r/Aphantasia

So does this technically mean that I can’t see closed visuals when tripping on shrooms?

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to gain more insight on aphantasia and infidelity.

Few months ago I discovered my partner cheated on me and found his texts and dating apps he has used.

We choose to reconcile and there is a lot of talks about getting to the root of his infidelity, our childhood traumas and our relationship issues.

But, one of the biggest hurdles of getting clarity is his aphantasia. He said he doesn't know or simply cannot remember specific things and I mostly can empathise with that.

What's frustrating for me is not feeling certain about whether he's genuinely tried enough or just gave up digging deeper in his memories to get me the clarity I need about his harmful decisions.

Sorry if I'm being too vague about this, everything still hurts but I'm trying my best to move forward with empathy for myself and his condition.

• thank you to everyone that has clarified that this is not related to aphantasia. At least I know now what it's not and I can keep going from here.

I'm learning to be an artist, and I have aphantasia. My father is a professional artist with vivid visualization. He has told me several times since learning about my aphantasia that I should channel my unique (aphantasic) perspective into my art. I'm... not sure what that means.

Do you have any thoughts as to what that would entail, and how I could try that out? To a real extent, I just want to make neat art, but maybe it'd be interesting to follow his suggestion as an exercise.

The closest I've gotten to this was, after learning I had aphantasia and that others could see pictures of my memory, draw a picture of my grandmother's front porch entirely from memory. I hadn't (at the time) seen the porch in the fifteen years since her passing. A few weeks ago I saw a photo of it and could compare and I got pretty close.

So any ideas on what I could do?

If Haley Joel Osment were an aphant, The Sixth Sense would have been a very short movie.

I learned about aphantasia on my 64th birthday less than 2 months ago when me and 2 of my kids were incessantly quizzing my oldest son about the images he can "see" in his head. That's when I learned that 2 or my kids and I have aphantasia. Now, I ask nearly everyone about their mental imagery abilities. I've not come across another aphant outside of my family yet.

But my good friend posed a question to me that stopped me in my tracks. He asked, "Are you prepared for the fact that by asking people about this that you may unwittingly traumatize the individual who learns for the first time that most of the world can visualize thoughts and memories but they can't?"

Breaking the news to people that they are mind blind could be quite traumatizing. Are we adequately prepared to dump this life changing news on people?

It took me about a month to come to terms with it. I still relapse into self pity here and there. Ultimately I came to be grateful that some people (most people) have visual thoughts. It's like I'm grateful that some people are star athletes, singers, artists, physicians, pastors, etc. We are all different and unique. I also came to realize that people born with actual handicaps, blindness, deafness, etc., still have full and meaningful lives. So I cant let my mind blindness rule or ruin my life.

But back to my main topic....we need to be careful about dumping this revelation onto a poor unsuspecting undiagnosed aphant... It could be traumatic for them.

Thoughts?

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I am 45 and, like most people here, lived my whole life thinking everyone imagines the way I do.

A friend of mine was telling me a story. To explain the story, he briefly mentioned:

Friend: (...) I have this thing called aphantasia and

Me: Really? What is that?

Friend: It is a sort of condition in which I can't picture things in my mind.

Me: What do you mean?

Friend: Like, when I tell you to imagine an apple, you can see the apple in your mind. I can't.

Me: Oh no. When we imagine an apple, we don't picture it clearly. We have the idea of an apple. (We = normal people)

Friend: I know, you have the idea, but you can also visualize it. Like the color, a little leaf...

Me: Oh no, don't worry. No one can do that. When we say we can visualize it, it is a way of saying we have the concept of an apple. And we can imagine it. But it's not like we can see it as if it were an image...

Friend: (laughs) Sorry to say, I think you have it too...

As usual, the first thing I did was to ask everyone whether they could see an apple.

Hi guys. I know I'm aphantasian for a long time. It made my world shake but now I'm fine with it. The thing is, there are sometimes that I can see things with my eyes closed. I remember 4 times specifically:

• When my uncle died, we didn't have money to do their dead makeup (I don't know how it's said in English), so I had to do it myself. It wasn't something dark in the moment, but I saw his face, grey and violet, and touched his skin to apply the makeup. I made jokes to him, like "sorry I didn't bring mascara but I will make you beautiful you queen". It was a mixed feeling of heartwarm and maybe fear? I don't know. But that night I couldn't sleep, everytime I closed my eyes I saw his dead face.

• In a meditation I felt a strong ghost that lives in my parents house. With my eyes closed I saw her face, pretty scary.

• in a party, one time, I took ketamine. When I closed my eyes I could see my friends in a caledoycope way.

• I tried changa (smokable Ayahuasca) and when I closed my eyes I had the most mind blowing trip ever in my life. I traveled through time and space until there was no more time, I felt like I literally died and I was everything and everything was me. I saw some giants moving like gears that make the universe. It was the most crazy thing that ever happened to me. I saw everything with my eyes closed. I traveled thru the universe for what felt like thousands of year. In real time it only lasted 15 min lol.

So, these are the only moments in my life that I could see with my eyes closed. This makes me think that, maybe, I have the ability to do it, but is blocked someway. Idk.

What do you guys think?

Aphant (and artist) here I noticed a lot of people are on two ends on the spectrum. Some people think aphants have it better because they think faster and don’t have to see things they don’t want to. Some people think aphants have it worse because they’re not able to see things like their loved ones, what they want to draw, or their future life, and would even go as far as calling it a disability.

