r/Aphantasia

do i have anauralia??? i am not sure if I can hear my inner voice?

it's just i cannot recreate a song i heard in past or someone's voice

no i can't hear my mom or dad sound

but I can recognise them and only what they say the words coming to my mind

but their voice??

wait people can really hear others voice in their mind??

i cannot hear my mom's voice

im hearing nothing

but like I said I need to mentally say myself what she says to think the speaking at all, i don't think that counts

do we really need to try to imagine famous someone's voice or should I say along with it?

because when I'm imagining there is nothing coming to my mind at all

i said hello

this is very confusing

am i supposed to hear an actual sound in my mind??

i can say hello

but i don't know if it's actually a sound in my mind or just words in silence

i cannot explain

how do you hear a sound in your mind??

it's confusing

i mean i can change the way i say hello

you know manipulating the way i say hello

ofc i can say hello imitating child, high pitch , low pitch , angry

but saying that way doesn't mean hearing that way too??

i feel like I'm not hearing anything but I can say that way

so I'm very much confused

or can I hear but I cannot say exactly I hear?

no i can only listen if i try to generate it

otherwise I cannot hear songs or anything anyone says

you can imagine others laugh????

i simply can't

i feel like I can talk

even I different tone

but not sure if I can hear them at all

idk if I can hear my thoughts either

anyways there is something i want to add

sometimes I get auditory hallucinations

you know how clear the voice is

it is exactly same as when i hear in real life

but in my mind

feels like listening to 4K voice

are we talking about that kinda sound in my mind?

i mean is it how people hear when they listen to someone else voice or sound?

is it how own inner voice heard!

im just going crazy thinking about this

I made a post a few days ago asking whether ADHD, especially poor working memory, could mimic aphantasia.

At that time I genuinely thought I had weak visualization.

Now, after reading papers, reading many comments, talking to people with aphantasia and ADHD, and spending the last two days basically experimenting on myself, I'm honestly not sure I understood what "visualization" even meant.

The biggest realization wasn't that I might have aphantasia.

It was that I might have been confusing knowing with seeing my whole life.

One thing that completely changed my thinking was learning that aphantasia is about voluntarily creating a mental image while fully awake.

Dreams, hypnagogia, hallucinations and involuntary flashes are different questions.

That made me realize I had been asking myself the wrong question.

I wasn't asking:

> "Can I voluntarily create and hold a mental image while fully awake?"

Instead I was asking:

> "Does anything briefly come to mind?"

Those are not the same thing.

I also read Adam Zeman's original paper on congenital aphantasia. If I remember correctly, about half of the participants reported involuntary flashes, yet they were still considered to have aphantasia because they lacked voluntary visual imagery.

That made me start testing myself.

---

Apple

If someone tells me:

> "Imagine an apple."

Something briefly comes to mind.

But I don't think I create it.

It feels like a faint flash that appears and disappears on its own.

I can't hold it.

I can't inspect it.

I can't deliberately recreate it.

If I focus on shape, I briefly get the typical apple shape.

If I focus on colour, I get redness.

If I focus on movement, I can think of a rotating apple, but I don't really see the apple before or after the movement.

I never have one complete stable apple sitting there.

---

Faces

Then I tried faces.

If someone asks me to imagine someone I know, their face briefly comes to mind.

But the moment I try to sustain it...

it's gone.

The weird thing is I don't think I actually see the contours of their face.

It's more like I know that person's face is there.

If I try imagining different facial expressions...

nothing.

Different poses...

nothing.

Same with the body.

I know it's their body.

I can't voluntarily see different postures or attitudes.

---

Clothes

This one surprised me.

If I think of my red T-shirt, I know exactly which T-shirt I'm thinking about.

But if I try imagining that exact same T-shirt in orange or purple...

nothing comes.

Try it with your favourite shirt.

Can you change its colour while keeping everything else identical?

I can't.

---

Reading

This completely changed everything.

I always thought I could imagine scenes while reading books.

Then I actually paid attention.

Imagine this sentence.

> You are standing in a quiet kitchen. Bright white sunlight streams through a window on your left onto a dark wooden table.

My experience isn't one whole scene.

It's:

standing...

gone.

kitchen...

gone.

sunlight...

gone.

window...

gone.

left...

gone.

table...

gone.

Each thing briefly comes to mind then immediately evaporates.

I can't hold them together.

I can't inspect them.

I don't see details.

I mostly know what they are because I've seen them before in real life.

If I stop reading and try creating the whole scene myself...

it immediately becomes an abstract concept.

I know exactly what's happening.

I can explain everything.

But I can't voluntarily experience it as one image.

