[BowBun]

I cannot fathom not being able to picture my loved ones at any time. I know it gives many people the little motivation they need to push through hard times.

Do you happen to use photos and written word more than others to try and make up for it? Is that even a remedy?

[kaffeemitsahne]

Without mental imagery you can still just think about your loved ones. It's not like you have no memory or something.

[Emma_Goldman]

My partner has aphantasia. If we didn't see each other for a couple of weeks, they used to say that they'd forgotten what I look like. I never thought they were serious until we realised they had aphantasia a few years ago. My partner also dreams in verbal narratives, which I find fascinating.

[scruple]

Not the GP, but... It used to bother me, many years ago when my wife and I first started dating. As a result, I've always kept a framed photo of us on my desk. At work at first, also in my car, and of course nowadays I have thousands available on my phone. Working from home full-time, I have one of our engagement photos in a frame on my desk. I guess I just never put together before why I was doing that.

[garmaine]

Not The grandparent, but I’m also aphantasic. I think the question doesn’t make sense. Why would I seek to remedy the lack of something I never experienced having in the first place?

Aprantly the rest of the world goes around hallucinating 24/7. I find that frightening.

[_Microft]

No, it is only a hallucination if the one experiencing it perceives it as part of reality.

Edit: here is the introductory paragraph of Hallucination from Wikipedia [1]:

A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness; pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, and is accurately perceived as unreal; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; and imagery, which does not mimic real perception and is under voluntary control.[1] Hallucinations also differ from "delusional perceptions", in which a correctly sensed and interpreted stimulus (i.e., a real perception) is given some additional (and typically absurd) significance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination

[calibas]

It's nothing like hallucinating, it's more like a blank canvas that you can paint whatever you want upon instantly.

[garmaine]

A canvas which doesn’t exist upon which you “paint” imaginary imagery. As someone who has only ever experienced sight when my eyes are open, I don’t know how to relate to that other than hallucination.

[calibas]

It's not like seeing things that aren't there, it's like watching a movie, you know it's not real. It's kinda like two different visual channels, and perhaps hallucinations are what happens when people can no longer distinguish between the two...

[garmaine]

You're missing the point. What if I told you I see an imaginary friend with me all day long. Everywhere I go, he is there doing his thing, making snide remarks and commentary that only I hear. I know he is not real, and I never get confused about that, but I see him nonetheless. You'd think that's weird, right?

I have the same opinion of people's purported "mind's eye" and visual imagination. Like, I'm able to recall things that I've seen, but they come back to me as grab-bag of feelings, abstract concepts, and an enumeration of qualities and characteristics. Not a reconstruction of a picture or anything like that, or a movie playing in my mind's eye or whatever.

This has never really been a handicap for me, except in art class which I was never any good at (Art teacher: "Just focus your mind on your subject while looking at the canvas, then just paint what you see. It's easy!" Me: "... wtf are you smoking?") Or when I went to pick up my fiancé from the airport after I first prolonged separation, and I got worried because I honestly couldn't remember what her face looked like.

But back to the analogy, it seems as if nearly everyone around me goes around life with an imaginary friend that only they can see, and I'm the only one who finds this weird. Like how can you even trust your senses if you're able to conjure up full sensual experiences in your imagination? I find this scary because it counteracts my own certainty: if my mind is seeing something or hearing something, IT'S REAL.

[calibas]

I figured since you'd never experienced it, I'd try to explain what it's like to you. For reasons I don't exactly understand, you keep trying to tell me what it's like instead! To compare it to a hallucination is a bad analogy, to compare it to an imaginary friend is an even worse one.

You have abstract thoughts, they just seem to lack a conscious visual component, but that's all the "mind's eye" is, thoughts. There's a distinct difference between your thinking and your physical experience.

>I'm able to recall things that I've seen, but they come back to me as grab-bag of feelings, abstract concepts, and an enumeration of qualities and characteristics.

Me too, and there's also "photographs" in there as well.

[julianj]

To me its almost like I have two separate canvases. One that my eyes render to and an 'offscreen' canvas my mind renders to. I can access both, but they don't overlap.

[henrikschroder]

> Like how can you even trust your senses if you're able to conjure up full sensual experiences in your imagination?

Wow, this is fascinating, and it's incredibly hard to describe something you've just taken for granted!

When I'm writing this down, I can "hear" my own voice narrating what I'm writing, sometimes talking ahead as my typing catches up, sometimes the other way around. But I have no difficulty separating "real" sounds that have gone through my ears, from the sound of my mind's voice, if that makes sense. If I were to open my mouth and talk along with my mind's voice, it would become quiet, because there's now real sounds taking its place.

Visualizing things work sort of the same way, if someone says "think about a dog playing fetch!", I start seeing fragments/glimpses/moving images of my memories of dogs playing fetch, but it's more like having a movie screen in front of your eyes, I don't see the dog in the world as I see it, the mind's eye "sees" things on top of/in parallel to existing visual input. And staring at something that is visually boring, or closing your eyes, helps you see your mind's eye more clearly, since there's no overlap. The more visually interesting the real world is, the harder it is to clearly picture something in your mind. And just like with the mind's voice, you just know that what you're imagining isn't real.

So to answer your question: Actual hallucinations are what happens when you're unable to distinguish between the two, normally you have absolutely no problem doing so.

[ralfd]

> As someone who has only ever experienced sight when my eyes are open

Can you experience/imagine music (or any sound) without hearing it? Like a song which is stuck in your ear. Or if I ask you to imagine the Star Wars melody, could you hum it in your mind?

[garmaine]

More so than imagery, but not to the extent reported by others. I do have an internal voice and usually have better luck with songs that have vocals—I can make my internal voice “sing” the lyrics without instrumentation. I can get songs like Bohemian Rhapsody stick in my head, but not something that is more instrumental than lyrical.

[PinkMilkshake]

>As someone who has only ever experienced sight when my eyes are open

Do you not dream?

[garmaine]

Not without the use of medication, no, which may or may not be related. When I do, the character of the experience depends on the dream but typically is experienced through feeling and abstract form. It never had the character of photo real-ness, real or imagined, that others often describe when talking about their dreams or mental imagery.

[arandr0x]

I have no visual memory, but my tactile memory is excellent, so I remember my loved ones' arms, the texture of their hair, that sort of thing.