How did you first discover you were aphantasic?

A few months back (I'm 59 yo) my adult daughter explained to me that she has synesthesia. She said that she tried to tell me years ago that when she looks at people, she sees their colors, and sometimes a shape to go with it, and that I dismissed it as nonsense. So when she told me this, I told her that I can't picture things in my mind. She gave it a name -- aphantasia -- and blew my mind. I always thought I just had a horrible memory for certain things. It is reassuring to put a name to the cause.

I found out I had Aphantasia some years ago, from an article in Scientific American, though I don't remember when I've read it. As an architect it can be quite debilitating sometimes. I lack a “mind’s eye” but I dream and I do it sometimes in colour, I can do math in my head and I can solve geometry in my head. My father is hyperphantastic, and my mom seems to be aphantastic like I am.

I found out I had Aphantasia when I saw someone talking about it on tiktok. I was shocked! I didn't know people could actually "see" images when they closed their eyes. I am 57 years old and just now finding out that I am the different one. I am the one that only sees blackness when I close my eyes. I am devastated. I was ok when I didn't know that I had no mind's eye, but now that I know I am trying to wrap my head around it. I wish there was a therapy or something to help develop your mind's eye. My parents are both deceased so I can't ask them, but my sister does not have Aphantasia and she thinks I am crazy because she doesn't understand why I can't see anything when I close my eyes. She says she can actually picture my great grandmother's kitchen and still conjur up the feeling sitting on her lap. She can see my late Father's face, hear his voice and laughter. I am so jealous, I have nothing just black silence.

I discovered it like so many here, after stumbling across the term online. I’ve found it impossible to actually visualize something since high school, when a coach encouraged visualization for performance improvement. “Visualize yourself peeling an orange” and I absolutely felt so frustrated, why would we be asked to do something that’s not possible? No wonder I never got better at free throws, I couldn’t visualize that either 😝 I’ve spent a lot of time practicing meditation throughout my life and I’ve found it to be such a struggle all the times I’m told to visualize things. So it’s a huge relief to understand that this is, in fact, a real phenomena and I understand now why nobody seemed to understand my frustration. I particularly believe it more, given the scientific evidence. Seeing mri’s to validate helps me feel confident, but honestly I’d love a true diagnosis so it doesn’t seem weird when I tell friends and family I think I have this.

I discovered the term ‘aphantasia’ last week on a watercolour Facebook page. There was a discussion on using reference photos versus using your imagination to create the image on the page. There was a comment from a lady who explained that she can’t use her imagination to create an image for a proposed artwork as she has a condition called aphantasia where she can’t see images in her mind. After some internet searches, I now know that I have aphantasia and SDAM. I am 59 years old and have always claimed that I do not have visual memories that I assumed was due to my childhood trauma and I’ve been working with various therapists over the past ten years to try to come to terms with my trauma with the sole purpose of being able to regain my visual memories - I had assumed that if I got to the point where I could cope with the bad memories then I might also regain the good ones. It was quite a blow to the heart to think that this will probably never happen.

In BBC 4. It transpires that my son and goid friend also have the same condition. I wonder how many other people are unaware that this has a name and that we’re not alone.

I was in the Mensa subreddit on Reddit, a week and a half ago, when I saw a poll asking Mensa members to confide whether they were aphantasic or not. I had no idea what the word meant. Someone in the comment section of the post told people that if they could picture a purple elephant on a tightrope they weren’t aphantasic. I woke up my sleeping husband next to me and asked him if he could picture such an elephant. He drowsily said, “yes,” and went back to sleep. I thought he was delirious with sleep… Finding out a few hours later, when my husband of 42 years was actually awake, that he — and in fact most of the world (according to some internet research) — can absolutely visualize a purple elephant on a tightrope at will BLEW MY MIND! I couldn’t sleep the entire night after learning about this. EVERYONE doesn’t see complete blackness in their mind’s eye?!?! What alternate universe is this that I’ve stumbled into at 60 years of age?

