a common side effect of being blind is where the mind seems to create
images that are not there or completes images that you can see
partially. This is known as Charles bonnet syndrome.
These apparitions can alarm people but fortunately for me I cannot say
that I suffer from this syndrome but that the images that appear
intrigue me.
I know that I am blind and therefore when an image appears I know that
it cannot be real and sometimes I try to hold the image in my mind to
see if it relates to anything that I have seen or done previously.
However sometimes when I’ve tried to do this I have ended up with a very
bad headache.
I realise that Charles bonnet syndrome upsets and disturbs a lot of
people and I am not trying to be blase about this but I feel these
images are only the same as a static version of a visual dream. They
usually come to me when I am tired and the images can be as varied as a
village scene which usually appears when I am facing a window or an
image of a room depending on which room I am in at the time. These
images never appear when I am out and about by myself however recently
when I was travelling in a minibus and I was starting to feel tired I
had an image of a road on one sideof it there was a forest and on the
other side there was a petrified Forest and I could not relate this
image to anything that has happened previously my life.
As I’ve said before I do not believe this is anything to be worried
about if you have accepted your visual impairment because then you must
realise that these images must be false though I could understand how
people could find these very upsetting if they have only recently become
visually impaired but if they still dream in images what really is the
difference.
I have never been to a Charles bonnet syndrome support group because I
do not understand what that would achieve but I have done a little
research into this syndrome to try to understand how the images are
formed and that has reassured me that it is nothing to worry about.
