Comment on Who here does NOT have intrusive thoughts?
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year agoLike most folk with aphantasia, I thought that people talking about “seeing things in their imagination” were just being dramatic and using common language. It never occurred to me that they could genuinely see things in their minds. And the whole thing where people would be upset when a character in a TV show or movie didn’t look like how they’d imagined they would look, never made sense to me. And shows where people could recall the details of peoples faces for police sketch artists…
Basically, moments like that started adding up over my life, and then about 10 years ago, I read an article from someone who had discovered they had aphantasia through a similar path, and it all just fell in to place.
And the lack of internal monologue? How is that experienced? Do you know what you’re going to say before you say it, or is it simultaneous? How do you problem-solve, can you ask yourself questions?
I’m sorry if I’m being obnoxious, I’m just terribly curious. I’m always hungry for experiences outside my own.
I can think of words, I just don’t think I’m words. And when I think of a word I can run them together in a sentence. But they have no “sound”. They don’t have volume or pitch, they don’t sound like anyone, they’re just the idea of words. And because the words are after the fact, they don’t exist without me willing them in to existence. So no monologue in the way people describe it, and the idea of a conversation in my head doesn’t make sense. It would be more like writing a script for a conversation
That’s interesting, I myself can sometimes think without a monologue. I did it just now, and I am not sure if I do not use words, but I do not actually hear them, but I know the thoughts are there somehow. It often happens on its own when I have a lot of thoughts at the same time or think really fast about something.
But usually I talk to myself in my head, this is either a monologue or a sort of dialogue, and I often tell myself to shut up out loud when no one is around. I also imagine music, and I can enjoy it this way, and I do so pretty accurately. I play by ear.
I am sorry for the questions, this is really interesting.
What about maths? How do you do geometry? Do you have to have a drawing or can you manage without it? How do you understand geometry if you can’t see it’s objects?
I have very good spatial awareness, but it’s non visual. I can navigate my way mentally through a spaxe and “feel” where the walls are without seeing them. I have a sense of how big something is compared to something else and where they are relative to each other in space, but all non visually.
And I can rotate objects in my mind and change my perspective around them, but all without any visual elements.
I can sense the mental cube, but I can’t see it. It has no colour, no texture etc. Imagine a sort of mental bat sonar?
i find this entirely fascinating because i’m the opposite. I write shit down because it’s too loud in my brain. like, right now left ear wants to listen to Hurricane from Hamilton, right ear wants to listen to Hurricane by Bob Dylan so I’m getting both of them and it’s kind of hard to think until that settles down.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
How does one read books without reading them out loud? Is that not a form of internal monologue?
galanthus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Interestingly enough, silent reading was historically uncommon due to the fact that literature was less common than it is now and, most importantly, the lack of separation between words.
The ability to read silently was considered very unusual.
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
The words have no sound. No volume, no pitch. They’re word ideas not words. I don’t hear anything, I just understand the words.
galanthus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And what happens when you read a description of something? Do you just have an idea of what it is, because if so, it seems to me that some of the value of literature will be lost. Do you actually feel anything when you read a description of something beautiful, for instance?
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
No, I don’t get a sense of awe or beauty from reading things. I can appreciate when the folks I’m reading about experience those emotions, but I don’t feel them, because there is nothing to inspire them in me.
Which is why I tend to prefer books that go in to more depth about what people are thinking and feeling than books that go in to lots of visual detail