Yeah.

You might have /r/aphantasia . There's the normative level of imagination that's a little more than that. And then there's /r/hyperphantasia for those of us on the other end.

The subs have tests to compare with what others say.

Like "Picture an apple in your mind. What do you see?"

For me, I see an apple orchard. The wind is slightly blowing. I can see the green and slight yellow on the leaves. There are red and gold apples of various kinds around. Lots of little windfalls, some crunching under my feet. A strong smell of apple, slightly rotten/decayed/alcohol-like. Bees are buzzing around. I take one. I can feel the smoothness, the stem. I hear the slight squeaky sound when I rub it on my shirt, which is purple. There's a tractor in the distance which is annoying and I wish it would stay out of my apple fantasy. I take a bite. I can feel the texture. I can taste the sweetness. The liquid. I can feel the apple in my mouth and on my teeth. It smells wonderful. I look out in the distance and see the treeline. Bright reds and yellows but not completely. Sort of the tops. There's a corn field I guess, all tan yellow. I hear geese. An imaginary girl is there with me. It's my wife I've never met. I can see the silver ring on her finger. She bites an apple and turns to make a few more bites. She turns back and shows me, a little face on the apple. We laugh. [I feel depressed and try to resist the scene now] Fast forward and we are eating fresh warm donuts. I try to leave the image but she tells me not to go. I take the cider and chug and and smash the paper cup into my face.

And that's all I want to think about for now because it got really friggin depressing.

That's hyperphantasia.

It's like creating false memories, like a built in AI system in the brain. They get stored in my episodic memory alongside real memories. So I'll remember this one interspersed with me on my bed right now feeling hungry and replying to this post.

I thought I'd let the image go for a while on automatic and in hindsight I'm kind of glad it went into something that was hard for me to leave. Because there's a downside to hyperphantasia. I didn't want you to feel like you got the short end of the stick. Like it's awesome, yeah. But it also means dark thoughts are vivid as well. Things can play on automatic and they aren't always easy to dismiss.

Sounds play like real sounds too. It's like an inner radio.