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THIS! That is exactly what I visualize, but I also have a 'narrator' in my head as I'm reading.
It's like watching a movie that is narrated.
I will say that I envy being able to turn that off for those visualizations that you don't want after someone says something you'd prefer not to know a thing about...unfortunately, it happens. I'd like to be able to turn that off at appropriate times.
Is this why people have PTSD, because the horrible images they saw of dead bodies stick in their mind's eye and don't want to go away? I can see how someone with aphantasia might be better off in that circumstance. My visual recollections are always fleeting. a very vivid memory as a child was seeing my grandfather laying in his coffin at the funeral. He was brutally murdered on Christmas eve, so it was traumatic as a young boy.
If I want to rectal his image, I do it with my eyes open, and it's fleeting, there and gone in the blink of an eye. If I close my eyes and try to recall an image, I don't see anything. I've never had "an image stuck in my head," like I have heard actors say in the movies.
I have a very robust inner monologue. When I read a fiction novel I'll even create unique voices for each of the main characters. I can imagine the colorful world they live in, and what the characters look like.
But when it comes to seeing an apple in my mind, I don't see anything. Well, I will get a sort of momentary flash image of the apple, and then I can describe it. That image is very brief and fleeting, it's not emblazoned in my mind anywhere. So when you folks say you see the apple in your mind, where is the apple? How large is it. Can you rotate it and inspect it, cuz I don't see that, not even close.
If you do see images, do you ever have trouble getting them out of your head?
I do dream very vividly, when i recall my dreams. They are also in color and it's common that those images are very detailed.
So I'm unsure what people see in their heads, and if they also have vivid, detailed colored dreams too? I ask this, because it's common for people to not dream in color, or to only have vague and indistinct images when they recall their dreams.
Yeah dreams are different for me. Not a lot of words going on, all images, like being in an experience, seeing it. Vivid colors. I rarely remember dreams but sometimes I do, and I can recall one that I had some 30 years ago as a teenager and how it was so intense and vivid a "place" that I felt I had truly gone to, and I wanted to go back so badly that I spent a lot of time sleeping for a couple of weeks trying to get back. My brain also seems to have this silly (to me) function of telling me that I am in "my house" only upon waking I know it is no place I've ever been, or I am in an "airport" or a "hospital" but it looks just like a shopping mall for some reason. I don't have scary nightmares so much as I do anxiety dreams. I am in an "airport" but I am lost and will miss my flight and all of a sudden I have too many bags and I can't move them all. I can't read in dreams. I can see signs, recognize that there are words on them, but the letters keep moving and changing and making no sense. Usually my anxiety dreams happen when I am too hot or in pain and I need to wake up to fix something going on with my body like that.
While my dreams sometimes feel metaphysical and it's easy for me to understand why some believe that they hold meaning, I don't believe in anything like that really. I believe that it's just the sleeping mind firing off random electrical and chemical signals and then trying to interpret its own activity into some sort of narrative.
Yeah dreams are different for me. Not a lot of words going on, all images, like being in an experience, seeing it. Vivid colors. I rarely remember dreams but sometimes I do, and I can recall one that I had some 30 years ago as a teenager and how it was so intense and vivid a "place" that I felt I had truly gone to, and I wanted to go back so badly that I spent a lot of time sleeping for a couple of weeks trying to get back. My brain also seems to have this silly (to me) function of telling me that I am in "my house" only upon waking I know it is no place I've ever been, or I am in an "airport" or a "hospital" but it looks just like a shopping mall for some reason. I don't have scary nightmares so much as I do anxiety dreams. I am in an "airport" but I am lost and will miss my flight and all of a sudden I have too many bags and I can't move them all. I can't read in dreams. I can see signs, recognize that there are words on them, but the letters keep moving and changing and making no sense. Usually my anxiety dreams happen when I am too hot or in pain and I need to wake up to fix something going on with my body like that.
While my dreams sometimes feel metaphysical and it's easy for me to understand why some believe that they hold meaning, I don't believe in anything like that really. I believe that it's just the sleeping mind firing off random electrical and chemical signals and then trying to interpret its own activity into some sort of narrative.
You must have odd dreams. I don't remember my dreams often, but when I do, it usually has something to do with something going on in my life. In one example, I was taking a foreign language and in the dream I was boarding a bus in that country and speaking in that language. In another I had a sequential series of dreams in my birthday month annually that had to do with attaining a goal. The last time I had that dream, everything was easy instead of a challenge as it had been in the earlier dreams in the sequence.
I have a very robust inner monologue. When I read a fiction novel I'll even create unique voices for each of the main characters. I can imagine the colorful world they live in, and what the characters look like. Ditto
But when it comes to seeing an apple in my mind, I don't see anything. Well, I will get a sort of momentary flash image of the apple, and then I can describe it. That image is very brief and fleeting, it's not emblazoned in my mind anywhere. So when you folks say you see the apple in your mind, where is the apple? How large is it. Can you rotate it and inspect it, cuz I don't see that, not even close. I suppose it depends on WHY I'm thinking of an apple, am I hungry and picturing it in my hand, thinking about recipes and it's on my cutting board, getting ready to shop and picture the produce tables? But basically they are life size, 3d images in my mind, it is a stored memory being dredged up I suppose.
