Lali Fregoso

Hi, I think I was also around 16 when I found out about my aphantasia, and since then I have understood more about my thought process because of it. The most exciting discovery is finding the best words I can to describe how I think of "visual" things. In my experience if you ask me to think of something like a gas station, I would think of the essence of a gas station. It would feel like viewing all traditional gas stations from all vantage points created by my collective memory of gas stations. I say it "feels" like that because again, I can't actually see a gas station this way. Another interesting point was comparing my art to other creative friends I know, even analyzing art projects I've done in class. I realized I am a very character driven artist that focusses on the emotion expressed by the character rather than landscapes or interesting anatomy. Drawing characters from behind are very difficult because there is no face to be to attach to. This connection to emotion explains my memory problems too. I remember small events or things people said only if there is strong emotion tied to the event. Sometimes I remember very unnecessary and trivial things just because it made me laugh or made me think for a bit. Of course I am a very verbal person. I discovered that its almost impossible for me to process my emotions without talking my fiancé's ear off about whatever happened. This had caused me a lot of problem in regards of mental health. If I don't say what I'm thinking out loud, its hard for my brain to understand what it's feeling. If I forgot what I felt, I end up repeating stories just to process them again. I've tried journaling but due to my dyslexia and lack of visualization, my brain can't connect with the written words. Last thing I discovered is that my aphantasia may link to my obsession with stuff. By this I mean my room and desk is full of useless decorations and little random items I collected over the years. Being surrounded by things like this brings me lots of joy; I think part of that is because I am uncomfortable in blank spaces. I'm completely fine in a place like the doctor's office cause I can find other stimuli, but if my room has too many blank spots, I would go insane. After discovering I had aphantasia, I was really sad for a bit because I though I was missing out on a cool ability everyone else had. I was upset I couldn't read books the same as everyone else or meditate the same. Now being aware that this is how my brain works, it only fascinated me more. The human brain in amazing in how unique it can be yet still be functional. I hope my experiences give you a different perspective from someone who share this with you. Maybe you'll start finding little loopholes you brain created to deal with the lack of visualization like mine did.