As a neurodivergent who has aphantasia and can’t visualize, not like this at all. For me it’s more like, what I need is there when I need it (usually), not in a visual sense but a conceptual sense.

Vision zone. Where I prefer to be when idle. I can see and hear things fairly vividly, what others might call daydreaming. I mean, it IS daydreaming, except I do it at night too, it’s the only way I can relax enough to sleep. I tend to flit between subjects rapidly. Sometimes the endeavor is creative, or planning, stored away for later use - most times, it’s simply self-indulgent. Fantasies of making a difference, usually. I’m hard to reach when I’m like this, and if I slip into this when talking, I quickly lose what I’m talking about.

Talk zone. I’m extremely introverted, but very words-oriented. I can have long conversations where the words are not vocalized, even inside my head, but are nonetheless ‘present’ and engaged in dialogue. When typing up this comment, this is where I am, for example, running over the words in my mind like a printer setting type. I said “a printer setting type” out loud, and briefly flitted up to a more vision-oriented zone, consumed with the image of a printer running his fingers along type that very satisfyingly ‘clicks’ into place. This is also where I’m most social towards others, though it can very quickly drop down into tension if I don’t know them well and/or lack subjects of interest to speak on.

Tension zone. Where I mask. Everything else shuts off. All that remains is hyperawareness of the current situation and a burning desperation to escape it in a way that does not make me feel guilty for shirking responsibilities or hurting the feelings of others who’ve done nothing with malice, and often acted with kindness. I’m very attentive when my mind is here, so most people consider me polite, amicable, and helpful; in reality, I’m screaming behind my eyes every moment. It’s a state of alertness, it’s exhausting, and I hate it. There’s no overlap or easy transition between here and the other two.

The fantastic mind: This is what’s active when I read books, examine memories, do mathematics, and dream. Vision, sound, smell, texture, emotion, and kinaesthesia simulated and under some amount of control.

The word mind: Text and inflection and sound and meaning. This is what’s active when I speak or sing, whether internally or aloud (and I’m more or less constantly doing one or the other when awake, usually aloud but not always).

The reactive mind: Processing inputs, forming connections, and responding to them. This is what activates during empathic conversation, when making jokes, and during most kinds of problem-solving. Mostly below the conscious level, and the responses are left to the word mind to use or not use (in conversation), or the fantastic mind to visualize and examine (in problem-solving).

The guts: Some might call this “the intuitive mind” but mine is full of crap. It gives me anxiety about things for no good reason. It also tells me to stop what I’m doing and check on time-sensitive agenda needing my attention, so I do attend when it flares up, but it’s not great about giving direction to do something, just to stop or avoid things. It’s like a smoke detector that goes off randomly, but also when there’s smoke. No false negatives, so you keep using it, but lots of false positives.

Generally, as an introvert, the fantastic mind is active best when I’m alone or at least in calm, familiar surroundings.

The reactive mind I find somewhat draining to use but usually that’s compensated for by the results: emotional connections, jokes, problems solved, recognition at work. But I don’t really control its outputs, only whether or not I use them; if a task goes in and nothing comes out, that’s the ballgame; I might not even remember there’s a task anymore until something reminds me.

The word mind is closest to the decision-making process, and so I tend to think of it as the most “me” even though it’s not fully under my control.

And the guts, well, you know how I feel about that. It may be that the guts are the same thing as the reactive mind but acting on subconscious inputs rather than conscious ones, I suppose.

Obviously a little simplistic, but those are the four primary mental modes for me.

I find the idea of mind categorisation very tiresome. I indulge in the concept of simply being and observing. I don’t name my observations, they just are.

Not an interesting answer to your question but an answer nonetheless.

Thinking in terms of words and sentences always felt really slow and tiring, so I took the “picture is worth 1,000 words” metaphor literally and just visualize thoughts instead of using words. I could spend a few seconds/minutes piecing together a scene or conversation with words, or I could just instantly see it in my mind and have an innate understanding of the concept or situation, almost immediately.

Of course, this makes it harder for me to communicate verbally (especially since I’m an introvert), so I’ve had to spend years practicing conversations out loud. And since I think in terms of images, I’m basically translating visuals to words every time I open my mouth. So I can be a bit awkward and fumble over words sometimes. I spent a lot of my youth just lost in my own head, because dealing with the real world was like trying to translate a foreign language in real time. It was exhausting, so I was just the quiet kid growing up. Kept to myself, for the most part, and just absorbed information about my surroundings.

