Can't Visualize - I See Nothing When I Close My Eyes | Aphantasia 

Same!!

Same

Me too

Ikr, I’m sad.

Wow I didn’t know this many people had it

you have anphantasia. Basically, you can't see pictures in your mind but you can understand them. same with music and smells.

slash ' thank you, I'm aware of this. I can hear music much better though than seeing. Though I've never heard of anyone thinking in smells.

Same, Eddie. I'm a visual artist and studied music at the university level for years. I can hear melodies very easily, but I have a very difficult time seeing much when I close my eyes. I completely understand when you say you have to do the actual work. When painting, I have to put something on the canvas first and then it becomes a conversation where I put something down and it speaks back and it's just a back-and-forth wrestling match. haha

Exactly how I draw/paint too. So annoying. I wanna be able to get it right without sketching forever xD

Same

>imagine an apple on top of a table. >>ok. now what? >do you see it? >>no.. what color is it? >green. >>ok. now what? >do you see it? >>no. what time of day is it? what should the light look like? is it fresh or rotting? is there a bite out of it? is there a worm poking it's smiling head out of this goddamn fucking apple? WHAT IS THE FUCKING POINT?!?!?!! >so, you don't see an apple? >>No.. I do not see an apple. Would you please tell me what in the entire fuck you want from me?.. Is one of the legs on the table wobbly? I can help you with that.. What is it doing?

YEAH - its legit like, i know what a table LOOKS like, an an APPLE too, but, i can't literally see a fucking apple on a table in my head on a tv or some shit when i think about it

@@citizenatlrge ahhahahhahahaah omg! This is me describing things to people i go into SO MUCH DETAIL when i story tell and people think im nuts but, that's how i navigate my thoughts ALL DAY EVERY DAY, with connections, descriptions, maths, science, categorisation, feelings, smells, etc

@@ArtyMars I have the exact same problem and I only recently realised that some people see, some feel, some make words... I'm more a description person too, so I'll describe the image to myself rather than see it.

I know I’m late but yea, I fully understand, it’s so weird? I can conceptualize but not see? Same, it’s weird

Yes including music, sound, feelings, taste, smell, touch and everything else. It's not perfect imagery tho, most of the times is kind of blurry and fuzzy but everyone is on a spectrum, like I'm really good at recalling smell or taste or music (and extending the music I like despite knowing nothing of music making lol) but when it comes to pictures it's situational for me, most of the times it's blurry and fuzzy and I imagine better with open eyes, but I have ADHD so I'm different

@@markmuller7962 even smells!? i didnt think that would be possible. thanks for the info!

@@dwlrma Yes including, you know... s*x smell 😅 you welcome!

+Redonkulous i believe you bro becouse the same thing is happening to me dont worry you are not alone :D

Me too

Bruh, I have someone on the same side with me, I've only had one person believe me, but the rest all think I'm lying to myself and that I'm just not trying

Redonkulous I believe you too... I’m 38 yeas old and I’ve only figured this out 2 years ago.

Redonkulous I believe you cuz it’s me too

RisKyyy same, you are not alone.

I think it is bc of depression. Dopamine or endorphins seem to help me visualize much more. Makes sense bc if you are under stress already then hallucinations would just be a distraction. Without anaphasia a person can focus better and get their work done.

Same... I wish I could think about my lost loved ones and see their faces.

I'm an amputee and that doesn't bother me at all. I found out about Aphantasia a few weeks ago and was just gutted! Weird that a limb physically missing is no issue but my inability to see anything but grey mist when I close my eyes is depressing as hell.

Why is it depressing....because some can? I can't.... I wonder if my frequency is too low. I am trying meditating lately as I become more spiritual and present....stopping my subconscious mind rehashing stuff that has made me depressed my whole life and I am 59.... anyway...while I was trying to meditate....I little patch of .... like a hole in the black....which is all I ever see....opened up and it was a Forrest with a lake In vivid colour...... it was amazing. It was only there for a few seconds..... I now think my mind is blocking it... I am learning how to raise my frequency

Nicholas Blackston Video production quality was off the charts on this one ;)

Welcome to my world.

