r/Aphantasia

I have aphantasia along with a lack of internal dialogue and most of the time brain is doing/thinking nothing. I am so curious to know how common this is? Is that most of us orrr???
Most of the time I try to drown out the silence with noise of some kind BUT too many different noises messes with me 😅 for context, I did get diagnosed with ADHD this year.

I love reading this sub - it is truly so interesting how other peoples brains work and no one ever knows they’re different until it oddly comes up 😂

Yes from my side.

WBU?

I have AuDHD+ mild DCD

I've always loved writing, but any attempts at prose always found my descriptions and scene-settings incredibly lacking. I would read books where authors could expound for pages on the way a place looked and smelled and sounded and felt, but when it was my turn, I struggled with even the most basic of descriptions.

Small wonder I ended up more of a play- and scriptwriter, focusing on dialog (which I had no problem with since my ADHD-addled brain often has inner conversations running constantly) and the occasional bit of action. It was only a week or so ago, while discussing my recently-discovered aphantasia, that I realized my inability to describe the scenes I was writing could be connected to my inability to see those scenes.

Which has me curious: is it like this for all aphantasiacs, or have some of y'all managed to come up with strategies and mechanisms to get past not being able to visualize the things you write about (if you even need them at all)?

Well there we go...looks like my brain is a nice little database, collects all these facts about things, but can can't relive past events.

I only discovered I had aphantasia earlier this year, and now it looks like I have SDAM too 😂

I genuinely had no idea that when people talked about remembering something, they could actually sort of go back and experience the memory again. I thought remembering meant knowing what happened, but not being able to see or relive it.

I know loads of random facts from my life. I know I “married” Campbell Beers in P4 with a traffic light ring and a packet of Spangles. Can I relive the actual event? Nope. No idea what I wore, what anyone said, what happened before or after. I just know it happened.

I just thought I had a bad memory that would throw up random facts now and again. But I genuinely can't visualise anything, I can't reclll specifics, only that vague sense of a ghostly still photo, so I don't know if I am making a memory from a photo of if I am remembering it.

The really weird bit is that I can simulate things really well. So I can take the bits I do remember, fill in the gaps with what probably happened, and end up not entirely sure which bits are memory and which bits I’ve inferred.

Anyone else got both? And how did you realise?

I love to draw but can only draw from things right in front of me. Sometimes I think of ideas of things I'd like to create but when I go to put pencil to paper I can't do it cuz I can't SEE it. Does anyone else struggle with this? How do folks get around creative roadblocks?

When I close my eyes and picture an apple, I can't see it. I know what it looks like, I an describe an apple. When I sleep at night, I can "hear" dreams but I can't see it.

Does that fit Aphantasia? I am going insane? can someone help? thanks

I'm a student and a slow reader. I don't know if its common for aphants or not, but when i've tried looking for tips on learning to read faster, they often say things like "try to get into it so that its like watching a movie" or "stop reading out the words in your mind". I'm like 99% inner monologue, so those tips feel impossible and counterproductive to me.

Do other aphants have similar experiences? Any aphants out there with tips for learning how to read faster?

Anybody here who is a lawyer? I am doing a court internship these days (which is mandatory in my country if you studied law and want to qualify for certain legal professions). While I was assigned to criminal law, I had no issues at all. However, once I got ordered to serve in the civil law compartment, my visual issues exploded. I had to judge visual descriptions of accidents, graphics, etc. and it took me three days to understand what happened. Same with visual descriptions of product warranty, etc. I even got headache and an MCAS flare/Audhd internal meltdown from realizing that I can just not "picture" the accident in my head. I had to "translate" what happened to the parties in text to make it abstract.

Think about this:

Someone with aphantasia who also has short-term memory, SDAM, auditory hyperphantasia, Blank Mind Syndrome (BMS), and Intrapersonal Communication.

I just so happen to have all of the listed instances and have done my research.