The same thing happens with simpler stories.

"A boy under a tree eating an apple while a white dog sits beside him."

While reading...

boy...

gone.

tree...

gone.

apple...

gone.

dog...

gone.

When I finish reading I know exactly what happened.

But I can't combine them into one stable mental scene.

Trying to force it honestly gives me a headache.

---

Memories

Then I noticed memories.

I don't replay memories like movies.

They're more like PowerPoint presentations.

Sometimes one isolated frame briefly appears.

Then another.

But I don't continuously replay the event like watching a video.

It's more like I know what happened.

---

Drawing

Looking back...

I think this might explain something from childhood.

I always thought I was terrible at drawing because I simply lacked artistic skill.

My friends could draw things from imagination and include tiny details.

I never understood how.

If someone told me to draw a dog...

I knew a dog had:

head

body

four legs

tail

But I couldn't inspect a mental image to see:

what the ears looked like

how the fur lay

the proportions

the small details

I knew the concepts.

Not the visual details.

Eventually I just accepted I couldn't draw.

Looking back now...

it makes a lot more sense.

The same thing happened in anatomy.

Drawing anatomical structures from memory was incredibly difficult compared to understanding the concepts.

---

Other senses

Then I realized...

Maybe this isn't only visual.

I don't think I can voluntarily recreate sounds either.

If I think about my favourite song...

I don't hear the original singer.

I have to sing it in my own mental voice.

Taste...

blank.

Smell...

blank.

I know exactly what they are.

I just can't voluntarily recreate the experience.

I haven't explored touch enough yet.

---

Dreams

The weird part is...

My dreams are vivid.

Hypnagogia is vivid.

Lucid dreams are vivid.

Colours.

People.

Movement.

Entire conversations.

So my brain clearly can generate imagery.

Just not when I consciously try to.

That made me wonder whether the issue isn't generating imagery itself...

but voluntarily accessing it.

Originally I thought maybe this was just ADHD, poor working memory or executive dysfunction.

Now I'm genuinely not sure.

Maybe ADHD made it harder to notice.

Maybe they're separate.

Maybe they overlap.

I honestly don't know.

---

The biggest thing I discovered through all this wasn't a diagnosis.

It was realizing that I may have spent my whole life confusing concepts with mental imagery.

When I think of an apple...

maybe I don't actually see an apple.

Maybe I simply know what an apple is.

When I think of a beach...

maybe I'm not seeing waves, sand and rocks.

Maybe I'm just retrieving the concepts: waves... sand... rocks.

For years I thought that was what everyone meant by "imagining."

Now I'm not so sure.

So I'm genuinely curious...

Has anyone else gone through this exact realization?

Not just discovering aphantasia...

but realizing you may have misunderstood what visualization itself meant your entire life?

So recently I saw a TikTok post about how certain people can visualize a red apple perfectly and others can’t at all and I have a question. So I can picture the apple but at the same time can’t it’s hard to explain like I know there’s a red apple I’m imagining and I can kinda see it but at the same time when I close my eyes it’s just black and not literally like imagining a red apple. Best comparison I can give or atleast hope it is is reading a braille book like you know the words and can visualize them but at the same time don’t actually see it sorry if I’m vague just ask me any questions if I was confusing

Im not sure if I remember it wrong, but I think as a teenager I masturbated quite a bit also with imaginary scenes in my mind. (I also read a lot).
Then internet porn took over more and more - to a level I guess one can call addiction. Meanwhile I can’t really imagine scenes anymore, and since getting to know the concept of aphantasia wondering if I have it, definitely somewhere on the spectrum, can sometime get a vague glimpse, but not sure if I’m seeing smth or rather having the concept of an apple, a horse, my partner in my mind…

Question: I read porn addiction can alter your brain - so I’m wondering if it can lead to aphantasia? Any research/ experience with developing a.?
(To be clear I understand that most ppl have A. from birth and are not all porn addicts 😏)

Also curious about opposite development- anyone developed their visual imagination over time?

"The value of an experience isn't measured by how much emotion I can relive later. It's measured by whether it was worth living when it was real."

Experience may differ for every aphants, but, this is what resonates with me.

So after chatting with chatGPT for a while, which I know is bad because first of all its AI and that overdiagnose may and will happen. But it still open up a new perspective for me as an aphants.

I used to think that, travelling, dating, going to concerts, are a waste of time and resource, why? since i would not be able to remember and relive the moment then why bother doing it, why bother wasting money and time for something that I will forget later on, which I feel like make sense before, but then after talking with chatgpt, I guess i might have come to an idea that changes my perspective on my whole life.

