How did you first discover aphantasia?
2 min readByTom Ebeyer
I always find this question so interesting. For most of my life, I didn't realize that others were actually visualizing their thoughts and memories... I thought it was more of a figure of speech than a literal description of how people were thinking. I had such a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that visual representations were being created in someone's "mind's eye". I still do, to be honest. How do you understand something you've never experienced? It's almost like trying to explain the colour purple to someone who only sees in black and white... good luck! It was my second year in college when my girlfriend (at the time) opened my eyes. We were talking about a mutual friend we'd just seen, and how she was wearing the same thing she was the last time we saw her a year prior. I was amazed she could remember that kind of detail... "How do you remember what she was wearing a year ago??" I asked. "Well, I can just see her in my mind"... WHAT?! I then spent years obsessively asking everyone about their experience. Helplessly searching for "learn to visualize" or "no mind's eye" on google only led me to nothing... how can I be missing what seems to be a vital part of the human experience? To relive memories in my mind... see the people, places, and events that meant the most to me? To "picture" what it might be like to visit a destination or "imagine" a success. All the writing I found talked about the benefits of visualizing... even today, a google search shows that it's still heavily weighted this way. This was years before aphantasia was coined by Adam Zemen at Exeter. Many discussions have taken place since then, and I've come a long way in my understanding of aphantasia. How did you first discover aphantasia?