Getting Visualisation Back ...?
3 min readByJuliet Peake
So, I've known I've had aphantasia for quite some time now and 99% sure it's trauma-based for me. I've asked here before if there's a pattern like that with mixed responses, so I know it's different for everyone, but for me, I had a vivid imagination and strong visualisation skills as a child, up until after puberty hit. I believe this is because this was around the time I properly processed what had occurred to me in my childhood, and so I think my brain knew it was too distressing, so starting wiping more memories. I say *more* because a year ago, I discovered I had amnesia surrounding my trauma too and there's some things that I now know happened, but I have no memory of them. Altogether, I think in my case, it's really obvious that my brain went into a state of self-preservation when I was a child, removing some memories pretty much instantly, and leaving behind the ones it could handle. However, when they became too difficult to handle too, something else occurred, which resulted in a slow development of aphantasia; Such a slow development that I didn't even recognise I was losing the ability to visualise, until one day I discovered what aphantasia was, realised I had it, and remembered how I definitely used to visualise things before.
ANYWAY, now you have backstory, I want to ask about regaining memories. I have been so opposed to even try and visualise things again due to my trauma and this amnesia. I don't want to visualise the things I remember happening to me, but I especially don't want the amnesia to wear off either and then for me to visualise everything else too! BUT I'm getting really sick of technically having a disability that I can't treat and my fear being what's stopping me from trying. Visualisation would be so useful as nearly every day I have a moment where I have to think or say "I have aphantasia. I can't do that," and it sucks. I'd normally put more thought into these posts, but I'm just speaking from the heart. I'd love people's opinions or stories on regaining visualisation, successful or unsuccessful attempts, etc. Do you think it's worth trying? Have you had any experience with amnesia? Literally any somewhat relevant info would be interesting to me; I'm just reaching out to get some different perspectives.
If you've read this far, thank you very much! Best wishes to you all :)
Note: My current level of visualisation on a scale of 1-10 would be a 1. Mostly everything is blank, but I can sometimes visualise something for millisecond, more often when it's something I've seen repeatedly unchanged (e.g. a family photograph).