It is still true that, i will have no feelings when reliving the moment I went to a concert and sing my heart out, it is also true that after travelling, i would forget 95% of the experience I have, and the money i feel like i 'wasted' to experience something that I will forget anyway.

But, seeing it from another perspective, I feel like life would be a waste if I dont try any of that, or if I dont build the excitement so that it makes a mark in my memory, there is always value in doing anything, be it for the present, or the future.

Live in the moment, that it creates a mark in your memories, so that it does not get carried away by time.

Hi, I’m doing research for a character in a book I’m writing, and I’m just wondering how complex a 2D shape you can imagine. Like, can you visualize an uncolored page in a coloring book, or can text itself be hard to imagine?

Edit: Thank you for the responses. I can see that aphantasia is perfect for the character I’m thinking of.

I'm sure we can have PTSD, like certain things that happen can remind you of what happened but like daydream/hallucinate and reenact in your mind what happened.

like y'all can make a freaking pictures in your head and you can dream. how nice is that . here iam can see shii . like iam writing bro . and i have this maladabtive dreaming. like iam writing a freaking light novel not a anime going on my head just word . i thought everyone see black screen with words. when u close eyes . gpt said like iam in 2%-3% . gng i wanna see something just by imagining 😭

I could compete for "worst skill at drawing human faces" against this sub, and may land somewhere in the podium.

Most people hear a dialogue inside their head. I'm looking at an incredibly slow talker right now. Is his internal dialogue as painfully slow as his external speech?

Before reading.. please be gentle i have wanted to post again here after years and i didnt do it because im scared from people being harsh.. know that it took me so much time to gather courage to ask for help...

Hey everyone. I’ve been a digital anime-style artist for over 15 years now. I used to be really proud of my work, managed to build a decent following on Instagram, and even took real commissions. But for the last three years, I’ve been stuck in a brutal burnout loop and complete artistic paralysis. I feel like an absolute alien in the art community, and I'm posting this because I desperately need to find out if there are other creatives out there who share my exact wiring or if I'm just fundamentally broken.

My main issue is that my mind's eye is nearly blank. I have hypophantasia. When I watch traditional art tutorials, every single one of them tells me I have to learn anatomy by drawing 3D construction boxes, memorizing muscle insertion rules, or mentally rotating geometric shapes in a void before I sketch. Every time I try to force my brain to do that, it completely lags out and gives me an intense headache. Because of my ADHD, my working memory is terrible, and trying to hold all those abstract, hidden rules stable in my head while looking back and forth between a separate reference screen and a blank canvas completely drains my dopamine. It triggers severe task paralysis, and I end up giving up before I even start.

My entire life i have been using procedural learning method without knowing until now. It has been my default way since i was a kid, from learning english by speaking with others rather than the usual educational way at school (grammar) to playing video games with high mechanical skills without investing much in theories. I have always been bad at anything with conceptual or abstract learning like physics and such which is why i loved art a lot and it was my only subject that id get A with effortlessly.
Except now... because i fell into a trap where i have been hearing lots of different opinions about learning art from youtubers or even here.. i became paralyzed with fear. I wanted now to only do the right thing.. the right path but when i tried for the first time to learn art in the way that i rarely do.. like studying it by understanding theories... no matter how much i tried i always failed.. didnt matter if i watched different way of teaching the theory i would always never understand it.

I stopped for the first time 3 years ago and i dont want to.. art is a big thing in my life.. without it i feel souless. I have been trying years to find answers by understanding myself more but its still difficult for me to start. Its sad that i became someone who would die to wake up in the morning to sit and draw im his tablet to someone who cant even bare to look at it now.

I hope i can get the help i need.. i feel like im getting closer but all i know is i need my own method of learning art to the way my brain is wired. I was told that in order to improve i need to learn theories and stop depending on my method of doing things.. sadly when i tried that i burntout and been in a state of confusion where i hated art so much

Does anyone else with low visualization or ADHD traits work this way? Can you actually reach a high professional level using external software scaffolds and visual-reactive tracking instead of abstract mental geometry? I just want to know if my method is a valid way to exist as an artist, because I would rather keep drawing until the day I die, but the isolation and the fear of doing it "wrong" is keeping me completely frozen. Thank you.

like me being terrible at holiday planning? Short-term stuff like a treasure hunt - any day. But planning holiday to me feels almost as hard as trying to see an image visually (a niche for a travel agency)

I've been wondering whether what I'm experiencing is actually aphantasia, or whether it's something that only looks like it because of ADHD.

I have combined ADHD with pretty significant executive dysfunction and working memory problems.

