Aphantasia

I can’t visualize. I have Aphantasia - which translated from latin is “missing imagination”.

For the longest time, aka my entire life t-minus a few months, I thought everyone “thought” the same way. I was actually shocked when I was hanging out with my best friend when he dropped the “think of an apple, now what do you see?” question on me.

People with differing visualization abilities picturing an apple in their mind

It turns out I’m part of the 3-4% of the population who see nothing and relates to 5. The realization thats others can actually see pictures when they’re imagine things is still wild to me.

When other people think and see visualization in their head, all I see is black. I’m unable to visualize anything at all - hence aphantasia, the extreme end of being unable to visualize at all.

There is a spectrum to visualization. Some see hyperrealistic images (1), others see basic shapes (2), while some see dull or muted visualizations (3 and 4). ¹

Counting Sheep

I was a big worrier when I was younger. My mom nicknamed me “worry warrior”, one of my many nicknames. I always had a hard time falling asleep so I would constantly bug her. In response, my mom would tell me to count sheep.²

Only now do I realize I was scammed. While others could actually visualize sheep jumping over a fence one at a time and see them frolicking around in a grass meadow - all I did was just count “1 sheep, 2 sheep 3 sheep…” to myself in the darkness. I thought “counting sheep” was just an expression to make the act of counting to the hundreds/thousands less boring.

Growing up, I thought most sayings were figurative - sayings such as “visualize yourself at a beach” when you were in elementary school, or reading about “constructing a memory palace”, to even things like “it’s raining cats and dogs”. I didn’t think these phrases could actually evoke imagery.

Reading books, listening to poetry, to even talking about gross things while eating now take on a whole new meaning now that I realize people can visually imagine.

How Do I Think?

I don’t. Jk. Although if you know me personally, you’d probably think that.

It’s hard to describe how I think because it just happens naturally. I just kind of “know things” to a degree despite not being able to see anything.

The best way to explain aphantasia that I saw online was describing a computer with a monitor unplugged. All the data is still flowing, but there is no graphical user interface (visuals) to help you interact with the data. But the data is still there, on demand and ready to be recalled. It’s kind of like using a computer using the command line entirely.

Another way of thinking about it is like navigating your room in the dark. You don’t have to necessarily “see” your furniture to know the layout of the space you’re navigating to prevent yourself from stubbing your toe.

Aphantasia Copium

Discovering that you have aphantasia can feel devastating at first. When you realize that others can close their eyes and see things while you can’t, it can feel like you’ve got a piece of yourself taken away - nerfed IRL.

It’s tempting to try to causally link aphantasia as a rationalization or explanation for everything. Poor memory? Bad at art? Subpar spatial awareness? Must be because of aphantasia.

I’ve been there too. You start to think of everything you missed growing up and how much of an advanatage you would have if you could visualize too. While these feelings are natural, it’s important to avoid over-attributing characterstics due to aphantasia - in other words, I think it’s a mistake to use aphantasia as a crutch to cope with perceived shortcomings.

Suppose I’m dumb and I have aphantasia. There are two ways to view this.

• I’m dumb because of aphantasia
• I’m dumb and independently have aphantasia

I think the first interpretation is likely incorrect. It’s more likely that traits can coexist without being causally related. ³

If aphantasia predisposed people to certain traits, you would expect the 3-4% of the population with aphantasia to show consistent advantages or disadvantages right? ⁴ I don’t think such a global set of characteristics exist (with the ability to visualize being the only exception).

What’s more likely is that you’ll find aphants who excel in one aspect of life, and you’ll find others who struggle which is no different than the other 96% visualizing part of the population.

Closing Thoughts

I don’t view aphantasia as a negative thing. I’m the same person with or without the fact knowing I have aphantasia. It’s probably very common for aphantastics to live their entire life without even knowing they have aphantasia.

We all think differently I guess and there’s no way to know how each of us perceive the world. Knowing how one sees the world is never going to be the same as experiencing it.

All’s this just to say that aphantasia is merely one aspect of who I am, not a defining factor of my capabilities or identity. Pretty neat.

1. Fun fact: my brother is only able to visualize specific objects that are meaningful or stand out, but nothing else generally speaking. ↩

2. Aphantasia runs in families to a degree. My mom also found out she was aphantastic when I asked her about it. Yes, ironically the same one who also told me to count sheep lol ↩

3. On a real note, even if it did turn out to be causal you got to live with the hand you’re dealt. No use in complaining. Unfair yes, but what else can you do? ↩

4. I’m really bad at art. Sure that could be explainable by aphantasia. But I have great memory, spatial awareness, and directional sense. You would expect those skills to be quite poor since I can’t visualize right? ↩