entry 004

03.27.26

i've been having such wildly specific memories surfacing lately. i got pulled back into this random moment when i was first learning to write, and my mom had gotten me a little black book to practice writing in. i remember digging so deep trying to spell 'couch,' and i still ended up spelling it cooch.

i guess i didn't have access to 'u' yet.

otherwise, i've been having these moments of me saying something batshit from a movie- like 'house of a thousand corpses,' but never telling anyone i was quoting a movie. and 1. assuming people know i'm quoting some obscure film 2. that they've actually seen.. is a creative risk that has never once paid off for me.

so, i recently found a word that describes my experience well. hyperphantasia. there's also another word that i feel is really similar and connects to the experience- hyperthymesia. hyperthymesia is the ability to remember vast amounts of personal life experiences in vivid detail. hyperphantasia aligns with my experience a bit more closely, and it's characterized by exceptionally vivid mental imagery that can rival real-life perception. it's often described as a 'cinematic' or 'high-definition' inner world. i think that they must go hand-in-hand to some extent or at least work in similar areas of the brain because the hyperphantasia i experience is the doorway to the hyperthymesia. i mean, i believe that's why i can access so many rich details of memories- because they were just encoded that way.

when i stumbled upon this, it floored me- mostly because i had no idea others were not having this experience. it supposedly only affects approximately 3% to 10% of the population. i've been talking about the way that i've been doing inner child work by going back into memories for a long time, and it probably sounds a bit unhinged. i just.. assumed that people understood.

for me, if i have full access to a memory, i'm able to walk back into it like it's a movie scene. it's like my current self can walk back onto the set and look around, and most importantly, explain things to a former version of me. it's been profoundly healing. it's been a long process of reparenting myself and attending to the specific needs i had at the time. a wiser version of me gets to intervene in some of the most intense experiences of my life, with a far more nuanced understanding. it has been one of the most healing tools i've had over the last decade. it's like low-dose time travel for wholeness.

anyway, i don't know how common this is, but i'm certain it isn't so black and white. while there are some people who genuinely can't access this ability (aphantasic), i would say most people are on a spectrum. it's most likely a skill that can be exercised just like active imagination, and that's what the neuroscience supports.