So, you know how usually you get motion sickness if you read while you're in a car? Well, I usually get car sickness even when I'm not doing anything specific. For example, I just found out this subreddit and I was doing the hyperphantasia check and got car sickness from visualising an apple (maybe I got too much invested lmao).

Let me know if anybody ever felt the same.

Title. This year I have had 2 short windows (about a week or two) where it was just harder to visualize things. I’m not sure if it’s maybe some kind of deficiency (sometimes I don’t eat a lot) or I’m just overthinking it and worrying. During these times I also had headaches and migraines. I know stress can also affect it, but with the headaches my thought was either some kind of deficiency or perhaps lack of sleep.

I depend on my hyperphantasia for my artwork and I spend a lot of time keeping myself entertained by daydreaming and visualizing various situations. Before these two instances I had never really thought it was possible to lose this ability or have it get weaker. I have also noticed that when I think too hard about the hyperphantasia itself it’s harder to imagine something. It just comes naturally without thinking about it. I like to think about hyperphantasia as computer memory. Maybe after doing it for so long you run out and need to refresh and rest. But now that I’ve learned it’s possible to lose it I’ve been really worried that it will happen to me and my art will be heavily affected.

The first time this happened to me a few months ago I felt really terrible since I just wasn’t myself. I had woken up one day and it just… wasn’t working. I went to the doctor for a physical and told her about it but both the lady typing everything into the computer and the actual doctor didn’t know what hyperphantasia was. It kind of pissed me off a bit because I could tell she had no idea what it was but was just pretending like she knew anything about it and asking basic questions. That was the main reason I went, not the headaches. I just wanted my ability back and wanted to know if something was wrong with me.

If anyone knows if diet or anything like that or mineral deficiency can affect the state of your hyperphantasia I’d love to hear any information or similar experiences. This is my first time discussing it deeply with anyone, since most people I try to talk to about it simply don’t understand or don’t have it. I’m hoping it’s lack of sleep since my sleep schedule has been kind of messed up or if I just need to take vitamins.

If so, what’s the max word length you can fit on your mind’s screen at once?

I seem to have perfect hyperphantasia, visuals, sounds, feelings, smells and taste but i have a bad memory. Sometimes i dont remember what i ate the day before or things i done same day and a lot of my old memories, so i can very vividly come up with and imagine things that dont exist but struggle to visualse existing things accurately when they require memory. I dont know if its intertwined in any way but i also really struggle to make my mind up on things or to pick something to imagine. Does this mean i do not have hyperphantasia or just struggle with things that are intertwined with it?

I mean is your imagery purely visual or is it more semantic, meaning related?

I ask because it's a dream of mine to have a Mind Palace for thinking, not just for storing memories. I always thought that I have hypophatasia (while clearly having detailed versions of songs and other audio fragments, like movie quotes, scenes and so on, being able to mimic them perfectly), but recently, when I started practicing some exercises for visual recall and reviving distant memories, I realised, that I was just suppressing everything because of trauma. In my early years I started blinking off the harsh things at first, then reclused inside, to live in the inner worlds, when things were emotionally or sensory unbearable. But at some point my parents started bothering me and scaring me too much, trying to force their will upon me since I was pretty autistic and unresponsive in usual ways. So I kinda got stuck between outside and inside not fully belonging to neither. Too scared to go inside, because if others are around then I'm not safe. Too uninterested and clueless about what happens outside, also scared to interact, since to me they're unpredictable, hostile, volatile.

Anyway. Now my phantasia and memory is being revived. And even with small percentage of capacity revived I see that there's sometimes too much going on. And it's scary, too little control of what's happening.

And that's what I want to know about. How can one make this mental circus more controllable and orderly. I want to control it, like some sort of VR interface, in which I can open and close apps, manipulate everything and sort it by associations, like some sort of tags. Now whenever I look up some memories associations are too illogical and my mind can bring up completely irrelevant stuff linked to current images by some vague and unexpected associations.

Before, when I thought that I had hypophatasia, I had this weird idea of creating 3D mind palace/zettelkasten to store my notes in "physical" catalogue with fractal worlds inside the drawers, so I can combine benefits of Loci and index card system. Kinda like russian doll nesting situation or infinite zoom of some fractals. Now I think that I eventually would be able to create something like that in my mind. But I'm not sure of how to build with this imagination material. What are building blocks, how to create something stable and permanent and is it possible without repeating things over and over as you do when memorising.

