Sarah D

I actually grew up just like this. I'm diagnosed schizoaffective. The interrogation room idea is something I'm highly familiar with. I am not, personally, aware of a word that relates the two. Since aphantasia and hyperphantasia are not technically considered disorders or impairments, I feel that they are not considered as factors to conditions that are. 

My experience with not being able to visualize things mentally has affected me since the beginning of my life. I learned how to read when I was two or three. I would have to read things over and over again to really understand what it was saying. Fiction was very hard for me, so when I was 3 I read the dictionary instead. I started kindergarten when I was 4 and excelled in most things past the 3rd grade level. No one noticed that I wasn't learning unless I wrote it down and then had lengthy conversations about what ever subject the focus was on. I've always been chatty, but I have to hear something and make connections with it in order to understand it. I am 41 years old and I still need to write my name on paper before I can spell it out loud. For me, I would meet someone, be told their name, I would look at their face and notice how their lips moved when they formed words, but when I turned around, that person disappeared. There were several people I met for the first time, quite a few times. I thought everyone was like that. I identified as forgettable and insignificant. It didn't help that I moved often, sometimes multiple times a year. New living arrangements, always the new kid at school, always the weird kid. So, I didn't grow up anywhere and I didn't have long term friendships. When I ran into people later, and they remembered me and could recall all of these specific things about me and events we were in together, I had a full blown panic attack. 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU REMEMBER ME?!' > If they remember me, that means I made an impact on them. If I made an impact/lasting impression, I made it on accident and have no idea what kind of impression I left. I remember that they exist, but I don't remember what we did. I realized that they knew things about me that I didn't. I also hadent held on to any information as to what they may have done with me. I can't remember what anyone looks like or any of the places I lived. I didn't know my hands were attached to my body until I was 18. I did not associate the image in the mirror with being me. I technically knew it was me, but I have no real sense of me. I can't imagine me. I can't imagine anyone. I remember technicalities about events at locations. None of these events are attached to any specific order in time. For the longest time, all of my memories were interpreted as events that were all happening right now at the same time. I had to work on learning how to teach my brain to try to remember that time stretches out. Basically, everything I saw was superficial and my brain interpreted that as junk information.  I was molested when I was 11, but I couldn't give a description of who did it and was shamed for lying and trying to get someone in trouble for attention. By the time I was 13 I was institutionalized because I was 'making things up for attention'. What was really going on was that I thought my dad was going to kill me because he had black out rage problems, my mom tried to kill herself on my birthday, and I was taking all the damage from my dad to protect my brother and sister all of the time. My therapist was a sadist who liked having power over children, so that didn't help, but I couldn't describe what was going on and I was detached from feeling things because I didn't think I was real so, to me, no one was really getting hurt. The mute, emotional part of my brain disagreed and acted out a lot. I ended up on a lot of drugs.  I was raped pretty bad at 16. I remember the sound of the click of the lock after I was drug into a room by my feet. I remember the sound of his voice laughing at me and making fun of me while I was drowning in tears and snot until he was finished with me. I can't remember his face. I don't know what I was wearing. I don't know what he was wearing. I have a scar on my arm from the crystal drano I considered 'cleaning myself out with' but I was afraid that would make everyone mad at me for waking them up and that they wouldn't believe me when I tried to tell them what happened. I let it eat through part of my arm instead just so I would have proof that I didn't make it up.  The issue of not being able to visualize things in my mind doesn't just affect me creatively. I can't memorize things, I couldn't remember lessons immediately after they were given, even though the only reason I went to school was for the lessons. I WANT to read math so I can understand physics, but I have to learn it over and over again. This is like training my instincts to 'know' things for me because my brain is blind and feels like it's living in a strange state of amnesia.

I have, since an early age. I was in second grade when I realized that other people weren't seeing what I was seeing. It's the auditory hallucinations that really get to me though. I hardly get the visuals. ~also diagnosed with schizoaffective/other