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
There’s a difference between understanding “this isn’t going to be what it looks like, it’ll look like wood” and actually being able to visualize and “see” the wood version in your head prior to completion.
So looking at your grey version, someone with aphantasia (who isn’t a moron) might be like “I can’t visualize/imagine it as wood, could I see what that looks like?”, as in they understand it will be wood, but may have no clue what that actually looks like until it’s in front of them.
What you’re describing just sounds like a run of the mill idiot who also may have aphantasia.