And it's like having 5 different tabs open in your mind all at once? Images, conversations, music etc? I don't actually mind, it's been like this my whole life, but I was going about my business this morning when I suddenly realised; I was in the midst of straightening my hair, concentrating on that and thinking about how I desperately need a haircut (and visualising style ideas), whilst also thinking about/visualising what I was going to be doing at work when I got there, whilst also singing and visualising a song (a musical number from a movie that was stuck in my head), whilst also considering what I might figure out to have for breakfast (visualising my kitchen and opening cupboards and fridge to picture what was in there.)

That's the best I can describe it. All of those thoughts/images were all happening simultaneously, like playing multiple TV screens all at once. And that's normal for me ALL the time. 24/7. And it doesn't quieten down no matter what. I often meditate and even then I can only quiet everything down to maybe 2 different "tabs" being open and I cannot focus on just, nothing.

Right now as I type this I'm thinking about tasks I need to do tomorrow, and singing a song in my head (it's like a constant backing track), and focusing on typing/words, and it's like having multiple inner monologues just, rambling away at the same time.

It's fascinating, really. I know everyone's experience of Hyperphantasia is different so, wondered how common my experience is.

Hey there!

Been reading into hyperphantasia and did some tests.
I always believed people imagine things like I do and also recall memory like this.
Now I know that this is a very individual process.
However I don't know if I could consider myself in that spectrum.
I believe that the definition is pretty vague and many people (me included) just have slightly above average imagination, but think it is hyperphantasia. I mean you can't look into the heads of other people. How are you supposed to know what is average imagination?
In guided meditation you constantly imagine things and most people seem to have no problems with it...

In one test I should imagine a landscape and tell the details I see.
I do have a clear vivid image, but it is not as "real seeing".
First of all I have no clue what that's supposed to mean. Because I don't "see" the image, I just know how it looks.
But it's usually a very "artsy" version of the imagined thing. When I imagine a sunrise it's not as a real one, but more like something you'd see in a cartoon. I can imagine the sun rising and giving its rays to illuminate the sky and imagine a rainbow forming. But it is like someone did an animation trying to replicate the actual thing but with waaay more effects than there are present. For the rainbow it is that it fades in from top to bottom, leaving some sparks wherever the new colour starts appearing. I can imagine it just fading in, but this is if I really concentrate. The standard version is the unrealistic one.

Does anyone have this as well? And is this a form of hyperphantasia? As already said I don't know if it's just above average or really that far.
Thanks!

I never knew this was also such a thing until today and I'm wondering if it's related or not to being able to visualize, sort of like a prerequisite?

Here are 2 YouTube examples: Looking at the world with Visual Snow and Navigating life with Visual Snow

If yes, have you had it since birth, has it spontaneously happened from some event, or have you managed to "turn it off" at will?

-Would you consider your visualizations better in the presence of visual snow or in its absence, if that's even possible?

-Would you consider this visual snow presence a type of "second screen" from which you are able to visualize into this 3D space?

If you don't see visual snow 24/7, whenever you visualize, can you kind of see it in the background if you tried looking?

My thinking is that in the same way aphants take their non-visualizing as "normal" and they think everybody else is the same, phants/hyperphants may take their visual snow as "normal" and think that this is the case with everybody else, when in both cases, it's not. It would be a major lead for born aphants like myself if we can find that the processes involved with the creation of visual snow is what makes visualization possible.

At most I see the tiny white dots in the blue sky, and recently after meditating, when I close my eyes before bed, I see just a little activity like this: Visual Noise but at 10% brightness in comparison; before it was just darkness.

I imagine that this little bit of visual light noise can eventually be developed into full-blown visual snow 24/7 but in a way that can be turned on or off at will. I don't know, just wondering. Thanks for your responses!

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 and hyperphantasia. 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 hyperphantasia, so for those who do, what has helped you visualise things while reading?

EDIT: Sorry I posted this on the wrong community. I was supposed to upload this on the Hypophantasia community not realising that there was Hyperphantasia community. I didn’t realise until now that there is an opposite to hypophantasia. I'll keep this post up as there are some useful comments that I want to come back to unless the mods want to take it down.

