#mind blindness

[mothnoodle]

Okay so. I have aphantasia

For those of you who Don't know what that is. I don't have a mind's eye. I can't imagine visuals. At all. (Different people have different levels of this. Also, I can imagine sound and touch, which some aphantasiacs can't do)

I have found the single best work around for the issues this presents to my creative work, to my pagan practice, and to my meditation attempts.

If you think about it, there are two 'me's. The physical me is not blind. But the mental me is. When I visualize in meditations, I give my mental avatar one of those nice canes that blind people use to find their way around(if there's a fancy name for them... I'd love to know) and that feeling of touch can replace what I'm missing.

I dunno I just think it's cool and wanted to share.

[melieee]

Did you know that there’s people who can’t see pictures in their mind? It’s called congenital aphantasia, usually dubbed “Mind Blindness”. You can think of a picture, or think of what something looks like, but you can’t picture or visualise it. Apparently, not everyone has this.

If you have this, like me, your mind probably went boom tbh

[rewritethisplot]

Aphantasia feelings analogy

A great description of how I have felt the last few days.

Imagine if there were suddenly headlines everywhere saying "Scientists discover that there is a man without a tail!!!"

And you are like...wait...humans have tails?! But I don't have a tail! Since when have humans had tails?!

It doesn't affect my life all that much, I am still the same person, I don't have any new issues as a result...I just don't have a tail.

[ladyautie]

I often talk about what I like, regarding my autism, but this time, I’ll talk about a side of it that’s bothering me. And it’s the Mind-Blindness that comes with it. More specifically, the fact that I have so much troubles to know what other people might know about myself or a situation.

When I know something, I kinda automatically assume that everyone else knows it. It’s something I have to work on to, because it’s a problem in my professional life as well as my private life. 

In my professional life, I have a system. A system to do things, a system to tidy up my desk and so on. But I never think about explaining these systems to anyone because they seem obvious to me. And they’re not. 

So, my colleague thought I was slacking off because I let some stuff lying around that I was supposed to throw away (when I was decided to finish my job and THEN throw away everything, instead of having to do multiple trips and interrupting my work). 

When I told her that, she told me that there was no way she could have known that, if I didn’t take the time to explain it to her. And that it could be very negative for me if I kept doing this...

In my private life, I often assume that my friends and my family know everything about what’s going on in my life. I don’t think I have to talk about it because for me, it’s like common knowledge. But it’s not. 

On multiple occasions, recently and in the past, I’ve been told that I don’t say anything about me. That I’m a mystery. One person even told me that she felt like she didn’t knew me at all. 

And it’s not that I don’t want to share anything. It’s that I don’t think that I need to share. I assume automatically that they know or that I told them about it already or that it’s common knowledge. And it sucks because I’ve already lost too many friendships because of this Mind-Blindness.

It’s exhausting because I have to second guess myself all the time. I have to consciously ask myself : “Are they supposed to know about this piece of information ?” and to find an answer the best I can. Or to ask them constantly if they know about it and it’s not a solution.

I like the person that I am and I’ve accepted my autism as an essential part of myself. But I could really do without the Mind-Blindness...

[neurosciencenews]

Neuroimaging Study to Shed Light on Mind Blindness

To determine why some people cannot create visual images of people, places and things in their mind’s eye, scientists are planning to conduct a world-first brain imaging study of people with this baffling condition, known as congenital aphantasia.

[rainbowcapers]

Mind Blindness

So I discovered a Thing. A thing that explains another thing. I have been a called a “mystery” on a couple of occasions I’ve been explicitly told I don’t volunteer information. Both of those things can probably be traced to Mind Blindness. From the wikipedia article: Mind-blindness is a cognitive disorder where an individual is unable to attribute mental states to others. As a result of this kind of social and empathetic cognitive deficit, the individual is incapable in putting himself "into someone else's shoes" and cannot conceptualize, understand or predict knowledge, thoughts and beliefs, emotions, feelings and desires, behaviour, actions and intentions of another person. Ok. Maybe? On some degree? I definitely make a LOT of assumptions. If somebody else is going out, it’s either for work, social stuff, or shopping. If I go out, it’s the same thing. Any more detail than that I figure is their prerogative to share and I don’t mind if they don’t. Other people sharing (or not) details of their personal lives has no impact on my life one way or the other.  I know this isn’t quite the case for them. They want me to share details and will occasionally pry because I pretty much never do. I don’t understand this importance. It’s definitely an example of other peoples feelings, desires and behaviours that I cannot conceptualize or understand. It just strikes me as nosey. The flip side is that it’s a struggle to accurately gauge how much a person knows about something, so I tend towards the infodump of what I know. The most common interpretation of that is, “I’m not as stupid as you think I am,” and honestly, that’s not what I’m thinking. I just want to be fully open and honest and helpful about topics I’m confident I know about. I dislike that there’s no inbetween. I dislike that when these things are noticed, it’s always in a negative light.

[apparentlyaspergers]

Somebody talk to me about mind blindness?

[unwoundbobbin]

Wow. This is kind of mind blowing. What it’s like to go through life without a minds-eye .