one, it's the same. I never recognise eye colour or hair colour in person (even someone I just met, I can't tell you the colour of their hair unless I've made a manual data entry into my brain of their hair colour and repeated it to myself over and over like I'm learning an equation)

My point is - I'm good with remembering facts. I can remember equations, lines in a play, whatever. So I'd love if anyone knows of any software to construct a human face? My thought is that I want to have a way to categorise someone's face by saying they have an "A4-type nose" or a "B6-type eye" and be able to remember those features. Maybe then my stupid wireframe brain will be able to get better at picturing types of noses and eyes and be able to string together a coherent face. Are there such things as "types" of features, or is that another sign of my dumb brain not realising every face is unique?

Also as an aside, I think everyone I meet looks like someone I've met before. I always recognise people as celebrities or loved ones. It's not ideal. I can only tell people apart from celebrities by how they speak. Is there a name for that condition as well?

Thanks guys!

Step by step from the bedroom to the front door, you get in your car, drive down your street, take the first exit, maybe pass a traffic circle, a crosswalk, arrive, park and walk to the front door, etc.

Can you add a scenario, such as a man jumping in front of you and you hitting your brakes hard when you are just about to arrive?

How do you process this in your mind? How clear is the picture?

I’ve collected and posted a bunch of useful information on all the different types of phantasia in r/phantasia

If you have any extra information I would really appreciate a post, I am trying to learn as much as possible in this field and help others learn as well!

Hello r/Hypophantasia community,

I've been struggling with what I believe to be Hypophantasia, as I find it incredibly difficult to voluntarily visualize anything. Even when I do manage to visualize, the images are extremely blurry and fade away within a second. However, what truly perplexes me is that just a year or two ago, I had a reasonably good 'mind's eye' and could visualize things vividly. It's as if I suddenly or gradually (I'm not sure) lost the ability to visualize.

I want to clarify that I haven't experienced any brain-related injuries or problems in the past, which adds to my confusion about this sudden change.

I'm reaching out to this community in the hopes that someone has had a similar experience or can provide any insights into what might be happening. If you've gone through a loss of visual imagery ability or have knowledge about Hypophantasia, I would greatly appreciate any advice, personal experiences, or information you can share.

Thank you in advance for your help and support!

Hi everyone,

As part of my third year of university, I am conducting a study on mental imagery and the effects of having little or no imagery ability on memory recall. This lack of an ability to visualise is called Aphantasia and is a recently defined neurological phenomenon that has been suggested to be present in approximately 5% of the general population.

To investigate this phenomenon further, I have put together a memory test that takes approximately 10 minutes to complete and a preliminary mental imagery test to determine your visualisation abilities. The whole process of completing my study takes approximately 15-20 minutes and if you are interested and would like to help me with my study, participation would be greatly appreciated. Just follow the link below to get started. Thank you!

Kieran

Link: https://uclan.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5u2RVPPfvHc6sqG

I have been learning about this lately and I am curious to know if hypophantasia affects someone's reading ability.

I haven't finished a book in my life, mainly because I when I try to read books where author is very decriptive and specific about certain things, they all are just words to me or sometimes I find myself pausing and try to paint a picture in my head word per word. Fun right? Lol

I am unsure is this is also related but whenever I read something, most of the time I have to hear myself talk for me to be able to understand whatever I am reading. Don't get me wrong - sometimes I could read silently but not really long stuff which maybe another reason why I do not enjoy reading. My eyes just tend to focus on looking for the punctuation marks just to feel that I went through the paragraph but I did not understand any.

Is anybody else like me? 🤪 Thank you in advance.

Is anyone able to fantasize or picture the future in general? Ever since I realized that I have hypophantasia, I’ve realized that it’s always been hard for me to fantasize about my future, not sure if that relates to this at all but curious if anyone relates