How about this. Can people that are blind visualize? I've never asked that question...

@@DLexEdition Ok... this is a sad idea... the fact that a blind person might be able to see better then I can with my eyes closed when they never see at all is almost depressing. (I only see black like what 90% of the video is

Sammeeee

SAME

me too.

Same

For me its like two seperate layers. I cant see anything when i close my eyes but darkness but in my minds eye even with my eyes open or closed i can visualise things to a certain degree. Like im not visualising through my actual eyes but through a different set of eyes. I cant actually see the colours or things through my eyes but i can see it in my mind to the same foginess of what a dream is like kind of.

Yes, I totally understand what you mean by that. If I close my eyes, the things I visualize appear blurry, however hard I try. But if I try to visualize something "casually", I can see it super imposed over everything around me. It's still blurry though. :(

i have the same thing aswell. i can't imagine anything with my eyes closed but actually when my eyes are open, i can recall a face perfectly but i'm not even really seeing it

Yes I can relate to that, especially with memories they seem so clear even when I have my eyes open. But when I try to visualize something it's all blurry and weird, even if I try to imagine a simple circle for example, it's moving all around and it's not doing what I want, it keeps dissapearing or changing form. But usually I don't see anything at all.

@@Orion3G yes man! isn't that weird? when i close my eyes it's really hard to even think. when my eyes are open though, i can almost "see" what i am thinking of. it must be the fact that i am looking at reality and could picture the thing i'm thinking about within reality

Wow you most be the only one person that didn't discover it on the internet Edit: oh wait 6 years ago it probably didn't went viral yet

I never really considered it like that! But I often imagine various activities... usually adventures through completely imagined worlds or augmented versions of real life. I will definitely try playing an actual game with save files. That is very interesting! Usually Im more like @Alepap and create 'the perfect MMO' with incredible detail. Its not always perfectly visual, but I include an incredible amount of description. I only just now realized how much detail I conjure up when I go to write it down... My current brain-child is several pages long, and it only covers the basics of the game... I havent even included the actual 'adventures' Ive done in the 'game' yet hahaha.

I have various anime going on in my head lol

This almost sounds like what NIkola Tesla would do. He honed his ability to visualize from an early age, and by the time he was an adult, he could run experiments in his head to see if the they would work or not.

This is really interesting! I can remember doing stuff like this when I was little, but it always took a lot of concentration. Nowadays, if I try to conjure up full scenes in my head, only the part I'm actively "creating" is visible. Like, I can't really visualize an entire face from a description, but I suspect that I used to be able to (though I don't think this is something I ever really tried).

I play puzzle games in my head sometimes. Like back when I was playing Bejeweled a lot, every time I closed my eyes I'd play Bejeweled.

As for me personally, I can only "see" what I think of. They aren't like if you are actually looking at pictures. It's more like an imprint or sensation of whatever it is -- like a dull or blurry image that's convincing enough for me to say "Yes, I can see it." I can choose whatever I see though by direct or indirect thought (though not with clarity), but generally it's black.

+Дмитрий Дмитриев Back when I was younger, I didn't even need to close me eyes to see the monsters if it was dark. My treacherous brain conjured all those images against my will, and harder I tried to will them away, the image only became more realistic. That's why I hated the dark and left the lights on when I went to sleep if I could when I was a kid. Now, I'm sure I _need_ to start meditation, because _god_, I can't go to sleep thanks to the uncontrollable amount of thoughts my mind thinks up. Out of all my ideas for anything, most of them are thought up before going to sleep. Due to that, it literally takes me over 30 minutes to go to sleep on a good day when I'm tired as hell-or it's over 5AM. Still remember the nightmare I got thanks to playing too much Slender, lol. I literally jumped out of my bed when I woke up - I opened my eyes during the moment when my entire body was in the air. That monstrous motherfucker appeared behind me and kicked me in the behind-thank god there's no pain in dreams-into a large fall. That's when I woke up. I spent so many hours in the dream running away from the Slenderman. On the bright side, I also have had a few lucid dreams. Most amazing thing ever. And I had rather large amount of semi-lucid dreams, where I wasn't aware that I was in a dream but was mostly in control, and could fly and do some cool shit. Flying was really hard, though. I also had the dreams repeat again a few times. One of them, I had 3 times, actually; funny, how I still died the same way, no matter the experience. Once, the first time I had a particular dream, I vaguely remember having to fix some device stuck on a truck. I think it was a really annoying thing, so when I had that dream again-even though I wasn't aware that I was dreaming-I remember saying, "Fuck it, I'm not doing this shit again", and waking up. So I think strong visual imagination is actually a good thing. I'm mostly balanced, having both but neither are the best.