I find that when I'm reading something (in conjunction with visualising the scenes or events), I can recall specific words/sentences situated in particular places of the page (commonly sentences that I mentally bookmark, because I simply like it, or it has key information). I haven't tried memorising an entire page yet because that is intimidating and kind of redundant anyway, but I wonder if recalling the words on the page (with the aid of visualisations) is just another typical ability of hyperphantasia or impertinent to it?

Also this makes writing notes abysmal, because I like putting things into my own words, but sometimes I unintentionally mentally plagiarise the words? It sounds stupid, but sometimes that occurs and it's frustrating. (But I still understand the information, which is the important part)

Whenever I visulize I focus to much on it even if I do something simple are there any meditation that help me fix this problem?

I have aphantasia, meaning I cannot visualize anything. AMA

I've had hyperphantasia since forever and it's become unbearable. I'm now 15 and and while I'm luckily quite naturally smart I'm borderline passing classes because I simply can't focus during class or when I try to study something it takes me horrendously long. It started out with when I was younger me imagining me and my friends in shows like transformers because I was obsessed with them. But especially when I was mentally straight up losing it this was my best and only escape. My problem is that whenever I do something I can't focus more than 30 seconds unless the subject really interests me otherwise my mind just wanders of into my dream world where I'm some superhero or god (usually based on books, games or movies I'm currently interested in) Or I just start thinking about other possible outcomes of whatever just happened which makes me lose my grasp over whatever is happening.

Is there anyway to stop my "daydreams" I suppose is the best way to describe them from taking over?

Or do you need to think about it for a second to “bring up” the image?

I am excited to announce r/hyperphantasia is back! There may be some changes from before, as I had to setup almost everything from scratch. Please take some time to familiarize yourself with the new rules.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated as we work to make this community better than ever. Happy posting!

Like can you have a slideshow or some video going on in your head while you are doing something else or when you are just sitting. Sometimes I don't even choose what comes up. It can be related to automatic daydreaming or just mind coming up with random images related to something you are thinking/working on.

P.S: Also it's good to see this community back and up. So let's share our experiences

It just occurred to me that hyperphantasia may be the reason I don’t collect souvenirs of places I have been. I know a lots of people collect merchandise such as fridge magnets or a pen with the name of the place on it they have visited to remind them of being there along with taking hundreds of photos. Do some of you with a strong memory not feel the need to do this as your memories are vivid and you can recall being at the place and imagine the sights sounds and smells as if you were there?

What is it called when someone's imagination IS their physical reality? When someone's mind is one with their reality? They think things and see them in real time interacting in their reality?

How much time passes when you fully immerse yourself in your world?

Where do you go? How long are you there?

There have been times where my mind will venture out and I will be gone for a couple days and in real life it will have been maybe 15-20 minutes

The title. I've been in this journey of developing life-like visualization as a skill and I've wanted to talk to others who had done it, or are trying to do it, for a long time. I'm surprised I didn't find this sub sooner. So if you are somebody like that, please reply here or message me, I would very much like to hear from you.

I'm putting here some stuff I try to do in visualization. *Driving cars, riding motorcycles (I was horrible at it up until recently) *Walking, in streets, or interesting locations *Creating buildings and structures that I can actually use, like a home or a garage *Real life skills, like medical skills (I'm a doctor and this helps a lot while I study) *There is much more but I'd like to hear from you now

I don't think I can visualize these scenarios like people with hyperphantasia, but it was always getting better slowly.

I can sense what I conjure in my minds eye and can project it onto the world or just alter world objects to fit what I want. I can taste, hear, smell, feel texture, but obviously it is not the same experience as actual sensorial experience.

I can manipulate objects and play around with them as well as change their properties. It is not a super vivid experience, but I can feel it.

What would this be exactly?

I have always had a good visual memory so I took the cambridge test and landed in the 90th percentile for hyperphantasia. My parter thinks I might have synesthesia as well because of the way I attribute tastes to shapes and little quirks like that.

With all that in mind, any time I have anxiety I have a constant compilation playing in my head of myself getting into very gruesome accidents and seeing and feeling them happen to me, I can't help it, I'll drink a bit too much coffee and all of a sudden I'm seeing a pov of myself falling teeth first into the corner of a counter top on repeat, or my knees snapping in the wrong direction. I can see internal visual thoughts better with my eyes open so this nightmare just goes wild while I'm trying to live my life.

