Gemma Cooper

I have found others seem to have a reaction to me asking direct questions about their mental states or emotions, like you described. I think they expect me to know and start going through assumptions of why I don't or why I might be asking. But, it's the only option I've really got to know what is going on and how to help, and it's better for me than guessing since I'll probably guess wrong (especially since I tend to experience things differently from other people due to being autistic, so my guesses will be informed by what I know about a situation which mostly comes from my own experiences). At least if I ask directly I only have to explain my reasoning for doing so and not whatever incorrect guess I made. It seems to be better than trying to force or fake empathy, but still has some problems. It helps me to remember that if and when people make assumptions about my emotions or mental state (which they'd label and include as part of their empathy) they are often wrong, and I find it to be invasive and quite frustrating and stressful, so by asking (even when they react negatively) I have at least not made in inaccurate assumption that they may not be comfortable with. Sometimes people get angry, like they think I'm trying to argue with them or something. I found that when I was talking to another autistic person, when I asked directly about what was making him worry, he just answered the question and I just responded to what he said, then the problem was solved, so I know the process of asking directly works if the other person co-operates, but I'm not sure how to get people who relate to each other via empathy to understand that I need to work a different way.  I've also found people equate empathy to morality and kindness, and I can't understand how that works. I learned about 'psychopaths' lacking empathy and thought I was one, because I couldn't empathise or relate to others. If people define empathy by their sharing other people's emotions, and say this is what makes people do good things, then aren't they doing the good thing to share someone else's positive emotions, rather than because it's good? I don't have to be able to feel someone else's pain to believe they are hurt or not want to hurt them. I think there are different ways of processing and interacting with the world and other people, but the one that involves empathy seems to be the most common and therefore seen as the only way. Maybe one day we'll be more aware of the different ways of working and be able to accommodate them better.

If I can remember the words I can recite them, and I can have a vague sense of going up or down, faster or slower if I can remember how the song goes. But I can't hear it. There is no voice, I don't hear the words in my head. I don't hear pitch changes in my head, it's more like I've put a mental note on top of the lyric and I make my brain think both pieces of information together. My brain doesn't do this on it's own. Sometimes it can be easier to keep a song going in my head, but my brain doesn't do it automatically. Getting a song stuck in my head is more like having an intrusive thought of a few lyrics making me keep repeating them in my head.

I’ve been near constantly daydreaming my whole life, and I now have total multi-sensory aphantasia. My daydreams are me manually thinking the characters’ dialogue in my head. There are no images, no sound, no other senses.

I used to have some imagery as a child, I could use it to replay an entire TV episodes dialogue for long car journeys. My long term memory also used to be pretty good as a child, I could remember a lot about things I was interested in, and could remember things people said and where everyone was with specific details about the colours and patterns of things long after others forgot. My short term memory has always been terrible, a combination of my (at the time undiagnosed) ADHD and aphantasia (I could only use imagery sometimes and never for things like copying off the board or mental maths). I noticed my long term memory getting worse as a teenager, though no one believed me. It was basically gone by 16 after I finished my GCSEs. It’s been getting worse and worse ever since. I now have total multi-sensory aphantasia, which seemed to develop gradually over years as more trauma happened and my mental health got worse and worse. I’ve always been daydreaming, now it’s just through manual narration of dialogue without the visuals or other senses, though I’m also autistic and constant daydreaming is a common coping mechanism for us.

I have these experiences too. I’m autistic and have aphantasia. So my mind is silent, just an empty void, but everything outside of me is too much to cope with due to the sensory issues.

I have all of those. I also struggled with copying anything from the board at school, as I had to copy everything 1 or 2 letters at a time whilst repeating them to myself as I couldn’t visualise them or hold them in my memory. Makes spelling hard too, I can’t always tell if a word looks right, because I can’t visualise the right spelling. It took me so long I was kept back at break as punishment and made to keep writing. I had a lot of spatial issues too, I can’t visualise what things are supposed to look like or how I’m supposed to do movements correctly, so writing was difficult, very slow and caused me quite a lot of pain. I have a permanent deformity on one of my fingers from writing in school that I’ve had since I was a child. my mind is also empty, and processing, thinking or doing anything is very slow as I have to do it manually without any imagery to use as a guide. Makes learning hard, I can’t memorise things for exams anymore. I had IQ testing done as part of trying to get my auditory processing disorder diagnosed, and I think my memory issues supposed the doctors, though I haven’t got the results yet I’m pretty sure I did terribly as so many of the questions I couldn’t answer and just said ‘I don’t know’ because I couldn’t remember. They had to stop multiple tests early because I just couldn’t answer the questions.

