Do you know what you look like? | Aphantasia Network

Do you know what you look like?

January 9, 20251 min readByMICHAEL DORFMAN

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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Jamie Mason•recently•edited

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.

Bonnie Penn•recently•edited

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.

Anne Goehring•recently•edited

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•recently•edited

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.