+The Light Sabrix You are crazy if you play things like Slenderman! I rememer I told my girlfriend that horror games are much scary than movies and she didnt belive me. So I set her to play Amnesia. I couldnt even watch her doing it! I avoid every horror game, and hate when non-horror games have some horror levels, like that asalym from last Thief. Try not to play the, if you got such a problems with sleep, right? I also had s strong fear of darkness. But ist became much better after Vipassana meditaion course. You can do it too. They got a lot of meditaion centers around the world, you can easly find one close to you. Its works for donation and takes 10 days. Strong stuff, but worked for me. Now I can go to the kittchen at night without turnig lights on :))) And yeah, flying in a dream is super fun ;)

+The Light Sabrix Here is the link for meditation centers - www.dhamma.org/en/maps#001

Amazing!! I am much the same way!! Its so hard to remember that most other people dont have a constant inner dialogue and visual maps in their head that they can manipulate at will (or against their will haha) Rare for me to actually find someone that has such an 'overactive imagination' The only thing I seem to not have is vibrant colors, usually all my mental visuals are kinda water-colorish... or like faint holograms... But yeah man I hate horror movies!! Not because I necessarily get 'scared', but because all the visuals get replayed in my head over and over and over again, and sometimes also 'pop out' from the shadows (or even broad daylight)... Everything from sounds and sometimes even smells get conjured by my brain. Smh... I love my brain... but gotdamn its annoying sometimes hahahaha.

take a look at the mbti. I think the difference between you and fever is that you work on intuition while he works on sensation.

Yes! I didn't know I had this, and so hard to believe it people ACTUALLY see images... I can hear any song that I know the words to, I can remember it and how the music sounds and everything and "play it"n i my head. If I don't know the words, I can't do it

Alkerae hb

Well i've just figured out I have this mid trying to become an artist at university, feels bad bro.

No people don't actually see the things they're imagining on the backs of their eyelids, it's more like an image that you don't see with your eyesight, but with your mind. So an internal idea that you're able to visually think of the details, in your mind. Rather than seeing something as you would in the external world.

@@ChildOfAnAndroid you can still totally be an artist! The RU-vidr AmyRightMeow is a visual artist and animator who just recently realized she has aphantasia.

Can you remember sound and smells and stuff other than that?

Ghost I envy the way people can get lost in books.

Nolan Murillo you just aren't allowed to tell people my real name :)

Fevir I don't even know it. The way I have my bandcamp set up is all that info is only store by Bandcamp server; I don't see any of it. So, to be honest, I didn't really have any clue if you did download any or not :P

Fevir WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTT A MINUTE ...omg...I just checked my bandcamp stats. Thank you, Fevir! Oh my god, thank you!

+Fevir Hey man, read this. I just saw it today and thought of you. www.iflscience.com/brain/cant-imagine-pictures-your-mind-you-might-have-aphantasia

Yea it's a coin flip really visualising and 99.99% of people in the comments have no idea of that

rhino2213 Imagine if it was all a trick to get you to watch a 6 minute video of a black screen?

Fevir That would bother me a lot.

Spruce lol don't worry it's all real. Crazy even to see the varied visualization of people here in the comments

JaSoN1X That's an interesting point you bring up at the end that you can almost conjure up something so meaningful that it fills a hole (girlfriend) that other people seem to strive to fill.

Same!! I can never get past that tiny glimpse of a tree/bush!!

Cynical Mindblow I know, the production value was insane.