I knew something was wrong with me when I could not "do" guided meditations. And then once I was in an auditorium of people. Our instructions were to picture and build a "safe place." With our eyes shut. I couldn't get started. I opened my eyes and saw all these people, happy faces, building away, moving their arms to pat things into shape. I just sat down on the floor, sad. Sad. Something wrong with me. Years later I was on Facebook and this "quiz" scrolled by. "Can you see pictures in your mind?" I lunged at the quiz. And found out what was "wrong" with me. Something called aphantasia. I was devastated. I still feel a sense of loss. I had intended to attend the big meeting in England a few years ago but wasn't able. I had questions. And concerns. Turns out, my adult child is also aphantasic. They don't seem to mind. I am able to hear music in my head and for that I am deeply grateful. I just cannot imagine (!) that others can "see" in their mind's eye. Wow.

Last week, by chance, I listened to a program on the radio about aphantasia. To my enormous surprise I thought ‘this is me - this explains a lot’. I have always known that I think differently to most people. I took the test to confirm it and asked my wife what she saw when she imagined a horse. She could describe it in detail. I can not get over, that at the age of 75, I had no idea that people could actually imagine pictures. I have passed the information on to my son and daughter. My daughter is the same as me and my son slightly less so. The interesting thing is that all three of us have, or had in my case, very good jobs that rely on processing factual information, creativity and solving problems. It seems probable that our careers are successful due to this condition, so I see it as a great benefit. One thing that puzzles me at the moment is, as I cant imagine a face, how am I able to pass comments such as ‘He is looking older’. Could it be that the information is in my brain and available to use, but I can’t see it, only the result.

Two days ago, I listened to The Curious case of Rutherford and Fry on BBC Radio 4 about Aphantasia and had a dawning at 59 years of age that "that is me". It explains so much in my life but I never realised that the majority of the population see in vivid glorious technicolour images but believed everything was a figure of speech and they all see in black outer space like me!!It has been a revelation. I often said to people "I know I think differently to other people" trying to explain me but now I know why. I am quite creative in photography, painting etc but also very logic and mathematically orientated and it explains why family, friends and a specific ex would be frustrated at my descriptions of directions or where something was. I've checked with two of my three adult children and they do not have the condition to their amazement and my relief and they wondered how like many people on here I hadn't realised at my age.I'm looking forward to furthering my knowledge on the subject, finding and speaking to someone else who has it. After the initial dawning, a little sadness that I have missed out, the euphoria of an explanation of why I have always seen things rather differently there is relief and now I am part of a rather special minority.

I was in therapy for PTSD, and I was totally frustrated by my inability to find a safe place in my mind. I tried everything I could think of. I carried pictures that looked a little like a bluebell wood I loved as a child, but it was never the right one, I knew it wasn't right and that I would know it when I saw the right picture I wanted but couldn't explain what was missing.  Also, with my eyes shut the picture disappeared no matter how long I looked at it. In the end, my therapist and I decided to use an alternative way for me to calm down and feel safer. Going back for a 'top-up', I knew I'd have a different therapist and only a few sessions so I didn't want to spend two of them searching again for a place I could visualise - I went googling and finally found the name. But I do dream in pictures, and in colour. And sometimes I can visualise things in my mind but it is as if they run away across my eyes - there for a nanosecond then gone and out of my conscious control. So does this mean I am partly aphantasic?

What a great question, and an amazing number of responses. I identified it when I was around 20 during one of those visualization relaxation activities. Like so many other people on this forum, I found it UN-relaxing and when I mentioned this to my fellow-participants (I recall we were all training to become residence advisers at my college), they were baffled, and I was baffled by their bafflement.  Since then I have had many of the other experiences outlined by forum participants here to confirm that this is true, and then I read something Oliver Sacks wrote and felt validated because there have always been people who just did not believe this was even possible (my wife for example is still dubious).