If anyone else is having vivid hyperphantasia/anxiety fueled body horror waking nightmares and have found a good technique to make them go away please hook a brother up.

Peace.

I know that Sherlock Holmes uses this power to help him remember useful information but sadly he's not a real person.

I belive hyperphantasia to be a subconscious blocked thing- Kinda like how there are two kinds of blind people- people who can't see beacuse they dont have eyes or stuff like that and people which their brain doesn't send the things the eyes see to you.

My reasoning to belive it's that way is beacuse I remember that when I was younger I was able to remember pictures in my memories, and also my dreams have clearer images of memories, do other people have it that way too?

Lmk what you think about that

I wonder if anyone else can see an explosion or a car crash in a movie and use it in your imagination.

I feel like a vfx program or something because I can cut things out of a movie and I can use it and manipulate it as I see fit. I can do it with sound too.

I can for example imagine my house explode or my car being on fire.

I wonder if anyone else does this.

I can imagine the smell and taste of anything I’ve ever smelt or tasted. Example if I think of a dominos pizza slice I can taste it how it exactly is and imagine any toppings or the texture. If I’ve smelt a perfume I don’t forget I just know the smell and can experience it and the feeling I would get if I was really smelling it.

Again with sounds I can hear a particular sound in my head or a persons voice.

I can play a song I know in my head again exactly how it sounds I wouldn’t need to play it as I can hear it in my head no different if I was to hear it playing for real.

I can visualise any object in my mind and if you was to ask me to think of something random I could visualise it. I can even imagine and ‘feel’ textures like if I was to think of either slime or a wooden surface with any particular finish.

I have always had a vivid memory for example reading a book I ‘see’ in my mind what I feel the author has written and it can play out like a movie in my head as I read.

Is this normal what most people experience or hyperphantasia which is more rare? My brain never switches off it’s always visualising something or playing out scenarios. The scenarios are either real events that have happened or scenarios I imagine. I fail to understand how anyone can fully switch off and not think of anything whilst relaxing as my mind keeps me entertained!

So I know hyperphantasia means you have some control of your memories- you can play with them vividly- but sometime I can control them and sometimes I don't, is it that way for everyone?

I have suffered from OCD since I was 11 years old, especially from intrusive thoughts. After years of therapy and inner work I've managed to almost completely become free from OCD, but it was pure hell for many years.

I remember being a kid seing all these horrible and morbide pictures in my mind and also seing myself doing things I absolutely should not do. It was out of my control and absolutely not my fault, but I felt a lot of guilt because of this.

I think that some protection mechanism in my brain simply "deactivated" my visualization skills to prevent me from seing all these things, because I remember that my OCD changed in character from being purely in my mind to become more ritual based in the physical world so to speak. Maybe my OCD simply took this path because it couldn't any longer haunt me in my imagination.

As I said, I am more or less completely free from OCD now but I still have a hard time to visualize. When being close to fall asleep I am able to visualize extremely well, just like a movie really, but during the day its more or less completely shut off.

Sometimes I've been able to visualize even during daytime but quickly its like something in my mind has pushed a button and its all black again. This is why I believe this is the cause for my hyperphantasia, because I obviously have the skills to do it but my mind won't let me.

Anyone here have similar experiences or thoughts about it? Did you learn how to bypass this so you could visualize again?

Thanks!

My spouse and I are pretty sure that I'm hyperphantasic & my spouse is aphantasic. If it matters, we're both autistics but I'm also ADHD, and both have a range of sensory differences from the norm including sensitivities (ie, lowered thresholds of perception & overstimulation, plus differences in processing). But again, we are very unique from each other as well. But here's my question, because I'm trying to tease apart the effects of autism from hyperphantasia. When I imagine an object, there's as much additional sensory information-perceiving it in my head as there would be doing so outside my head. There's no simple snapshot it or reducing it down to a visual token. So if someone asks me to say, grab a bottle of minced garlic from a shelf, I may be imagining a bottle that's very different from the one on the shelf, in high detail with multiple senses engaged. So when I look at the shelf, nothing matches what's in my head enough to automatically trigger a match and I look stupid because I can't see the one right in front of me. I've learned workarounds such as reading the labels (in this example) and intentionally making myself "tokenize" the representation in my head, but I have to remember to do so.

I'd love to know your thoughts on this, please?