I’ve got a lot of memory issues, which can partially be explained by my aphantasia, but also by trauma and other mental illnesses. I think they all combined to make the issues I have with remembering anything, any kind of co-ordination or navigation. I don’t have creativity and I’m terrible with faces. I’ve also been led into a room I’d spent hours in over weeks at least and not recognised it or had any idea where I was because I was led into the room from a different door that I hadn’t walked through before - even though I’d seen the room from that angle so many times I couldn’t recognise it because my recognition was tied to the routine of walking through one door each time I entered the room.I think that the variation might be due to co-morbidities, other neurodivergences that can allow or prevent us from developing a different way to do things without imagery. I also had some weak imagery as a child and now have total multi-sensory aphantasia, so maybe the acquired nature of it has an impact.

I’ve had similar experiences of losing imagery over time. I now have total multi-sensory aphantasia, my mind is empty unless I manually think something, then it is just that thought without any sensory component just words I say to myself silently. I also have a lot of issues with memory, concentration, relating to others. I haven’t found anything that brings imagery back, but I am almost constantly daydreaming everyday, my daydreams just don’t have any of the visuals or other sensory parts (which I didn’t notice as my aphantasia developed more). I used to have some weak imagery, and it took years for it to be gone so maybe that gave me time to adapt how I daydream. My daydreams are now all through the narration I manually think. I think everyone’s dialogue, have characters narrate other characters, jumping around in the timeline of the imaginary world and characters. It helps keep my anxiety from latching onto something in my environment, as I have to manually put something into the void (daydreaming or watching/listening to videos) or my brain tries to find something to fill it with (which just ends in spirals of worrying). I don’t know if any of that was helpful. Sorry I don’t know if aphantasia is reversible. I tried to ask a mental health practitioner once and they just told me they had no idea.

I have similar experiences: total multi-sensory aphantasia and no empathy. If something isn’t directly happening to me right now (unless I’m having a flashback) I can’t experience or simulate what it is like. I don’t feel others’ feelings. I wouldn’t say I’ve got an increased capacity to feel or be compassionate as a result. Mostly, the fact that I cannot experience what others are has made me aware of the limitations of empathy, how others’ lack of empathy for me isn’t pathologised because they’re neurotypical so their experiences are expected to be the norm shared by everyone, and how it can often be an inaccurate assumption of someone else’s experiences or mental state. I’ve found trying to develop or become more empathetic or compassionate hasn’t worked out, it just ends up with me still not experiencing the expected things and being unable to pretend. I’ve found being honest and direct, asking questions to find out other people’s experiences/emotions and what they need/want rather than assuming or trying to guess has worked out better.

I haven’t found that mindfulness caused my aphantasia, but I have found mindfulness to me impossible for me to do and triggering, in part due to my aphantasia. A lot of mindfulness says to simulate experiences, imagine places or feelings, or focus on something like breathing. I’ve found that I just can’t do any of the simulation, I have no imagery to work with, all I can do is think of the thing and nothing happens because I can’t make my senses experience things that aren’t actually happening to me right now. I also found the parts about ‘racing thoughts’ just didn’t apply due to my aphantasia, my brain doesn’t independently make thoughts. It’s just empty, I have to manually think everything or it’s just silent, and focussing on my breathing just took it off automatic and now I have to try to keep myself breathing. I used to have some wear imagery as a child, which I lost as I got older. Perhaps if your aphantasia developed desperately, mindfulness was what allowed you to recognise your aphantasia, if it didn’t cause it.

I personally haven’t found this to be the case. My aphantasia impacts the type of flashbacks I get, so I don’t have flashbacks that present how diagnostic criteria and tools measure, but I still have them, just with the physical pain and emotions instead of other senses. I have almost no access to all of the traumatic memories (most of my life) which I can partially attribute to my aphantasia, but that’s not a protective factor, it just means I have a lot of missing memories and cognitive issues, which makes therapies like EMDR inaccessible. Perhaps it would depend on a particular person’s co-morbidities, as my other neurodivergences make me more sensitive and more impacted by trauma, preventing me from being able to recover from anything even slightly traumatic.

I have ADHD (I was diagnosed with combined presentation if that’s relevant) and aphantasia. My brain doesn’t do the “my mind never shuts up” thing either, which I attribute to my aphantasia. I remember I used to have rare weak visual imagery and some auditory imagery as a child and now I have total multi-sensory aphantasia. My brain doesn’t independently make thoughts anymore. It used to, when I was in class sometimes my brain would go from one thing vaguely related to what the teacher said to something vaguely related to that and so on like my mind was a 3D spiderweb of information that my attention pinballed around. Now my brain is more like a dark empty space, there’s nothing in it unless I manually put it there. I have to manually think thoughts rather than having any automatically. My brain doesn’t go really fast like other people with ADHD sometimes describe. It takes me a long time to process anything and get thoughts together or do anything. I’m also autistic, which will probably also explain some of the differences.