Do you suffer from hyperphantasia? If your answer is yes, then this article could just be for you. Our mind is the most complex chemical factory in the Universe. The emotions that we feel are all because of chemical changes in our minds. Our mind is a mystery that a lot of researchers are still trying to unfold.
To understand hyperphantasia and dreams, you need to understand what is a mind's eye. The mind's eye forms a picture in your brain that helps you remember the picture of activities you indulged in. Like what you last ate, whether or not you were sitting at a table? What food did you eat? Did you get your meal off a bowl or by using utensils?
Let me give this straight to you at the very beginning; the mind's eye is not some third eye on your forehead. On the internet, you will get many images of the mind's eye being portrayed as some third eye in your forehead, but that is not the case.
What Does The Term Mind’s Eye Mean?
Despite what the name suggests, your mind's eye is not some kind of magical eye in your mind. In reality, a mind's eye is the place where your mind stores and creates memories. Things that you ever imagined or pictured were in your mind's eye. It is more like a movie that goes on in your mind. The 'Mind's Eye' lets you go through your memories, remember images. It even lets you make new ideas. You will not be able to see everything vividly.
Most of these images will appear hazy and unclear. In simple words, consider yourself looking at something through a dirty piece of glass. More or less, everybody on Earth has a mind's eye. But there are some people with conditions who have a mighty mind's eye, whereas there are certain people who have no mind's eye at all.
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Let Us Talk About Hyperphantasia- The Hyperphantasia Definition?
What's the hyperphantasia definition? Hyperphantasia is a condition where you get incredibly vivid images in your mind without applying any effort. The images that you see are so vivid that you can control them as if you were there. Imagine a laptop. A person with hyperphantasia symptoms would be able to hold it with their hands and get a 360 degrees view of it. People often refer to this condition as a mind with overactive imagination because people have reported seeing anything with this condition.
I suffer from hyperphantasia and dreams, and I was quite taken aback when people said they do not see or imagine things the way I do. I've imagined things for so long that it happens without any control. When I think of anything, I feel that I am there as one body, seeing the things I would see with my own naked eyes. One good thing, though, is that it makes reading way more engaging.
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What Are The Advantages and Disadvantages of Having Hyperphantasia?
A person having this condition often views it as a gift or a curse, depending on that particular person's perspective. With such vivid imagination, it helps a person's creativity like writing, art, or photography. Speaking of photography, a person with hyperphantasia symptoms can picturise how he/she wants the photograph to be and adjust his/her camera accordingly.
A person with this in the field of writing can already imagine what the start. And the end of a story is, play vivid scenes in their head, and ensure that each scene's emotions are applied accordingly. People with hyperphantasia have also claimed that it helps them achieve goals as they had already imagined the outcome and planned precisely all the steps needed to take to achieve their goal.
There were the advantages, but there's a flip side to it as it is with most things on Earth. Now let us see some disadvantages, where people claim that having hyperphantasia symptoms is like living a nightmare. People that have hyperphantasia and dreams can quickly overthink the little things in life. They can quickly get stuck in the past and overthink things that are yet to happen in the future.
People with this have the habit of daydreaming, and sometimes they get so lost daydreaming that they completely lose grip over their present reality. These things become incredibly harmful when you have a 9 to 5 job or even if you want to get any critical thing done.
Some people get so lost in their mental game that they lose grip over reality, leading to depression, PTSD, or schizophrenia. They should learn more about hyperphantasia diagnosis as all these severely affect the quality of life.
What Is It Like To Live With Hyperphantasia?
Very few people are known to have hyperphantasia. Still, rumors had it that Mozart, one of the famous composers globally, has a condition that was quite similar to hyperphantasia. People of his time have claimed that he could come up with music very easily.
People also suspected Nikola Tesla to have hyperphantasia as he was able to invent so many objects. Rumors had it that he was able to build inventions in his head to see all the parts and materials that would be needed to build all those inventions. This process would help him to give fair trials to the inventions. He would do this to test his inventions in his head to verify if the inventions worked or not; and if they didn't, he would imagine ways to fix them.
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Do You Have Hyperphantasia?
If you have read this far, I am sure you are a little curious to find out if you have hyperphantasia or not. This is how you can judge the vividness of your image. Let's assume for a second that you have hyperphantasia symptoms for the sake of argument. Do you think about your past a lot? Or do you have anxiety while panning about your future since you already have drawn conclusions as to what might happen?
If the answer to both of these questions is YES, then there could be a possibility that you might have mild hyperphantasia. The best possible thing you can do right now is getting a hyperphantasia test done. Consult with a mental health expert on how to do hyperphantasia test. It is the professional who will decide about the treatment procedure after seeing test results.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. Is There Any Hyperphantasia Test?
Definitely, there is a specific Hyperphantasia test. the name of this test is VVIQ or Vividness Of Visual Imagery Questionnaire. Through this Hyperphantasia test, the vividness of the visual imagery of a person is measured.
Q2. Did Nikola Tesla Have Hyperphantasia?
Although there has not been any solid proof till now, it is suspected that hyperphantasia was a part of Nicola Tesla's life. It might be one of the reasons why he invented a large number of things.
Q3. What Does Hyperphantasia Feel Like?
A person with Hyperphantasia would have super realistic mental imagery. At times, this condition may get really dangerous for the person and people around him/her. However, the term is just the opposite to apgantasia, where mental visual imagery is absent - Aphantasia vs Hyperphantasia.
Conclusion
Having mild hyperphantasia symptoms is not a bad thing as long as you can function in your daily life, like going to your workplace, interacting with people, helping others, etc. Still, if your hyperphantasia stops you from doing every little thing in your life and makes you overanalyze every small decision you take, then you might need some professional help. Do a hyperphantasia test, show the test results to your professional and everything will be sorted.
If you can't form mental images, then you have Aphantasia, which is just the opposite of everything I wrote about hyperphantasia in this article.
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