10 years ago, I’d have put my ability to visualise at 0 out of 10. Practice and occasional halucinogen use has got me to 2 out of 10. It causes no end of problems in day to day life, so I’m interested to hear if anyone has tips or just experiences to share so it doesn’t feel such a lonely frustrating issue.
edit informative comment from @[email protected] about image streaming, I did a bit of digging on the broken links, the Dr isn’t giving the info away for free anymore without buying their (expensive) book, but I found some further info on additional techniques here, pages 2/3: https://nlpcourses.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Image-Streaming-Mode-of-Thinking.pdf
I think the “mind’s eye” is also partly a “skill” thing.
I remember distinctly as a child doing a great deal of “work” developing my mind’s eye. I didn’t have TV at home, so I read a lot, and that necessitated me being able to take text on paper and make mind’s-eye models of what the things on the page might actually look like (often without any visual references at all)…and I recall the early ones were definitely vague and fuzzy.
As I got older and did this more, and was exposed to more visual images of different things, my ability to visualize (and “hear”) with detail got better, as with any skill.
I suspect folks who have the ability to use their mind’s eye, but who haven’t been pushed into (or interested in) developing it might not realize what a “trained” mind’s eye can do because they haven’t developed that skill.
But I do think there are some people with legit aphantasia who don’t even have the weak, untrained mind’s eye that most people start out with.