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Do you know what you look like?

As I learn more about Aphantasia from all your posts I have new questions. So a few days ago I wondered if I'd be able to picture my face after staring at it in a mirror. I already know I've never been able to picture my loved ones and best friends but what about an image of my own face?
If interested I hope you'll check your experience in a mirror. Just look at your face in the mirror then turn away and see if you have some form of an image, and if you do does it quickly fade away? I see no image at all. Another exercise I tried is to close my eyes and try to picture the front details of my house – the front door, my favorite shrub, etc. Can you see your bedroom, kitchen cupboards, their color and/or design? These are images we've seen thousands of times! It does seem that imaging and memory are deeply connected, how much is what I'd love to know. Thanks!

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Anne Goehring
on January 22, 2025

Hmmm I tried it and like you I had no image of my face whatsoever. I am on the “seeing nothing but blank” end of the spectrum so I guess that makes sense. When I try to picture the front of my house, I “know” how it looks and what’s there, the glass front door, the steps up, the bushes and all, but I don’t see them.

Daniel Newsome
on March 15, 2025

Agreed. But I don’t quite want to call it intuition, but I can understand how that word sort of feels right. I can recall the front of my childhood home. I could draw a reasonable representation of it. The windows, roofline, the chimney, the front door, the basketball hoop. I can recall how the materials felt and the splinters from the raw and weathered wood and the sandy stone, but I don’t see it. No image what-so-ever. But… I do seem to feel textures… I think??? I can sort of feel the sensation of scratching frozen frost from a window pane… how it lodges under your fingernail… how it is cold… then melts and you feel the pressure it made under the nail relax and just become wet.

Bonnie Jean Penn
on February 6, 2025

I can’t visualize things but I conceptualize them through mental descriptions. When people with aphantasia say they just ‘know’ how things look, I think there is a connection there with intuition.

Jamie Mason
on April 3, 2025

I cannot imagine my own face almost at all. I was wondering if that was just me, so thanks for introducing this topic.

I can more easily describe the faces of people I know well, but my own face is harder to recall.