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I'm a Maladaptive daydreamer, not only could I "see" an apple, I can imagine it in my hand and look really close at the little details of an apple in real time.
I am not joking, my daydreams play out almost exactly like I'm watching a video, sometimes I look fondly at the story I crafted as if I just finished watching an episode. There is a very thin barrier for me that prevents me from just making up memories.
I’m so insanely jealous of people who can do this. Planning and thinking in my head is extremely difficult
I'm a maladaptive daydreamer as well but mine is more of a 2 leaning into a 3. I don't have as much control over my daydreams and need music and/or motion to really get them in gear. It's kinda like watching them on a secondary screen (like at a computer) while you're working on the first one? I suppose?
People can't imagine an apple in great detail? I thought this was just something everyone can do? Not only can I imagine it, or anything else perfectly, I can taste it, smell it, move it around in space inside my head...
I just assumed being able to do that was part of the human condition.
Look up aphantasia, it's when someone has no visuals in their head whatsoever, they tend to think more in concepts and words but never anything visual. And most people fit somewhere inbetween the two extremes (but it's still surprisingly common for someone to have aphantasia, they just don't realize it).
Funnily enough your daydreaming seem a little more advanced than mine, I typically struggle to imagine smells, but that might be link to just having a bad nose overall.
I can feel it too, the oily grippy weird skin of a freshly picked unwashed apple.
But I'm not seeing a red apple, I'm seeing a green apple with streaks of red, because I'm picturing my neighbors Apple tree.
:O sounds like a superpower
Are you an artist? I can imagine music pretty clearly (and I'm pretty sure I've got some tune looping around in there more often than not) but I'd say that's largely thanks to having actually trained that skill
It sometimes feels like that, I've used it to organize my thoughts, I also used to use it as a "hud" like a videogame objective but I'm pretty sure that was just superfluous.
I'm into worldbuilding and I want to learn how to draw, problem is this is all counterbalanced by my procrastination and ADHD, it's hard for me to sit down and write anything down or practice drawing. Having a TV in your head when you need to concentrate on things like school didn't help either.
The most productive use I've made of it has been for programming, I still don't have a programming job yet but I was able to learn the skills. I have a lot of technical interests and I feel like I understand a lot of abstract and theoretical ideas more easily. Funny thing is though I can barely do basic math in my head, even my ADHD diagnosis notes I can't easily keep words or numbers in my head, even if I try to visualize them.
Thanks for the in-depth reply!
I can sympathise with the TV in your head thing haha, for me the music feels constant which can be nice but occasionally really annoying and distracting loops get stuck in there. I've found asmr to be a good remedy for that though idk how relevant that would be for the mental images side of things. Also, I get all these ideas which I record/write down and... never really develop -_- feels like there's too much I wanna do and not enough time to really get into the meat of it :/
Even though you find number stuff in your head tricky how have you found algebra / calculus / the more abstract side of maths? Or more closely tied to programming, set theory? Maybe you'd be able to visualise the more abstract concepts well.
I can give you an explanation of godel numbers and how we proved that all general logical systems will have contradictions (knowledge gotten from youtube though), but tell me to subtract a two numbers and I'll need a minute.
As for calculus, I didn't take the class in high school, but I do watch videos about infinite series and proofs which I find fascinating now. I plan on going to college (2nd attempt) and I'm certain I'll be much more proficient in it once I learn the fundamentals.