ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Episode · 11 months ago
SHARE THIS EPISODE
Episode · 11 months ago
Aphantasia, Hyperphantasia and The Problem With Labeling
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
All right, a rigd, it's Sunday, johnnymotions there daily emotions is the podcast. That means I do a podcastevery day and if you're listening to these you're going to hear thembackwards, so it's best to just subscribe and listen every day, so we were going to have a guest today and the guests didn't show up and G shocqe was late and unpreparedsome thoroughly frustrated, but I'm going to do a podcast, anyways, just kind of feel. Like you know, I thak everything personallyso sometimes I feel like people are just trying to fuck with my Hiye just kind of getting by doing theminimum. So if you just give me a second, I'mgoing to go jump around the room for about thirty seconds and shake it off,be right back.
You met S. There's a bunch of articlescirculating around the Internet this week about obesity and exercise anddepression like specifically exercise and depression, and that alwayspresents a conundrum like well. How do I exercise if I'm depressed and that's a super, valid questionhaving experienced clinical depression myself, but it's important it's important oneto talk about, so I want to talk about that particularthing with the guest and I think what happened with the guest was this personjust doublebooked and forgotten to cascel the first booking, so it showsup twice in my calanly links anyway. I...
...want to bring that up with them,because I think that 'd be really interesting and I saw something elsethat I kind of connected it to the same situation, mostly because it's belly that the GUT biome of a mother forms the emotions of the infant of thefeed as first obviously, and then the baby that pops out. It seems obvious when you say it outloud, but it's a lot more intricate than that. If you realize that the gutbiom that we're talking about has the same type of Nero transmitters that wehave in our brain. In fact, even more of them, a lot of people call the Gut Byon like the brain in yourbelly. So the brain, the belly all interconnected, and I want to hear moreabout how exercise effects depression so we'll hear from an expert- and Ithink that person will be here next...
Sunday, so you've got five six morepodcasts between now and then and I'll flag it when they're on cool cool. So today I wantd to talk about somethingtotally different that it just found out about about a year ago. I put itoff, didn't really think about it, there'stoo much to think about, and nothing to think about all at once. It's kind ofmind blowing so kind of a trigger warning here, if you're not in themindspace, to accept some wild information, it's not deadly. Iwon't hurt you, but it might blow your mind and set youoff into a different space at least temporarily. So the thing I found outabout I learned about is called affantasia or afantasia. It spelled aPh, an ta s, I a Alfantasia, it's the opposite of hyper fantasia...
...and I'll get into kind of the the issueI have with the mislabeling already right here from the start, but let'sget into it so afantasia. It's kind of a word that means lack ofimagination like a fantasia. Fantasia means imagination in Latin, so afantasia means lack of imagination and therefore hyperfantasia. The otherdisorder is hyper imagination, get it get okay, but it's not really imagination,they're talking about its visualization and let me explain the difference, and this is kind of especially easybecause we'ne on a podcast, it's all audio, so I'm closing my eyes now closeyour eyes and now imagine an apple. Let's just call it a green apple, a bright green applewith maybe one little leaf up the top.
The leaf is a slightly different, color,green, of course, much darker little brown stem. You know kind of a HM. Iguess we call reflection of light and you can just rotate it in your mind.Okay, you see that green apple cool. I just described it pretty well right!Well, I don't see Shet there's nothing in my mind when I close my eyes is justblack. The words I just said are words that Iknow because I'm creative and I can I remember the description of a greenapple. I saw in the store the other day so try that on yourself it's super easyand it's mind blowing once to realize you have this or not so about threepercent of the population. They estimate have this condition. What do you see and pick anythingreally like pick the thing you're most familiar with the back of your hands,your mom's face your favorite coffee mug. I like now try to imagine it inyour mind like I can imagine it, but I can'tactually see anything when I close my...
