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 @Gwaer@lemm.ee 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
Hard to describe but I’ll try. Not sure if you’ve played Baldur’s Gate 3, but it’s a lot like that; announcing things other people are doing, commenting on what I’m doing, or sometimes a choice phrase that my brain seemed to find amusing might repeat a few times. Sometimes it creates a full-on musical number, like a song from American Dad, based around some fairly-banal incident. I’ve spent around 30 years writing various types of music so not sure if it’s the chicken or the egg there.
I would think I’m insane if I hadn’t been assured by many people (and a psychologist) that having an internal narrator is perfectly normal. It’s when the voice starts talking directly to you and issuing commands that it becomes a problem, which fortunately I’ve never had. My stepbro is schizophrenic and from what he describes it’s nothing like my inner voice, his is quite malevolent and conspiratorial when he’s off the meds.
Is that how you write songs - by hearing then in your head first? I’ve wondered how musicians, artists, etc. produce art. I’ve started asking people if they have voice or images and most have the same reaction of shock that other people do or don’t.
AFAIK whilst some creatives do fully conceptualise the work in their heads then set out to externally reproduce it, the more normal approach is to have a less complete notion and then create something via the process. IE, a musician might have a melody in their head but then they will play it on the instrument and experiment with different variations and accompaniments to see what sounds good and build on it that way, rather than sit and think of an entire piece based on that, then play it out loud.