I have recently been writing about the differences between two people living together with Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia (myself and my husband), but just wanted to do a small piece focusing on how it feels to have Hyperphantasia.

Visual imagery has been a big part of my life, for my learning, experiences and memories. I didn’t know there were varying degrees of this and now wonder how much this has affected my general interactions with people. For a start I have more hobbies than anyone I know, I need constant stimulation or thoughts to have as my brain feels like it is going ten to the dozen all the time. I never understood why so few people if any had the same mental rate of processing and interest in things as I did. I thought I was neurotic, people told me I was neurotic.

Now I suspect differently. From learning about various things I believe I come into the category of mild hyperthymesia, full hyperphantasia and chronesthesia (capability of mental time travel). All these labels actually well describe why there is so much going in on my head. Like doing a days work, while writing a book, and watching multiple movies, and having conversations – all at the same time as trying to engage in what is actually going on. Occasionally it gets very crowded and jumbled in there, but I have worked on systems, methods and mechanisms to live with it and try and make the best of it. But understanding it is helping. And some things calm and focus my brain to minimize it – like my job, singing and watching a good program. The downside of that is, if the program is that good, it will stay with me after and forever, getting logged in the giant filing room I have inside my head. It’s the same with songs or lyrics (or sometimes just an average phrase), they can get stuck on repeat in my mind, even if I haven’t heard them for an age.

I have had to make a big effort to dissociate emotions from these visuals though, for some that may sound odd, why wouldn’t you want to feel? Somewhere along the line, I felt having traumatic memories or invasive thoughts with imagery disturbing and didn’t want it, it wasn’t productive or helpful. I can’t stop the pictures, but I could work on how they are then processed in mind.

The constant visualization isn’t only confined to my waking hours though. Dreaming is something I have come to see both as an affliction and a welcome escape. The vividness and memory of these dreams is very intense, sometimes following me through the day. Sometimes my dreams are anxious, tiring and stressful, so I have to ask myself, do I feel anxious because of my dream, or was it an anxious dream because of my subconscious trying to tell me something? Or are they just directly influenced by what you see and watch and there is no hidden meaning at all? I am on the fence on that one, either way, they aren’t very settling but are great for fiction writing and ideas, just not for having a restful nights sleep.

For now I am just trying to keep up with my brain and will continue to work on the hows and whys of it all…

Here is the full book that came of writing about this subject, if it happens to be of interest.

(c) K Wicks