10 years ago, I’d have put my ability to visualise at 0 out of 10. Practice and occasional halucinogen use has got me to 2 out of 10. It causes no end of problems in day to day life, so I’m interested to hear if anyone has tips or just experiences to share so it doesn’t feel such a lonely frustrating issue.
edit informative comment from @Gwaer@lemm.ee about image streaming, I did a bit of digging on the broken links, the Dr isn’t giving the info away for free anymore without buying their (expensive) book, but I found some further info on additional techniques here, pages 2/3: https://nlpcourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Image-Streaming-Mode-of-Thinking.pdf
Is it called the same thing if you can’t visualize faces? I cannot visualize any face, not my own, not my wife’s. I can sort of get a blurry idea of my child’s face, and an even less blurry idea of my pets faces. But every other face I can’t remember.
The moment I step away from a mirror, I forget what I even look like. If you handed me a pencil and paper and told me to draw myself, I could only do it with a mirror or a photo on hand.
I think I have this.
It’s hard for me to communicate online to my coworkers who do not have a profile picture. And then when I do meet them in person, I don’t recognise them straight away the next time I pass by them (or worse, in a social function).
The ways I remember people by are their mannerisms and everything else about them, except for their physical appearance. But because people change styles and environments change, it’s hard to instantly recognise them on the third or more times I see them.
Wait. So when you look in a mirror it’s a surprise every time? Im also unable to draw myself, but that’s more of a drawingskill issue than anything else I guess…
Yes, in fact if I look in the mirror and close my eyes, I forget what I look like in about a second, or two… maybe much quicker. Timing the brain is hard to do on yourself.
Yeah, it’s not a skill issue. I am not super great at drawing, but I can get a rough sketch of someone in front of me or a picture. But I could never realistically draw myself without a picture or image, nor could I draw anyone else without that or them being right in front of me.
That’s really interesting. I don’t have this condition but I wear glasses all of the time I can’t see without them, but if I were to think about what I looked like I don’t actually include the glasses.
But in my case it’s more that they’re just not part of my mental image of myself than the fact that they don’t know what I look like.