Around 40% (average) of the world has Intrapersonal Communication. Around 21% of the world has Hyperphantasia in one sense. Around 20% of people have BMS. Around 20% of the world has Short Term Memory Loss Syndrome. Around 2% of the world has SDAM. Around 1.5% of the world has Aphantasia.

There are 8 Billion in the world, just about. This means 3.2 Billion have Intrapersonal Communication. This means 672 Million have both IC and STMLS. This means 134.4 Million have IC, STMLS, and Hyperphantasia. This means 26.88 Million have IC, STMLS, Hyperphantasia, and BMS. This means 537,000 have IC, STMLS, Hyperphantasia, BMS, and SDAM. This means that 8,064 have all IC, STMLS, Hyperphantasia, BMS, SDAM, and Aphantasia.

These numbers are off because I rounded down to 8 billion, but this is slightly true to an extent (please correct me if Im wrong, I would love to learn).

I just so happen to be one of (by my best estimation) 8,064 people globally that have Intrapersonal Communication, Short Term Memory Loss Syndrome, Blank Mind Syndrome, Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory, Aphantasia, and a sense of Hyperphantasia all at once. More specifically, I have Auditory Hyperphantasia, making my instance just that much more rare.

Doing the math a bit better, this makes me (not by originality or significance on any stance, not as an individual) 1 of around 9,000 that share all of these. If we consider those with just Auditory Hyperphantasia, it's likely closer to 4,000 (as auditory hyperphantasia is the 3rd ranked hyperphantasia, behind olfactory and gustatory, ahead of touch and episodic).

1 of an estimated 4,000 who share the exact neurodivergencies I listed. If I were to list every single neurodivergency I had, probably closer to 1 of 200-500.

Think on this. You are more rare than you think. Keep it to yourself. As a mental note.

Always remember: Even if you are 1 of 5,000,000, or 1 of 8,182,829,000, you always will be 1 of 1. There's only one of you.

(Disclaimer: This is not meant to be scientifically accurate to real-world numbers and official data, this is a personal estimation based on rough research and dive-deep research of aphants in the world.)

So I used to be a visual arts student- I love love the subject and im good at it too! I can sculpt, draw, sketch etc. But I have always struggled with translating pictures from just my head into my artwork. I NEED a refrence. It gets very frustrating too at times. I have ideas in my head - I can imagine what I want it to look like but I can't visualize it and I can't reflect it straight off my mind.

My imagination is also idk how to explain so I'll try my best. It's dark static if I try to picture something but I can project stuff? At the top of my head? 😭 its not very clear but for example an apple- i can imagine a red blob- its not a clear one- and move it around and all but i can't actually visualize it. I'm so sorry I don't even know if that makes sense.

If I read a book or stare out the window I like trying to imagine all of it but again its more like a projection? I can't think of a better work. Sometimes im not sure if im actually even projecting these things or if its just imagining them. (Not to be confused with visualising)

Also edit but idk if this helps but for example im really good with directions. But i can never picture directions- its more so remebering through familiarity?

Would love for some insight on this!

My husband has a strong mind's eye. I have absolutely zero - no flashes, no words, no nothing.

I'm not saying I have a great memory. Far from it since I can't visualise a scene or whatever. But I've noticed he might get something as big as the location of an event wrong, or who we were with. I remember, not because I SEE it in my mind, but because I remember the atmosphere, worries, thoughts, feelings from those moments.

On whether an incident actually took place or not:

There have been times where we argue about whether something actually happened, for example, him repositioning a picture frame the night before. He swears that he never did it. I cannot visualise it but I remember him doing it. I know for sure it is more likely that he forgot it happened than it is for me to totally make up (and believe!) something that didn't happen at all!

You know those scenes from The Queen’s Gambit where Beth imagines a chess board on her ceiling? …Is that real? Can people do that?
I thought that was purely for show, but after finding out that I’m a total aphant, I have been thinking about it..??

Would having no inner monologue + aphantasia make you immune to mind readers?