I first discovered that I "had" aphantasia when talking with my gf--who has the opposite problem. She sees images so vividly that the images interrupt her train of thought, and thus her speech.  Sometimes she has difficulty finishing a sentence because of images evoked from some related thought.  She and her sons have very strong visual MEMORY, too.  They can look at text, graphics, or even files, and describe days later what they saw. It finally "snapped" for me that others really DO see images, whereas I see NOTHING, just blue-black when I close my eyes.  Like others, I'd assumed that when people say "imagine" or "visualize", they were using a figure of speech.  There have been a very few exceptions when I dream.  Maybe 5 times in my life I've had dreams where, for a very brief few seconds I do see a complete, color, detailed image.  Then it disappears, never to reappear. All through school I had trouble with long descriptive passages (think Dickens) because they essentially meant nothing to me.  To grasp a fiction  work I'd tend to reduce it to it's elements--essentially an outline. I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to drawing or painting in part because I have no visual reference. Retired now, I was once an engineer, engineering manager, and later executive.  I was excellent in math--but, unlike some other engineers, or talented scientists, could not visualize formulas or their physical consequences.  I'd have to reduce, in my mind, all engineering concepts to logic--which is manipulated by me using internal language.  This constant referral to logic caused some to refer to me as "Spock", at least partly because I'd default to logic to solve problems, whereas others might default to experience or  emotions.  I also use logic (as mentioned above) as a crutch for poor memory.  Logic can be used to "compress" knowledge so one doesn't need to remember as many facts One possible benefit of the inability to "see" mental images is less distraction, which can be helpful in certain situations. Those who DO have good visual images (phantasia?) can use the images to code memory (as in impressive magic tricks) by remembering a visual image of a room, with everything in it, and using the names of those objects in sequence to tell a story--thus remembering the story.  If the encoded items also correspond to numbers, the magician could remember thousands of digits easily.  I once tried this, but wasn't able to use the technique, because I didn't have the visual memory (but didn't realize that others do).

Dear Thomas: My name is George Frank Carrillo. I am 76 year old. I am a retired Technical Professor. During my professional career I worked for diverse companies as IBM, RCA, UNIVAC, Mead Johnson, etc. and for several other, including private and government entities. I had earned diverse professional degrees in Electronics Engineering, Information Systems Security, MBA, etc. Recently, I discovered that I have developed a certain degree of Aphantasia, even if my mind is as clear and powerful as ever. I can not create images in my minds eye. I was very surprised to find out this, because during my long life, I was always able to visualize vividly any type of complex designs, diagrams, mechanisms, and technical devices, to the degree of seeing them actually dynamically working and be able to modify them in my mind. I am very interested and passionate about learning about Aphantasia. I have subscribed to staging-aphantasia-staging.kinsta.cloud, purchased several books, and doing dedicated research. I would be very grateful if you can give me your advise to help me in my interesting quest of study about Aphantasia. Best regards, George Frank Anaheim, CA, USA carrillogeorgefrank@ gmail.com

My mother once said to my astonished father, "You know, dear, when I am not with you I can't picture what you look like".  I knew I had the same problem - I recognized people when I had seen them regularly and had got to know them, but if I met somebody new and then saw them even a few days later I would not know who they were. They might seem a bit familiar, but it was not possible to place them. This caused a lot of embarrassment - people accused me of ignoring them in the street, and I dreaded situations where I had to introduce people as I couldn't put names to their faces. I was in Oxford Street once and met a man who instantly recognized me. His face seemed vaguely familiar but I couldn't place him despite some tactful (I hope) questioning. It gradually became obvious to him that I hadn't a clue who he was, and he looked absolutely disgusted as he said, "I am your husband's cousin and my wife and I spent a whole day in your house last month" - he walked off in a huff and never spoke to me again. I very reluctantly decided to give up my dream job as an artist's manager because in my work I needed to recognize people whom I may only have seen once or twice before, and it was just not fair to my singers if I missed a vital opportunity to home in on someone who could further their careers. I didn't tell anyone the real reason I was leaving as I was so embarrassed by what I thought was a failing on my part. I am so relieved to discover that this is a real condition and not something lacking in myself. I only wish my mother could have known as well.