If you do see images, do you ever have trouble getting them out of your head? Definitely, it contributes to the insomnia I've had all my life. On the opposite end of that question I've always wondered if when I ask people what they're thinking about and they respond with "nothing" or when various life instructors tell you to "empty your mind" if that's even possible. A mind not filled with pictures or busy thoughts is a foreign concept to me.
I do dream very vividly, when i recall my dreams. They are also in color and it's common that those images are very detailed.
So I'm unsure what people see in their heads, and if they also have vivid, detailed colored dreams too? I ask this, because it's common for people to not dream in color, or to only have vague and indistinct images when they recall their dreams. Always in color and usually detailed recall for the first few minutes after waking, though they fade quickly. My dreams can be so realistic that in the past I have sometimes had to ask friends or family members if they were only dreams, or memories of actual events.
THIS! That is exactly what I visualize, but I also have a 'narrator' in my head as I'm reading.
It's like watching a movie that is narrated.
I will say that I envy being able to turn that off for those visualizations that you don't want after someone says something you'd prefer not to know a thing about...unfortunately, it happens. I'd like to be able to turn that off at appropriate times.
This is what is so odd. When I read a fantasy novel, I see the world that a good author creates. I see the characters, I read their lines using their voices. When i saw the Lord of the Rings movie, Gandalf and the hobbit village was exactly as I had envisioned it in my mind.
However, during those video exercises when they ask me to imagine an apple, I cannot see any apple. When I close my eyes I do not see anything. Well, except for that fraction of a second where I my memory recalls a millisecond image of an apple. If you guys see the image of an apple that remains, floating there for you to rotate and alter, until you dismiss it, I do not see that.
I find this all so weird, since I only just discovered it. First to find out that some people do not have an internal dialogue, now the mind's eye is not a metaphor?
It seems inconsistent for me, that I can envision the colorful world inside a well written fantasy novel, but not conjure up the image of a 3D apple?
I have seen some horrible things in my life, and I'm glad those images do not reappear unsolicited in my head when I'm trying to sleep. It's bad enough that my inner dialogue will sometimes do this to me, with shoulda, coulda, woulda regrets for how things might have turned out differently if only this or that... anyone who has experienced this knows what I mean. Which apparently is not as many people as I once thought.
You must have odd dreams. I don't remember my dreams often, but when I do, it usually has something to do with something going on in my life. In one example, I was taking a foreign language and in the dream I was boarding a bus in that country and speaking in that language. In another I had a sequential series of dreams in my birthday month annually that had to do with attaining a goal. The last time I had that dream, everything was easy instead of a challenge as it had been in the earlier dreams in the sequence.
Me too, if I'm engaged in doing something new at work all day. If I'm putting many hours into anything new for extended periods of the day, I'll wake up in the night and recall odd dreams associated with that. Luckily I can get those dreams to stop. Not so much when I was a kid. Back then I recall having a few repeat dreams that were unpleasant; I had to learn how to control that.
You must have odd dreams. I don't remember my dreams often, but when I do, it usually has something to do with something going on in my life. In one example, I was taking a foreign language and in the dream I was boarding a bus in that country and speaking in that language. In another I had a sequential series of dreams in my birthday month annually that had to do with attaining a goal. The last time I had that dream, everything was easy instead of a challenge as it had been in the earlier dreams in the sequence.
/shrug
I have no context to know how odd they are or are not. Most people dream a great deal and remember almost none of it, from what science tells us on the subject. I think they say that we tend to remember our dreams when we wake up during them. I suspect that's why I remember the ones that are "anxiety dreams" because I really think that it's a combo of brain and body TRYING to wake me, so that I can correct a bad position or regulate my body temperature or something.
I have recurring dreams. A long time ago I had dreams about being in a town that was burning down, and trying to go into stores and warn people and no one would listen to me. I have lots of dreams about driving a car where there are impossibly steep hills or bridges, like nearly vertical seeming pavement in front of me - I hate those. I've also had sleep paralysis, where my brain feels "awake" and I try to force myself to move but I can't. That sucks, too.
But I don't think that my internal narration is active when I sleep, which is something I never really thought about until this thread.
But I don't think that my internal narration is active when I sleep, which is something I never really thought about until this thread.
I never narrate my dreams, that would be weird, like Will Ferrell in "Stranger Than Fiction."
I don't think i ever talk in my dreams, but when I do it's always a struggle to speak, like trying to shout a warning to a person in my dream, but I cannot get the words out. If I finally overcome this speech paralysis in my dream, my wife wakes me up cuz i was talking loud.
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