Richard Stanton

Rant accepted. :) I made a choice to respond to your comment because I believe you may have fallen into yet another trap as I see a definite analog to my own life experience, minus the giant FU to my industry of choice and professional bridges. :) I can relate to the lack of visualization regarding seeing myself in different roles, or exploring new and unexplored capabilities. That said, after some long introspection I came to the realization that it  was not in fact the lack of visualization that was holding me back. In my particular case, and possibly yours, I had an inherent lack of any kind of confidence factor in myself or my own capabilities. Much of this stemmed from school systems that had no understanding of our way of thinking, and as a result I realize that I had slowly been bludgeoned into believing that I was simply "wrong" about many things and my understanding of them (don't get me started on reading analog hands of a clock in school). I was lucky, however, that I was an early starter and a pioneer in many ways within my own professional field and professional passion for computer sciences. I had early access to computers that most did not have, and I remember teaching my "teachers" in grade school how to use and teach early learning languages like Logo, and how to use the new technology being handed to them. Being aphantasic afforded me quite a lot of advantages over others in my field - because I do not rely on visual memory to work operationally I realized that, without knowing it, I was like a super computer myself, building each and every process in real time, every time, often with iterative improvement along the way. I could not understand why others would find themselves "stuck" when under operational stress; Knowing what I know now about myself and others, I can almost hear the flood of images crashing through their minds as their visual brains are flooded with so many causality scenarios that a sort of panic ensues. Being aphantasic, we are the epitome of "present". Yet while, like you, I felt on the top of the world as I could procedurally think circles around everyone around me, a seed of doubt always existed. An echo of a past of being always wrong.. and somehow internally accepting it.. in just about every other area in life. Discovering my aphantasia has unbound me in many ways, most importantly because I now know that I was not always wrong, simply because I had to come to the same conclusions via other means. I used to be scared of touching anything mechanical, basic things like changing the brakes on a car absolutely terrified me. Once I managed to subdue that lifetime of self doubt I started to realize how absolutely EASY so many things are, if I simply let myself be OK with my sometimes radically different way of understanding them. People argue that we congenital aphantasics have a disorder, or are fundamentally flawed. I used to somewhat subscribe to that line of thinking, but it never quite sat well with me. It did not feel right. One could argue that we are fundamentally flawed  because we lack something that others have, and could explain away any advantages in the name of necessary strengthening of other capabilities to compensate for our "disability". Logical, but as someone living it, I have to still disagree. We are talking about a fundamental concept here, veiled by a very simplistic description of "the inability to form mental images that are not present". While that is a biproduct, it is an oversimplification to say the least. We once theorized that humans in fact think in pictures, and this general thought seemed to make sense. I would say that the general acceptance of such a specific statement to be true in part proves how fundamental pictures are to a normal persons thought process. Visualization is at the core of most people's cognitive process, more so than I think anyone realizes. I theorize that the visual memory for normal people acts as a sort of "index", or reference structure to that enormous database that is in our heads. We have the database too, and probably a heck of a lot more meta data than most on just about everything. So, what happens when you take away the pictures and you remove the index? It sure sounds like we should simply fall over in a slump with a nice trail of drool emitting from our gaping mouths. But we do not. Some say we compensate for the lack of visual memory by piping some of that fundamental data through other areas of our brain to compensate. While I might hesitate at the word "compensate", there may be some truth to this. For instance after some detailed thought, I came to realize that my imprint of many things, say letters or iconography, obviously is not visual, but in fact based on the motion used to make them. Accepting this allowed me to also accept similar methods to my personal 'learning tools' arsenal. And while I have learned quite a lot about myself and the condition through reading others' stories and being brutally and honestly introspective, I still struggle with trying to define, or explain in words the fundamentally different way that my brain works, or describe in detail the torrent of real-time processing I am doing at all times for all that I do, because it's simply how I think. This is a mind shattering concept, and one of the reasons that I do not necessarily equate congenital aphantasia with that brought upon someone by circumstance or trauma, though there are obvious similarities. Knowing what I know now about my own thought process and the bits and pieces I am able to explain, it is as alien to a visual thinker as the concept of being able to picture something in my head is to me. My apologies for the novella, however, I felt that some basic understanding of my own journey might help explain my challenge to you. I challenge your assumption that you are not playing with a full deck. I challenge that your relation of visual thought to seeing yourself in a new career might actually simply be fear, and self doubt. It's hard to be honest with ourselves sometimes because fear is often perceived as weakness... yet it exists in all beings. I let it guide me in many aspects of my life as I managed to delude myself about my own capabilities even as far as to think of myself as a "fraud" when I would find success outside of my niche (photography being a very prime example for me).. because I didn't do it like others. Think hard, because like you I was great at what I did, and I still am; but coming to the realization that I am more than that, and accepting my unfounded fear face to face has afforded me a freedom I never knew before. These are all of course simply my own experiences, and while I feel an analog to your story, it may not be so - however challenging ones' assumptions I have found to be a worthy exercise that often results in a greater understanding, one way or another. :)

Yes, very much so. I find more often than not, however, that I simply do not remember my dreams. When I do, however, the best explanation for my personal experience that I have been able to find the words for, is that for me, dreaming is almost like reading a campfire story, to myself. Absolutely no visuals, but a story is played out nonetheless. If that makes sense? :)

As someone who more recently discovered that I have aphantasia, I find that I have trouble answering this question. For me, while I do not normally remember my dreams, I do from time to time dream. I know this because I will sometimes remember the contents of the dream.. but now that I try to describe it, pictures of any sort do not enter the mix. The best way that I can describe how I dream is if I were to be reading a book wherein I myself am one of the characters, or as if I were somehow telling myself a story that I consciously did not write. Interestingly enough, though, these "dreams" can illicit emotional responses, but just like a good book that is artfully crafted can make me feel deeply as well. That is to say the words move me, but not a memory associated to those words. I notice that as I have gotten older I remember more and more of my dreams.. and I think that is partly due to the fact that I do not sleep as deeply as I once did, and as such those self narrated stories that do play out in my head are a few layers more shallow than they once were, and that much closer to the surface for my conscious mind to percieve.