In the novel Hannibal Rising, they explain Lector Hannibal’s brilliant mind as a sort of visual hallway, with many rooms branching off of it. Any time he needs information, he takes a mental stroll down the hall and into the various rooms, where he’s filed away all sorts of knowledge. It’s how he can recollect fine details about almost everything he’s exposed to; he visualizes filing it away in a particular room in his mind, so he can go back to retrieve it anytime he wants.

I always loved that concept of a visual recollection, but I feel it’s too complicated a visual for myself in particular. It takes time to take that mental stroll down a hallway and go through files in my mind, so I keep it simpler and try to just jump right to the visual I need. If I can’t find it, then I can’t find it. Trying to keep mental files of everything just seems like way too much work for me, even if it would work as a shortcut to memory recollection.

When puberty first struck me (about 25 years ago now), I found myself in a strange battle for control over my mind. I felt split in two directions: my intellectual side, which I felt was my true self. And my instinctual self; the impulses that tried to betray the strict moral compass I had in place. Almost a sort of Jekyll and Hyde thing, now that I think about it.

I actually had a mini-struggle with this concept of a mental “self” when I was in elementary school. I was obsessive about details and had to do things in a particularly structured way. But I noticed that my peers were very lax about details and just did the bare minimum to accomplish tasks, sometimes very messily. It bothered me, and I spent several weeks agonizing over whether I should relinquish control and just be a messy, disorganized person like my peers, or if I should keep suffering under my mental structure and discipline. I didn’t want to stop hyperfixating on minor details, but I felt like life would be less stressful if I could just give up trying and go with the flow. Little did I know I was already suffering from ADHD, even way back then. I wasn’t even diagnosed until I was 37 years old.

But as I started to mature both physically and mentally, that split between being “normal” and being “organized” became my instinctual and intellectual sides, and I spent many years fighting to hold true to my morals and personal beliefs. ADHD won in the end, and I refused to give in to my instinctual impulses all my life. And the older I get, the easier it is. As my hormones and testosterone cool off with age, I get less impulsive drives. I’m more careful and more patient, with less effort.

In regards to OP’s mental “depths”… I don’t like to avoid topics just because they give me a negative vibe or emotion. I’m a realist, and I’ve always wanted to understand the world I live in, including the good and bad. I don’t want to trick myself into a false understanding of the world; I want to see it as it truly is, so there’s no misunderstanding a situation I find myself in.

So unlike OP, who has layers of their mind where they tuck away negative thoughts, I prefer to process and deal with them up front, come to some level of understanding, and then file them away. Once I’ve processed it, then it doesn’t hurt me as much in the future and I’m able to deal with it in the moment without freezing up or suffering from emotional reactions when I least expect it.

It makes me more adept at handling real-world situations as they come at me. Which was really handy when I served in the US military. When you’re being attacked by an enemy force, you don’t have time to be horrified at the carnage around you; you need to be present in the moment and focused on the next step to survival. If something truly shocking happens, I can set that thought aside while I focus on what needs to be accomplished first. Once everything’s said and done, then I can sit down and process that shocking situation I dealt with.

TL;DR - I visualize thoughts instead of speaking or forming words in my head, because it’s much faster. Also, my ADHD mind is a battlefield, wrestling for organization over impulses. ALSO also, I’m a realist who prefers to process everything up front, good and bad, instead of just tucking away negative thoughts and emotions and not dealing with them.

Like a cat

I process ideas and concepts mainly visually, in forms, colors and movement entwining (the movement especially is the most important!).

Verbal thoughts occur, but they are more of a chorus, or chord, rather than one voice - there is always several aspects sounding out together, and it can be hard to pick the dominant one to verbalize for communication.

There are thoughts which have already been translated to words before and I can communicate then easily, but also deeper areas or newly occuring “movements” which are still only visual, and I have to put in a lot of work to put them into words.

There’s more, but this is as far as I have pre-verbalized…

Only this - I once read a book that talked about minds as a rainforest, brimming with life and built in layers and impossible to fully grasp at once. I think that metaphor works pretty well.

There’s consciousness and its content.