Hi Cris,
Sounds very frustrating! I can sympathize. Though not to the same degree, I've myself had some difficulty visualizing, despite a life-long desire and belief that I ought to be much better at it!
I can't say for sure what you'll need to do to locate your "missing" visualization skills. Instead, I'll just describe a little of my own experiences and discoveries, and hope that maybe you... (or at least someone else reading this)... will find it helpful.
One of my biggest revelations along the way was that my standards were WAY too high! I had some strange idea that "visualization" was supposed to be like hallucinating. I read stories of people like Nikola Tesla who could supposedly design machines in his mind so vividly that he could come back a few days later to see how much the gears had worn down. Of course I'd LOVE to be able to do that. And I felt envious of everyone I heard of with stories of being able to have insanely lucid hallucination-quality visualizations.
So... biased by that crazy expectation, when I did "visualization" exercises, I'd always say that I couldn't "see" anything. It was frustrating. I would try really hard to "see"... but I'd just go blank. It was really frustrating not to be able experience life like a schizophrenic.(!)
Then a few years ago during the course of a few meditations, I noticed a subtle detail that completely changed everything. It was a simple difference in how the leader *worded* the instructions. The difference was this:
When they asked me to "visualize"... I saw nothing.
When they asked me to "IMAGINE"... I found I could *feel* my way through an imaginary situation. I could *imagine* holding balls of energy in my hands... even though I could not see a thing. I could *imagine* people standing in front of me... and even answer questions about them... even though I couldn't see them.
Turns out -- I could IMAGINE things just fine! That one realization turned everything around for me. It changed how I approach just about everything. For one, I *never* ask clients to "picture" or "visualize" something... (unless it's already been established that they're a visual person who literally "sees" things in their imagination)... but instead ask them to *IMAGINE*
(Not that "imagine" is a magical word or anything. I've encountered more than one situation where someone couldn't 'imagine'... so we played with the wording until we found some common language.)
So what I've had to learn is either 1) Translate "visualize" into "imagine"... Or when it becomes too annoying... 2) Avoid scripted meditations that refuse to break out of this very limiting language. Honestly, I often find myself taking the second route, because I don't want to get stuck with a training (or trainer) that's already biased against me.
And once I learned to do that... to start living within my own strengths... as someone with a VERY good imagination (even if it's kind of mysterious what kind of 'sense' I'm using to daydream)...
I have since become very good at literally Visualizing. It's still not "hallucination-quality" -- (as if that really means anything, since all imaginary phenomena are technically hallucinations) -- but I can dependably create imaginary visions... as long as I *FEEL* them out first! (In a sense, I actually sculpt them.)
Lemme know if you (or anyone else) can relate...
Coach Rik
