A personal look at mental abilities and labels of society and how they can affect navigating your way through adulthood. Discussing living with Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia and how they influence day to day life. Within those also looking at anxiety, mental time travel, PTSD, dreams, fear and more.
An honest and personal look at mental abilities and labels of society and how they can affect navigating your way through adulthood. Discussing living with Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia and how they influence day to day life. Within those also looking at anxiety, mental time travel, PTSD, dreams, fear and more.
Available in Paperback and Kindle.
The last few days of waiting for my proofs felt like forever. Today they finally arrived and although I couldn’t wait to get them, now they are here I am relaxed but haven’t started reading yet. I am enjoying them just being real. It’s funny how you can work on something for over a year, yet it still doesn’t seem real until you have the physical copy in your hands. I find this the most nerve wracking bit, getting closer to the final go ahead, which is funny because it comes from me. So for now I shall put aside the writer in me and commence with being the reader and editor, if such a thing is ever really possible. Even so, I do my best.
Meeting in the Middle of Nowhere – coming early December 2019
A look at mental abilities and labels of society and how they can affect trying to navigate your way through adulthood. Discussing living with Aphantasia and Hyperphantasia and how they influence day to day life. Within those also looking at anxiety, mental time travel, PTSD, dreams, fear and more.
(c) K Wicks
Excerpt from WIP looking at #Aphantasia #Hyperphantasia
Another question that I felt I should approach, was to ask if he had a sense of self. He didn’t know what I meant and I explained the term. This is something that has taken much of my thought. How the world views me, how I view myself and the world, all the things I feel this encompasses and can affect about a person. Being able to do this has helped me with each identity crisis I have gone through (and possibly caused some of them), helped me make friends, improve my career and assisted me generally in life.
So if someone were to not have a sense of self, I felt this would lead to feelings of a complete lack of identity. But without the concept of self and therefore identity, it seemed there was nothing to lack. It is only when I explained how much the sense of self affects ego and people’s motive and actions, he began to understand. And I was wrong, there isn’t a lack of identity at all, in fact, there is a person who knows what they want and who they are without the need to question it. I envied this slightly.
(c) K Wicks photography
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
Another excerpt from my work in progress…
Before we knew of Aphanstasia we decided to move to Spain. It was a leap of faith, we hadn’t been married long and tried to think of the best way to use our resources to have a good life. We discussed everything and we moved. It was hard and there was a lot to organise and sort out, but because he functioned great in the moment, it seemed a breeze really.
Only a small hiccup of a drunk taxi driver at the last hurdle trying to get to the airport to leave. But another one saved the day and we got there. The drama that unfolded when we were there though couldn’t have been anticipated and was caused mainly by a long list of shoddy agents and bad neighbours. We didn’t really have a chance to settle down and find our feet to plan anything. Instead going from one idea to another and having to change it every other week because of what we had found out, or how we had been treated. It was extremely frustrating. And it was in these frustrating times that we stumbled across this major difference in our thought process. He wasn’t planning ahead at all, he had no concept of our future in Spain and never had. That kind of explained why he always seemed to have objections to things, he speaks his mind at the time, there’s no saving it for later. It can make him seem quite outspoken, but it really isn’t on purpose I now know.
I have to be honest though, when I realised I was on my own with planning our future, it sealed the deal for me. I was already struggling and had thought I wanted to come home, I just didn’t want to ruin it for him. But deep down I must have known we weren’t going to be staying in Spain. I was grossly under prepared going there anyway (I can’t even speak the language), and knew this was the right thing to do.
I couldn’t do it for us both not on home soil. I had spent over thirty years working out how to function in this society, it sounds awful to say, but I actually felt too old to go through it all again. I needed the support of familiarity – not people, or friends as they are thin on the ground, but where I recognised. I realised that was my reference point, my safety zone. I felt like a duck out of water and wanted to correct it as soon as possible. I don’t often live with my mistakes once I have acknowledged them.
(c) K Wicks (Photography taken in Spain)
Sometimes you discover something which changes the very way in which you think about things, it may be a new idea, information or a different viewpoint. Or you may find that things are not what you thought they once were. Reality, truth and perspective are and can be very personal, and while we try and untangle the workings of the human mind, we are finding there is much to learn along the way
This is now also a published book available on Amazon –
(c) K L Wicks
It’s been nearly a year now since I learned of this and have been trying to understand Aphantasia, i now know it is in varying degrees across the board for the people who have it, partial for some, full for others. I try as best i can to understand what it is to not have visualisation, to not imagine at all and to not picture anything in ones head, its a concept i had not considered but now makes perfect sense.
For full Aphantasiacs, the difference from partial seems to be startling too ( i can only comment on full as that’s been my experience). There is no escape from the stark reality before you, what you see is all there is – without dreams and mental pictures to carry you away, what you see really is all there is. I have the ability to replay movies in my head, run through what i saw mentally, recall faces, remember looking at lists, posters, people, i can see it all in my mind. But trying to explain that to someone who doesn’t, well, i have been told it sounds like the most alien thing in the world.
“You can play movies in your head?!” Yes. I can retrieve almost anything i have seen in my life, whether i remember it correctly is another matter, but i have something there. I can picture all of my family, past and present, i can imagine i’m looking in the fridge when i am trying to remember what i need to buy (when i forget my shopping list). I use it for so much, and also i realise, for escapism. Even just standing in line or waiting is assisted by my mind wandering, occupying itself with either something i want to do later, of something i might have watched the night before.
So, looking backwards and forwards is natural for me, spending possibly very little time in the present. Reviewing what was, and speculating on what might be. But not for one who doesn’t imagine – there is nothing to ‘look’ back on, and the future doesn’t exist. So living in the now takes on a whole new meaning, and seems that it can lead to immense impatience and frustration with the world and people. Mostly the people who seem to be ‘in a different world’. It’s because they actually are – which was quite a terrifying revelation to one who doesn’t ‘drift away’ in mind – while driving, cooking, walking, and everything else we do, most of us probably are mentally somewhere else. “So no-one is really in reality or sees the world as it is?” And that was the terrifying bit, the reality of that question.
I’m still learning on this and will keep at it.
(c) K L Wicks
A concept that most may find quite far removed from their ordinary thought process. How many times have you heard a sentence start with or have said yourself ‘now imagine’… Well, some people can’t. Literally.
Now imagine (!!), not being able to conjure up any image when you think. No mental picture to refer back to or ‘see’ in your mind. A total lack of what they call ‘the minds eye’. This was only discovered relatively recently in 1880 an not even investigated until 2015, when the name Aphantasia was given. For a literal translation from the Greek meaning, lack of fantasy. (A = lack of, Phantasia = Fantasy).
No visual memory system, no dreams, no pictures of any kind to accompany thought and no imagination for what isn’t there. That is where i was completely stunned, to think there are people going through life without these things at their disposal to guide, assist or help. I rely heavily on my visual memory for many things, useful and otherwise. From a early age I retain the information for films, as soon as I hear the title the picture of the cover comes to mind, I see the names, the style and then follows the other information as if I were looking at it again but fuzzier – year it came out, director, story line etc. Even for films I never actually watched, just looked at. Now if I could transfer this kind of memory to something practical it would be great, but at this time it seems to have specialized itself for one main task.
But i am so intrigued by the other side, to not have pictures in mind, to not see dreams visually or be distracted by images long since past or that aren’t even real. Why do our brains concoct fantasy so readily and so easily, why is it that 98% of the population (rough estimate at this time as it is not known how many people really have this variance) have an ability to escape from reality, a hardwired ability to imagine, pretend, fantasize, lie to themselves and everything that seems to go with it. I can see how that might be an advantage. Self denial is sometimes self preservation for us imaginers.
Only 2% of people are thought to have this different thought process, to see the world as it is to them, no frills, no fantasy and no pretend. Don’t get me wrong, visual stimulation works just as well as it does the rest of us with people, TV and modern distractions, but not after the event from what i have learned. Once it is gone, it is gone. Therefore leading to more enjoyment of the moment. No thought of what might come or of what has been, purely being in the moment. I don’t think i know how this feels, there are always thoughts in my mind and thoughts come with pictures, and they distract me into more thought. And there the moment is captured and replayed later, not enjoyed fully at the time. I knew most people thought differently and had all sorts of variations in imagination and creativity, but this is more fundamental than that. I got so much enjoyment from fiction and reading all through my life because i can imagine, because my brain can run away with itself and get lost somewhere else. And recently I had to try and justify and explain why this is, and for the life of me I just couldn’t understand why I was not being understood, if someone doesn’t imagine or see pictures when reading, then no amount of words is going to explain what it is like. There is a massive gulf between these thought processes and I am still trying to work out how this affects everyday life, learning and thinking. It may take some time…
(c) K Wicks
MKW Publishing 