Fevir I was actually half serious about my previous comment (Cynical Mindblow here). It may have been just a black screen of doom, which provided me the opportunity to be sarcastic about "watching" the video, but on the other hand it is an interesting subject that really intrigued me more than any of your previous gaming related videos :P

Teo Strife I completely get ya- couldn't miss the opportunity to poke fun at the video myself though :)

Fevir It's funny the whole time I was staring into the "abyss" of a video, I was totally building so many images in my head.

Durveg Crazy. I have literally talked about this with 100s of people and you're like the 2nd person to identify with the head car. Man.. so crazy.

Fevir I Can free navigate anywhere in my city in my head. like noclip in a videogame. that car thing is what I do. what's weirder to me is that if I lose that visualization imagery and have to reset I have no idea where I am sometimes. its like I need to "re sync" with satellites of memory in order to regain my bearing. the visualization you speak of is my primary form of thought. I use it to analyze conversation and draw links between things that generally people wouldn't connect. like literally build a flowchart of conversation and language in my head for all of the possibilities of a conversation and try to jump to the end of it in order to make life easier or win arguments. I literally cannot imagine a life without the ability to visualize. I use it to simulate physical things in my head like how far a ball will go or which direction or what would happen if a cup of water were to experience a collision. If you are still reading... :D ive actually got a pseudo system for life and my encounters, that metaphorically involves the difference between 1 and 0 (infinity) and a gradient ramp from black to white. if you think about it all things in your life can be referenced on a gradient and in my head a system of visualizations and aides help me to make decisions in everyday life. I still have the logical nonvisual abilities of thought and reason. but I find that visualizing is a way to add another dimension to something that otherwise must be traveled through. like the ant on the piece of paper not knowing that if only the paper were folded in such a way he could instantaneously travel from one location to another rather than traversing the paper itself. It does wonders for estimation... in other words or to put it another way, I may not know the exact math or measurements but I will be close to your answer in a fraction of the time it takes to reason a succinct answer. let me know if this lets you a little further into understanding the brains of those of us who can visualize. I've always been so fascinated by this and how I use it ;only to attempt to explain it to people and receiving only aghast stares in return as if I'm crazy.

I followed you on the first half- then the second half you went much more vague. Don't make the mistake in imagining your type of non visual thought process or logic process is similar to mine or someone who doesn't primarily use visuals. You sound similar to my girlfriend's experience- the way she talks sounds almost like astral projection but she's never given any of it a second thought (nor does she seem to care beyond humoring my questions). The idea of thought is truly pretty mysterious.

Fevir Think of it this way. I don't believe I am making the mistake of nonvisual thought process similarity. I think that language itself is a limitation that a lot of people enjoy. (not enjoy in the sense of happiness) more of a cynical idea. Language is what you have to work with. without visualization you have a barrier that you cannot cross, that is... you take a flat piece of paper and when you fold it to where two points touch, an entity residing in the paper could instantaneously move from one point on one end of the paper to another point on another end of the paper. moving your internal thoughts outside of the limitations of the language you speak. IE things that don't translate to another language and turning the thoughts into "floaty things" that you can manipulate and rework on the fly. If I were to try to describe it further I would say, because of my visualization ability, my brain is a fucking metaphor machine. it will find the greatest outlier details and put them together due to the fact that they exist in the same little system I have visualized (not intentionally) in my head and associate things, find holes in logic, and generally piss people off because with the perspective I carry literally anything can be argued for or against....and convincingly. to help you to understand the gradient thing. think of an arbitrary thing like a lightbulb. you are buying lightbulbs at the store. 0 in my mind already turning is a broken lightbulb broken beyond repair or maybe even broken beyond recognition. then you come to the functioning lightbulbs that you have in front of you for purchase. you begin to grade them based on their attributes. (this is the point where I basically bring in a bunch of slide rules in my brain and attach a value to each one. Price Brightness in lumens Color temperature Build quality Brand other extraneous factors like how hard it is to reach on the shelf, whether I like the packaging whether I think the packaging is only attempting to mislead me. lifetime expectancy while looking at the bulbs for sale each one of these lists or metaphoric slide rules are being populated in order from 0 being least desirable to 1 being most desireable once the information is gathered the sliderules begin to move (not in reality nor does it look like a sliderule in my head this is just the best way to put it. whichever light bulb scores highest on the scales of the multiple metaphoric sliderules I have floating around in my head is the one I will purchase. this also is very much the same as a gradient for each trait. from black to white. in the end I add all the data (visually) be it with the numbers 0 to 0.25 to .5 to 1 or literally turn all the sliderules into a transparent sheet add them all together by aligning them in my mind and buy the no pun intended brightest or closest to 1/white lightbulb to further illustrate a 79 year old man would be graded at a .2 on the health scale but a .97 on the experience scale in my mind. the reason I say slide so much is because as new information is gleaned that .2 for health could easily change to a .03 with a discovery of colorectal cancer. many other mental machines that deal solely in visualization I use this is just the simplest one and most far-reaching. Keep in mind this all happens in my head live as a mental visualization I am not applying effort in adding a bunch of numbers and shit... that would be crazy. :D

