Aphantasia and the capacity to imagine future feelings

I watched Professor Silvanto's presentation on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3mWPHSms3U and it has raised for me the question about whether there is a form a aphantasia with imagining feelings.

I was speaking with someone who I suspect has hyperphantasia and they spoke about how much looking forward to things helps motivate them, so for example looking forward to a holiday helps them push through the heavy workload that leads up to the holiday. I realise I never look forward to things. I enjoy them in the moment, but I don't dwell on looking forward to something. I don't even really look back on something that was enjoyable and re-experience positive feelings.

I am wondering what the implications this has on treatment for physical and mental health issues. If I don't experience hope, but clinicians are assuming that I do and use that unspoken assumption to motivate patient, surely that impacts outcomes.

I am thinking of the phrase “the power of positive thinking”. I've never understood it, and because of my lacklustre response to that form of encouragement I've received labels of pessimism and depression. But what if I can't imagine or experience an emotion outside of the here and now?

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Neal White•recently•edited

I've never really thought about it. I do look forward to future events even though I have aphantasia. I do have apprehension sometimes, depending on the event and what it entails, which I think is normal. The term neurodivergent seems to cover a lot more differences than I previously thought. Some people might find your situation comforting. My wife has hyperphatasia and she says she sometimes wishes she had aphantasia like I do, since she's troubled by things which happened in her past and reoccur in vivid memories and dreams, and that includes the feelings which accompany those memories. My suggestion is to accept the situation and not fret too much. Now that you understand this about yourself, it's possible that with time you might learn to feel something with practice. If not, perhaps you can take comfort in the fact that there are probably many other people like you.