...eyes: It's black there's someunduladang lights from you know, whichever direction, I turn my head.The light kind of changes a little bit inside behind my eyelids, but it'sblack, no matter what I describe to you, I could read from a book. I could justpull things from my imagination that I've seen in the past or can imagine inthe future, but I don't actually see see any of it in my mental imagery, andthe thing I find mostly strange is that I make my living in the creative field,particularly graphic design, like I'm a branddesigner at a marketing, firm and yeah. I can't see anything in my mind.It's so weird, but I can imagine everything. That's kind of the problemI have with the terminology. They've come up withfor this afantasia hyperfantasia, basically lack of imagination orhyperimagination, but the thing is: It's not imagination. I have tons ofimagination...
...like all throughout school. That was eproblem. The kids I mean the teachers wrote on the report cards. Well, hedoesn't, he sure, has a vivid imagination. Well, that's how it'sconveyed, because I do have a vivid imagination, but under this labelingtheire kind of convoluting, visual mental imagery with imagination,like the creation of thought- and I think that's going to do a disserviceto this whole cause moving forward. That said, can you do it like close your eyes? Freaky Huh. Well, I guess it's notfreaky. If you can totally imagine it, but imagine closing your eyes andalways just seeme black I'm used to it. I just I didn't knowthat people could actually see see things.Of course, the way you see a green apple, for example, might be different.If I didn't give it so much detail, you...
...probably just would have imagined anygreen apple you wanted to, and although I mean the idea of thiscame about, I think intheig s, it finally kind of rose to popularityagain when they did a real scientific study in abouttwo thousand and fifteen. So that's why it's that's why mostpeople haven't heard of it. Just such a underlyine thing and again it doesn'treally affect your day today, performance at all. It's just something! I'm missing that other people have, butthen is that a bad thing or good thing, because, depending on your your feeling about mental differences, let's call them so,for example, people with bypolar disorder, for example, isa great one. Some people say I have bipolar and some people swear.The correct terminology should be. I am...
...by polar so the difference there ispeople thot say I am bipolar, are typically proud of what bipolar can dofor them personally, like sometimes that Hypermania I mean the Hypomaniahelps you achieve great things and if the depressiong part is tolerable well,you can appear to be a genius in real life, so I get why some people say I amby polar as if they're proud of it now people who keep getting fired from jobsand kicked out of school and spent half the day in their bedroom with darkenedcurtains, theyare going to more likely say. Ihave bypolar because it feels like a sickness which it is even more controversial. Is the autismspectrum disorders like a lot of people say I am autistic versus I have autismagain controversial, ' not going to get into it. I A on the low low end of the spectrum,so I can totally get it mixed in with...
...the other mental disorders that getdiagnosed when the first thing isn't treated appropriately anyway. My point being in the futuretime will tell whether people accept this Afantasia as a benefit or as adeficit, because personally I wasn't missing anything and I kind of like thepiece on quiet when I close my eyes when I took acid and you close youreyes or when you take acid and close your eyes, I see way more crazy shit inmy eyelids than I do when they're open. But again I can't visual. I can't likedirect those crazy lights. You know what I mean, but it's not going to helpunless we get the labeling right to say. Somebody who doesn't have visualimagery doesn't have imagination. Well, that's pretty fucked up so again,here's a problem with the labeling, the marketing, the branding all that stuff.However, if you think you have this condition, it appears that there is athing called the afantasia network and...
I'm not sure what it is exactly.Obviously, some sort of group or community doesn't look like a socialnetwork or anything like that, but that's that affantasiacom AP HaNtas Isa, ffantasiacom so check it out. I mean we'le just be cognisant thatthat's an interesting thing that some people have and again just one one of a million different ways. We seethe world so much differently, one from another when we appear so similar allright anyway, something to think about so tomorrow, Monday back addit whateverit is that you do each Monday, I'm going to go to work, get my work on hm trying to do great things. I got bigplans we'll see if they work out who knows, but I do have to get up and tryto have to get up and try each morning...
...if you don't to morrow cool, enjoysleeping in watching prices right whatever it is. You do appreciate listening thanks forlistening. It definitely is nice to be heard and now back to the wall.
In-Stream Audio Search
NEWSearch across all episodes within this podcast