Autodidact Visualfx So your gradient system is just your internal mechanism for evaluating and assigning value. Cool. You're making assumptions to try and retain some sort of superiority complex. You assume that language and thought is intertwined and therefore limited- unlike your visualization. I do not not have an inner voice, monologue- etc. I don't think in words. Language, which was the point you arguing against is just you imposing your own experience. "because with the perspective I carry literally anything can be argued for or against....and convincingly" Give me an example of a perspective on any topic you choose that you don't think that someone without your ability could come up with? Rereading both your responses you actually come off ignorant.

Grayson Ekman Who?

Fevir His names Sycra, He's an Art RU-vidr!

+Grayson Ekman I am also a big fan of Sycra but i never saw him taking about this, can you point out a video where he talks about it? Thanks!

possibly brain surgery. this is mainly brain damage or your brain is acting differently in some areas. i don't know if this works though.

Flying Mamoth your comment may be very old but can you just imagine a picture of some cartoon you've watched as a kid without your eyes closed like your traveling from your view what your seeing now to that view

this is how your brain works there's no need to "fix" it.

This is how i visualise

I found a site with excercises unchainmybrain.com/learn-to-visualize/#comment-221 I started excercising yesterday and I saw a red dot and I saw purple when I closed my eyes :) so don't give up hope. If you want to you'll eventually be able to :) Good luck

***** Actually that Right brain left brain mumbo jumbo you learn about in high school art class teaches that the right brain is the creative side.

J Knight Ahh that is right. the right side controls the left side. Thanks for reminding me (it's been a while), have a good day! :D

+Ficojepet I've done all that weird pineal gland decalc stuff and I've never had any changes.. dreams happen the same as any experience- I just have new information in my head that I didn't 1st hand experience.. so the emotions you would have that would make something a nightmare vs a normal dream don't occur. I think people just have different capacities.. although I've been looking into a lot of forced emotive mediation right now after having done a lot of Kundali stuff over the years

Fevir i'm pretty sure anyone is capable of recalling their dreams with practice and dream journal and everyone has at least 3 dreams per night if i understand what you say about that "new information" correctly, same thing happens to me, and a lot ...i wake up and i know that for the last couple of minues i was doing something, there was centrainly something going on, i know that my brain was busy and alive - i dreamt, but i don't remember what in this situation i usually remain lying still and try just think about stuff that that was going in my life currently: e.g that movie i saw last night, the exam i am have tomorow etc. just basic things you think about throughout the day - in your dreams you are going to think about the same stuff i let my thoughts flow free and usually get some "clue" and then direct my thoughts towards that direction until i am able to recover small fraction of the dream from there on just move on the dream timeline and am able to recall big part of the dream its actually kind of similar process to recalling somehting you were going to do when you walked to room and forgot it, or what you were going to say before someone interrupted you and forgot it read "exploring the world of lucid dreaming" by stephen laberge there is good chapter on dream recall the pdf is easy to find on the internets it took me like 2 weeks of casual trying with to recall first bit of a dream and from then i got only better at it dream journals helps a LOT if you have the patience and commitment which is not my case - mine has like two sentences in it

Yeah, and for spelling a word, my SO visualizes the word in his head and then tells me what the letters are...