When I was on a board gaming weekend with some dear friends, myself and another women were sharing about how we just didn't 'get' why people were so into D&D.  "I mean it's ok, but people are just so into it and they can go on and on about what happened to the elf during the battle.  Everyone seems to enjoy the storytelling so much more than me."  She asked me if I saw it... did I see the story happen when people talked about it.  She is aphantasic and that's when I discovered that I am too.  We share a lot of other great brain quirks too, like the ability to rehearse kinesthetic tasks in our brains and actually get better at doing the thing with our bodies from that mental exercise.  Crazy!

I just found out about my lack of a mind's eye in January 2022 through a posting on Cheezburger.com. The poster included the usual infographic with six panels from totally black to pretty clear image. When I shared my discovery with a friend, she exclaimed,  "But you're so verbal!" That's when I understood that I think in captions when most of the world sees the pictures. I've been using a sleep app for over a year, and did not realize I was being kept awake narrating what the app told me to visualize. I fall asleep much faster with music or audio books.

I read about  Ex-Pixar chief Ed Catmull and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

About 10 years ago my husband and I were out for a drive when he mentioned how many kangaroo were in the far corner of a paddock we were passing. I told him to watch the road instead of counting kangaroo and he said he was watching the road - he'd just glanced at them and then counted them in his head. ??? When questioned he confided that ever since he was a child he had this strange ability to glance at something and then conjure the picture back up to look at it in greater detail. WOW I thought, imagine being able to do THAT!   But when bragging to other people about this 'super power', we quickly discovered that almost everyone could do it - except me.  When I looked away from what I was seeing, it was gone for good, never to be seen again.   I recalled those crime shows on the tv where they get people to mentally recall an incident and pick up on extra things they may have seen, smells, noises etc. How did they do that? Pain management and relaxation classes never made sense - how does thinking about a beach relax you? I could only think of the components - sand, shell, waves, just words.  I have always been hopeless at visualising how things work or fit together - making a precut box from its flat shape, putting together sewing patterns etc, which provided my family with endless hours of amusement.  My camera has always been my constant companion and records things I want to remember. My filing system - in albums and hard drives allows me to find any specific photo within minutes. My husband spotted an article around 2015 about aphantasia and got really excited.  "Listen to this" he said, "this is you", and it was!  It doesn't really make any difference, I am nearly 70. However, now I understand why I cannot recall the faces of those I love, why I cannot recall actual events that were so special to me, why people get exasperated with me when I can't describe someone or something. I am not stupid, or forgetful - I just have aphantasia.

I just turned 40 a few days ago, an only found out recently that my mind is blind. My daughter wanted to play a game where I laid down, with my head in her lap, she asked me to visualize 3 doors that were blue,red and yellow. I always thought the phrase, picture this in your head, was a metaphor.. so I just pretended their was 3 doors, she told me to go in one of the doors, and asked me which color door I went in. I was like, uh you want me to just pick a color? She said, no.. what color was it? I didn't understand so just said yellow.. she then asked me to describe what I see inside the room I went into... I was like, what do you mean?? Just start making stuff up? She gets frustrated and says MOM, what do you see?? I said.. I see black! We quit the game.. I didn't think anything of it, I was just confused about what she wanted me to do, and forgot all about it.. until I seen an article on fb. I had no idea people seen actual images in their head. I  asked my daughter yesterday,  if I tell her to picture a white fluffy cat in her head, does she actually see a picture of it? She said yea, you don't? So then I asked my son.. he said he can play out movies in his head, like he is watching an actual movie!! My friend said he can picture the red ball as if it's right in front of him!  I thought everyone seen black when they close their eyes.. and I can't grasp the fact they see images, but it seems they can't grasp the fact I don't.