My perspective is that having aphantasia doesn’t make you better or worse off. It’s just a different way of thinking as the norm. There are a lot of things I like about having aphantasia. I like that I can’t have an idea of what my drawings will look like until I draw them because that makes them more special. I like that I don’t keep myself up by visualising uncomfortable things, because I know I definitely would if I wasn’t an aphant. Sometimes I wanna know what visualisation feels like. I wish I can see my old friends. But I’ve come to terms with the fact I can’t. I don’t think this makes us better than visualisers though! I think there are a lot of pros with that like being able to watch movies in your head!!

In conclusion, you don’t have to make yourself feel better by saying you’re gifted, but you don’t have to make yourself feel worse by saying you’re less than. You’re just different

All my life I have struggled with playing pretend. I eventually developed an intense aversion to it. In hindsight, I think I was struggling with the feeling of being dishonest. Like sure, I can "pretend" to be a cat, but I'm not a cat, I'm a human crouching down on my hands and knees and saying "meow" with my human voice. It might be socially acceptable to do this in certain contexts, but it's really freaking awkward for me.

This wasn't a big deal until I had kids. My daughter, now 7, LOVES to pretend. There have been several years when she wanted to play pretend every second she was conscious. Literally. She would start every sentence with, "Mom, pretend like..." I did learn to be more assertive about my boundaries and would say no if something bothered me too much. For instance, she has always loved to play veterinarian with her stuffies. I have a fair amount of medical knowledge, and I know a lot about anatomy, physiology, and biology, so I could certainly come up with ailments for her stuffies to present with. I could suggest appropriate treatments. I taught her how to properly splint and bandage injuries, etc. But then sometimes she'd want me to pretend like an animal needed a bunch of shots and it hurt. Or like they were really scared of the vet and didn't want to be there. Or like they'd been captured and held captive by a bad person. I just straight up couldn't do those. I can't pretend to be a vet that's mean or uncaring because *I*, my actual self, couldn't do those things to an animal and I can't imagine myself as not myself. I can't pretend to be a poacher unless I'm bad at it and get eaten by the first lion I come upon.

The absolute worst scenarios were ones where my kid pretended to be the patient instead of using a stuffy. Y'all, I *cannot* act like my kid is a scared, injured animal because THAT'S MY HUMAN CHILD. One time she wanted me to pretend she was an animal stranded on an island that was flooding. I actually cried that time, and I refused to play along.

I've done my best to explain that I can only ever see what's actually present. I might be able to roleplay a vet from time to time, but that vet is just me in scrubs. I can't picture my kid being a scared animal because all I see is my child looking scared.

We did eventually develop accomodations for me, and I made my peace with being lame and no fun sometimes. Nowadays, we have a friend who babysits once or twice a week who will pretend absolutely anything with gusto for HOURS. She does voices and everything. It's amazing. However, I usually can't stand to be in the same room. If I hear the dialogue of a scary scenario, my brain just hears my daughter being scared. If my friend is pretending to be some silly mystical creature with an embarrassing condition, I feel secondhand embarrassment for my friend. Thankfully, my friend knows how my brain works and takes my kid outside to play or they go play at her house. Thank goodness for cool neurodivergent friends.

My daughter is also in school now and gets to play with her friends five days a week. Thank goodness schools exist.

But y'all, is this just me or do you also find pretending awkward and uncomfortable? Can you embrace a fictional setting or are you trapped on Earth?

***** WOW, what a response! I have hit the quota of participants so will be pausing this*******

Hello, my name is Helen Corrigan and I am studying for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology in the School of Sciences, Humanities & Law at Teesside University.

As part of my course, I am undertaking a research project, and I would like to invite you to take part.

https://app.onlinesurveys.jisc.ac.uk/s/teesside/aphantasia-therapy-vviq2

Thank you

*approved by u/Pedantichrist.

I am getting better at it, and I've had an interest in chess ever since I was a little kid and I first played it on Chess Titans, somewhat decent at it by the time I was ten, then I rediscovered an interest in it last year's January. It helps that I can play against computer bots that do not care at all what time it is, how often I play, or what else is going on, but it still leads to problems. Especially if any takeback system ceases to work at stalemates. This is already a difficult game to master, websites don't need to make it arbitrarily harder.

The best way I can explain to people how my thoughts work are “feeling” and just paying attention to details.

Many times I can recall pretty specific details of something. People will tend to find it odd.

Or recalling directions to get somewhere. I’m not literally seeing it in my head but rather just remembering the turns, stores, landmarks, etc.

How do you explain it to people?

I genuinely thought everyone saw blackness when thinking of images and that we just thought that we know what it is but don't see it happening 😭 [no wonder i can't visualize my art]

Hi Aphantasia Community! hoping the creatives/artist in here can explain their process when making art- especially w/ anatomy & non-digital mediums. ( tho all is welcomed! ) That or share some resources/videos that you feel explain it best since I know this is likely a frequent topic.

I don't have Aphantasia( or atleast I don't think ) but I struggle w/ a cocktail of disorders that replicate it. Want to better accept my situation by understanding your POV and relying on my brain differently for Art.

Also any tips are greatly appreciated aswell, will try to add my own below when I feel like one could be helpful/relevent.

hi guys, last month I was talking with my friend and he told me that he has aphantasia, and I found out that I also have... 23 years old... now everything makes sense but to be honest I keep trying to imagine a red apple in my mind but its just everything black, nothing. I don't know exactly the reason why I keep trying, it's frustrating!!! any tips to deal with this better?

a newbie in the group ;)