If someone tells me to imagine an apple, I know exactly what an apple looks like, but I don't experience a stable mental image. At most, I might briefly get one aspect of it for about a second.

If I focus on the shape, I can briefly get the typical apple shape.

If I focus on the color, I only get the redness.

If I focus on rotation, I can imagine it rotating, but I don't really see a stationary apple before or after the movement.

I can't hold the whole image together for more than a moment.

The same thing happens if I think about my bedroom. I don't see the whole room. I can only bring up individual parts, like the bed, then the door, then the window, but never the entire room at once.

The reason I'm unsure whether this is actually aphantasia is because my involuntary imagery seems completely different.

During dreams and especially hypnagogia (the transition into sleep), my visual experiences can become extremely vivid. I can see people, places, colors, moving scenes, conversations, and dream-like imagery without trying to create any of it.

That made me wonder whether my brain is capable of generating vivid imagery, but I struggle specifically with voluntarily creating and maintaining mental images.

So now I'm wondering if this could be more of an executive function or working memory issue than a true inability to visualize.

Has anyone with ADHD experienced something similar?

Do any of you feel like you can generate an image for a brief moment but can't maintain it, combine all the details into one stable picture, or voluntarily "hold" it in your mind?

I'm curious whether this resembles aphantasia, hypophantasia, or whether other people with ADHD have experienced something similar.

Edit: I also noticed this doesn't seem to be limited to visual imagery.

I don't think I can voluntarily recreate sounds, tastes, or smells very well either.

For example, if I try to imagine a song I've heard many times, I don't actually "hear" the original recording or the singer's voice in my mind. It mostly feels blank. The closest I can get is mentally singing or humming it myself, but that feels more like thinking the notes than actually hearing them.

It's similar with taste and smell. I know what foods or scents are like, but I can't consciously recreate the sensation of tasting or smelling them.

This makes me wonder whether the issue is broader than visual imagery, or whether this is something people with aphantasia commonly experience as well.

Hey all, first time posting here

TLDR; If you have both aphantasia and adhd what hobbies do you have that leave you satisfied/de-stressed?

I wanted to see where other people were at that have both aphantasia and adhd. I had a rough therapy session today and I'm wondering if me having that wombo combo is making it extremely difficult for me to enjoy life entirely.

I have the adhd where I don't hyperfocus on nearly anything unless it's a rare moment when I'm locked in. I used to like drawing while watching YouTube, it was a good mixture of hands moving and brain stimulated.

For a long long long time now I realized that I don't enjoy drawing like I used to. I can't create new ideas to draw/paint, I can just copy. I have decent technical skill but any hobby I have feels incomplete because I can only go part of the way there.

I love scrapbooking (or rather, I really want to) but it's super difficult for me because I can't imagine what I want on a page and throwing stuff together doesn't seem to help me get the ideas flowing.

I've tried to learn how to code but I seem to have trouble using what I learn to make new things (or apply code to a different situation) - still gonna try learning here and there though.

Overall, I feel like I have the desire to do a lot of these hobbies but it falls flat when I need to design/make up an idea, despite having enough technical skill to be proud in the result.

Does anyone else feel this way? Did they find alternative hobbies?

Last night I woke up at 3am with very bad period cramps and I took a strong codiene tablet because we had no other painkillers in the house. I completely didn’t think but I had been drinking in the evening watching the footie so the tablet completely wiped me out.

Well here comes the interesting bit.. I full on had a lucid dream where I could see stuff! In the dream, I was thinking about my aphantasia and then the blackness I usually see ripped open and I kept seeing beautiful things like the sky and a beach. Then the blackness was fighting back and it kept opening and closing but it was so beautiful!

It’s similar to when I’ve tripped before but I couldn’t have been tripping I was just asleep.

BTW do not try and recreate this my taking codeine with alcohol it was a mistake of mine and actually very dangerous!! I just wanted to tell you for context.

Do you think aphantasia makes it harder to be consistent? I can't imagine my future and this, kind of, decreases my satisfaction, fulfilment and goal orientation which in turn negatively affects my career.

So I've only gotten the chance to dabble a few times in this realm. For me and my fellow tripper the LSD was seemingly devoid. Very minor visual distortions. I'm sure these are a different type of visuals altogether. But I'm curious for those who have dabbled more how the experience was?

I know at heroic levels your eyes needn't be open for the experience, but as an aphant I'm curious what this is like. Again I'll assume it uses a different part of visualization at this level.

Also I wonder if my curiosity in this department is heightened by in fact being an aphant. Perhaps for those who haven't messed with these drugs can shed light on their curiosity if nothing else.

Well I know this is taboo, but excited to hear any responses on the matter. Hope this welcome.