83
Of all the foods available in the world, you thought of a lemon? Allow your imagination to eat some ice cream. Or a strawberry. But a lemon?
Could just be me but I get a more immediate and more intense reaction when I think of sour foods
I'm with you. Thinking of sour is more likely to get my mouth working.
And you probably turn a little in the direction your eyes are pointed while driving even when you shouldn't too.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Yes of course, the Russian guy that made 7-zip duh
Your thoughts are so powerful that you can trick your body into thinking you got medicine even if you really just got a sugar pill.
I hate this about the body. If you can feel better by being tricked, skip the getting tricked bit and go straight to feeling better
Reminds me of this joke my parents told me, which I'm gonna paraphrase:
"We used to not have not much to eat, food was rationed, and we only got one 鹹魚 (Salted Fish) at home, not enough for everyone, so we'd have a bowl of rice, and instead of eating the 鹹魚 with rice, we look at it and pretend like we're eating it, then we eat the rice...
Then this kid was just kinda staring into space and his eyes was facing the 鹹魚 and the mom was like: '唔好睇咁耐啊，鹹死你啊！' ('don't stare it for too long, you're gonna die in overdose of sodium')"
This joke was so lame but I kinda just awkwardly laugh at it when my parent told it... and they repeatedly told that joke that it just got stuck in my memory...
I think I'm subconsciously doing this when I watch food shows while eating
Such power. The world will tremble before my mighty ability to salivate.
Y'know how some people can't visualize images in their head? I know someone that can't imagine tasting things
Dang, do they have trouble imagining things in general?
Yup, they basically can't imagine any sensation. Not sight, not sound, nothing. Yet they're a capable and successful person. I have no idea what the experience is like in their head
It is called aphantasia and, like many things, works as a spectrum from slightly reduced imagination of one sense to totally blank imagination of all senses.
I have totally blank imagination at least for visual and smell/taste. limited imagination for sound and, as far as I can tell as good as no limitations for imagination of touch/texture based things.
So when i want to imagine a wall height, ruffling, wet, cold, red velvet curtine that was pissed on... Well all that i can come up with is imagination of how touching the wet, cold fabric feels like. At the same time I know that it should smell awefull and I know all the facts about the curtine like its color, length, width, that you would need to imagine it but it is like reading a technical documention without any kind of pictures or smells, but with very faint and limited sound and the full vivid range of touch based sensations.
I have no issues dreaming, conjuring vivid images while sleeping is not limited at all, but I can only remember them as a list of bullet point facts. The images themself are gone as soon as i am fully woken up.
I would say the things where it limits or complicates my live the most are:
- When I try to do any kind of visual artistic expression. I can only barely do that and it is a painfully slow process, everything i draw looks like it comes from the hands of a small kid. I tried to learn the technics but just can't perform the transformation in my head to get anything to paper. So everything has to be done in tiny iterativ steps. Arts class was always pain for me in school.
- When I have to solve some kind of "transform the shape into another and compare them" puzzle in games or real life (Ikea manuals for example).
- I am the worst eye witness, because i can't relive visual memories in my head. I have no visual memories at all, only a abstract, very limited, list of facts. Like remembering scenes from a movie that you have only, in a haste, read the script for.
- and many more things where visual imagination is relevant.
Visual imagination is the only thing I really miss, the other senses barely matter for my, when it comes to imagination, but not beeing able to close my eyes and picture my wife in my mind at all is often painful for me.
How are you at doing jigsaw puzzles? The person i know is incapable of doing them
I tried them a few times and I solved one once, but that was more by brute force and not really by solving the geometric riddle.
Most people primarily use the printed image on the pieces to look through the pile to find the correct adjacent piece of the image, and then secondarily use the shape of the piece to find the exact right spot.
For example let's say the puzzle's picture is a photo of a car. And say currently I'm working on a red tail light. So I'll sort through the pile looking for pieces that are red with a plasticy-looking texture. Then after i found one I'll look for smaller image details to find the general area within the tail light around where the piece should go. And only then do i start looking at the shape of the pieces to see where the roundy out and in bits would fit into each other.
Is that not what you do?
I am sorry, there was a translation error on my side, english is not my primary language and when I read the question I translated jigsaw puzzle with the meaning of a sliding puzzle and those I can't do.
Jigsaw puzzle are not really an issue for me, more or less because of the reasons you said. There is not really much imagination needed to solve a jigsaw puzzle.
I am sorry for the confusion caused by my error.
Oh wow, aside from the slight misunderstanding of that single word, your english is flawless. I had no idea you weren't a native english speaker. You should be proud!
And thanks for clarifying
and on the other extreme end people can feel or smell colors or numbers.
Imagining pineapples gives me erections.
my thoughts are so powerful or my body is that easy to manipulate
For me I have this effect with pickles. Just thinking about eating a pickle makes me salivate like crazy.
You are now breathing manually.
Good doggyyy!
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
83 points (100.0% liked)
Showerthoughts
41870 readers
466 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS