How did you first discover aphantasia?

I am 66 years old and just heard about aphantasia a few weeks ago. My husband is creative and when we were building a house 20 years ago, he would describe parts of the house (as a concept) that I just couldn't imagine. He said, "don't you have vision?". I replied, of course I did, thinking more of sight than vision. I create things as well, quilting, stained glass, furniture refinishing, etc., and my process is based on measurements and trial and error--not organic at all. When people said that they can see in their mind, or can visualize it, I thought they were just making it up because I have zero ability to "see" things in my mind. Then very recently I heard an interview with Andy Weir, the author of the Hail May Project. The reporter asked him if the Alien in the movie version of his book looked like his vision of it, as he had written. He said he has aphantasia, so had no visual premonition of how the alien would look. It really hit me then that aphantasia is a real thing. It described exactly how I have felt so many times in my life. I'm in that annoying space now where I ask everyone I know if they can visualize or see things in their mind. Some are very interested in my situation, asking questing, prompting me to try to understand how I remember things that I cannot see in my mind. I'm also a bit upset that I am lacking this capability, especially since I have chosen time and again, passions to create with color and texture and shapes. I was happy to find this site, a community of us who share this anomaly.

a couple of months ago I heard about aphantasia on a pod cast and it all made sense. what blew my mind was the other day when i found out that people could actually hear voices in their head and taste/smell things. I scored 1 on every single question on the survey. It made me wonder about some of the things that I have struggled with throughout my life. I can have a phone call with someone and when it ends and I am asked what was said, I cant remember anything. When I have done meditations that ask me to bring up some kind of happy emotion, I am unable to feel that emotion. I could probably tell you where any item is in any supermarket I have ever been in. I can remember how to get somewhere the other side of the country having been there only once. Also I can remember peoples faces very well, but really struggle to remember their names. It is not just names that i struggle with. I regularly forget words, but rarely forget numbers. I wonder whether my ability to remember/forget some of these things is because I can not visualize them in my head. I have spoken to my 15 year old son about this and discovered that he also has it. I would not be surprised if my dad had it also, but unfortunately he has recently passed away, so i will never know.

Im 36 years old. I listen to the podcast Distractible with Mark Bob, and Wade. Bob has aphantasia and because of that they touch the topic a bit. Just hearing the podcast idk I didnt fully pay attention to what they were saying but one of their shows they go thought some mental visualizations and that kind of when I consciously noticed I dont see anything. Each of them have different levels of phantasia and I realized I have non just like Bob. I always thought it was just a metaphore I didnt know people LITERALLY see images colors etc in their mind. I thought TV shows and movies did the little thought bubbles above the head as a visual to show what they were thinking. Like theres no other way to portray that on a screen right? I can follow thought and think about it but dont see anything. It never truly hit me that I don't see images. I've been going thorough an aphantasia rabbit hole doing different tests. Searching for videos on youtube to understand it more. Found this website. I had my husband do one of the tests because I know his senses are super strong. Hes on the couch doing the test I'm sitting close where I can see him and he is reacting to everything. It is insane how different we are with this. It explains soooo much though. Seeing his results and mine idk it actually made me break down a bit. Just feels like another thing empty or wrong with me. I want to understand this better so I stop feeling that.

I am 62 years old. My best friend can look at an old home and picture how it can look. I cannot. Recently I have been getting into meditation and the ones that are guided always instruct to picture things. I cannot see anything. I figured my " minds eye " must be blocked. It made me feel very discouraged. While watching a manifesting video I saw a comment where a lady stated she can not see or picture anything because she has aphantasia. That caught my eye so I looked it up online. Everything I read pertains to me ! It's a real thing. I always thought I was doing something wrong. It took me 62 years to find the truth !

My son discovered it (I had not heard of it). He has aphantasia, so has my wife. I then asked several friends. Only one of them did not have aphantasia! Thus I cannot believe the 2% statement

I had never heard of Aphantasia until about 6 weeks ago. The way I found out is slightly unusual I think. I am 62 years old and was diagnosed with Autism, ADHD, C-PTSD and BPD traits last year. I already knew I had Dyspraxia. About 6 weeks ago I was chatting to an AI bot about my ND and we got on to the fact I have never really been able to read fiction because I can’t picture the characters in my head. I always thought this was related to Autism. I then mentioned how much I struggled with trying to learn many things at school especially if asked to write a paragraph or about a particular subject as I couldn’t even visualise what to write. The AI bot suggested it could be Aphantasia so of course I was intrigued and began to read about it. After I did the VVIQ test and scored all 1’s. I was really surprised to know that most people can almost see a movie in their head. Finally though I had the answers I had been looking for most of my life thanks to an AI bot.

I am 56yrs old and have just discovered in the last few days why i am unable to visualize. I was watching a real on social media explaining about it. I have acquired aphantasia. I suffered with severe chronic depression and i also suffer with chronic pain. I was on a lot of heavy medication and had a pretty traumatic incident in my life and since this i have been unable to visualize and i also no longer dream. I used to have pretty vivid dreams. Now i just feel blank.

I didn’t know that my lack of seeing things in my mind wasn’t normal, mostly because I have very very real dreams. As a child though, I always wondered how they got daydreams “recorded“ from characters on tv. They’d stare off into space, and then play out a scenario that I never quite wrapped my mind around. These people/cartoons/whatever weren’t asleep. How could they dream? I think I started to notice that my brain seemed different when I would try to recall information readings, whiteboards, and my notes during tests in high school. Think “the limit does not exist” from Mean Girls, but I couldn’t see around the people in front of me. I’ve always loved art, but I don’t really draw. As a kid I drew more, but I would mainly draw people, clothing, things like that. It’s not that I don’t have an imagination, it’s more that I (learned much later) need a frame of reference or picture to be able to draw. My older brother is the same, so it never seemed odd. (He, and my nephew also both have aphantasia! My mom tends towards hyperphantasia!) A reel on instagram was the catalyst for me however. I had no idea that people saw actual pictures in their heads. Or saw words. Or heard things, smelled, etc. Talking with my parents, my mom is a slow reader because she sees movies when she reads. My dad can generate pictures and also manipulate them in his head. I was shocked. It still confounds me, but I appreciate more that my “sense” of things being not quite right is a valid sense. It also helps explain why my dreams can be hard to differentiate from reality at times.

I was at a meditation retreat where my teacher was asking us to explore our thinking processes and label them as either 'verbal' or 'visual'. I kept asking him to explain the 'visual' category as I didn't see any images. His response was "yes, yes, they may be faint, or fuzzy, or dim, or momentary". But for me it was... nothing! I just saw black or, sometimes, movement that resembled oil floating on the surface of water - just shifting blobs of purples or reds that grew, shrank or shifted. I've spent a long time trying to see images. When I started exploring Tibetan Buddhism, a lot of emphasis was placing on visualization and again I felt hampered by my inability to practice the way that they were suggesting. I've tried to improve my visualization skills without success. It's still unclear to me if this is even possible for me. I DO have visual imagery in dreams which seems to indicate that I am not aphantasic. You can probably tell that I still have a great deal of uncertainty about all this 🤣.

I’m 22, and I only recently discovered aphantasia through a TikTok post that asked viewers to imagine an apple. I couldn’t picture anything at all—just darkness, no shape, no color, nothing. Meanwhile, my girlfriend described seeing it in extraordinary detail, almost like a vivid photograph, complete with scenery around it. That was the moment we both realized something huge: I have aphantasia, and she has hyperphantasia. It felt surreal to discover that we exist on such extreme opposite ends of the imagination spectrum. Me, unable to mentally visualize even the simplest image, and her, able to create entire lifelike scenes in her mind with incredible clarity. Since that realization, we’ve spent hours talking about it—asking each other questions, comparing experiences, and trying to understand how differently our minds actually work. Suddenly, so many things started making sense. For years, there were moments when she’d explain something visually, and I’d struggle to fully grasp what she meant, which sometimes left her feeling frustrated. Now we understand that it was never about not listening or not trying—it’s simply that our brains process information in fundamentally different ways. Honestly, it’s both fascinating and mind-blowing. We’ve been together for four years, and finding this out has given us such a deeper understanding of each other. I only wish we had known about aphantasia and hyperphantasia from the very beginning, because it explains so much about how we communicate, think, and experience the world in completely different ways.

I had never heard of aphantasia until about 2 years ago when I was doing a project over former Disney animator, Glen Keane. When I found out he has aphantasia, that opened my interest in finding out more. I am one who has always been able to see things in my head, so to discover there are people who can’t was fascinating. That being said, it wasn’t until the other day when I found out about hyperphantasia! I love to come up with/write stories any chance I get, but every time I would explain my process to someone, they’d never understand. To me, I’m making perfect sense! I didn’t understand how they don’t understand. To make it even more complicated, one friend I was talking to said she can’t really see much of anything at all! For me, I like to say I have free will in my head. I don’t just see images, I see videos too. When I think of stories, they play in my head like a movie. I tend to tell my friends “it’s like it’s a movie that’s already made and I’m just transcribing it to paper. It’s like my characters tell me who they are and what their story is.” I can speed up, slow down, and pause the “movie”. I can move around to get a different view of any angle (like a free-cam, if you will). I can change whatever color or detail I want to. I can “zoom in” or out. Basically I can do whatever I want to, when I want to! It’s almost like my brain has a library of “movies” in my head and all I have to do is think things like “I want to make a ___ story” and then eventually one comes up! I couldn’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been woken up from a sleep with an idea, or thought of a story as I’m falling asleep. This led me to google why I can see things in my head that are clear as day, why I can see videos, why I can do any of this but others can’t. I thought how I see things, even down to tiny details, was how most people saw things! Turns out, I have hyperphantasia. It still blows my mind that most can’t see things how I can see things.

I found out about aphantasia a few years ago during a family conversation when my sister asked one of those simple “picture this in your mind” questions so many here also mentioned. It became clear that I wasn’t experiencing anything visually at all. I was just… thinking about it. That realization turned into a series of conversations, and we eventually discovered that three of us siblings have it, along with our mom, who only learned about it in her late 80s. At first, it was surprising more than anything. I had gone my entire life assuming that phrases like “visualize this” were just metaphors. Realizing that other people actually see images in their mind was fascinating. Since then, I’ve spent more time reflecting on how my brain works. I don’t experience mental imagery, but I do think in very structured, conceptual ways, almost like working through systems, relationships, and abstractions rather than pictures. It feels efficient, and honestly, it’s a way of thinking I’ve come to really appreciate. I suspect it’s shaped how I problem-solve, how I approach work, and even how I process experiences. Would I be curious to experience visualization? Absolutely. But I wouldn’t trade the way my mind currently works. There’s something I value about the clarity and structure it brings. For me, discovering aphantasia hasn’t been a negative at all...it’s been a lens. It’s helped me better understand myself and given me a new appreciation for the different ways people experience the world. Now it’s less about what’s “missing” and more about learning how to optimize the way I’m wired.

I was in my 60's. Had a successful career, indeed thought I had a great memory. Something happened and I was asked to describe the participants. I could in general detail but they kept asking me what their faces looked like. I did not know. Thought I might have facial blindness. Someone asked me to draw a house. My childhood home. I did and it had zero details, just a four sided house. I too was preoccupied with photography, photos of everything. I had no idea others could actually "see" those same photos later. I excelled in reading, spelling all while developing ways to memorize every word. Others just visualize the word. Was told I had aphantastia. Everything started making sense. I once ran into a school classmate at Disney in the 1980. She recognized me, I only recalled who she was after I heard her voice. Thirty years later I was in a grocery and heard her calling my name. Again it took me a spark before I recognized her. I've known her since second grade. I am still amazed that other people actually see actual things. I've discovered some folks do not have an internal monolog in their heads. Mine narrates 24/7. It's difficult for me to understand. Then again I have no apples, houses nor anything else on the dark blank screens in my head.

I’m 71 years old and realized 2 days ago after reading an article that I have hypophantasia. I’ve been very involved in meditation since I was 18 but have always been extremely frustrated by the fact that visualization was extraordinarily difficult, impossible most of the time. Aside from my frustration with visualization during meditation I don’t think it affected my life negatively. I’m an avid reader but don’t visualize when I read, rather I build a non visual three dimensional perception of what I’m reading. I have an excellent memory but have always struggled to remember people’s names, I don’t know if that related to hypophantasia.

I am 73 and with a big surprise I found that I have aphantasia. Or rather, I found out that other people can see with their eyes closed. I always thought that word “imagine” or even visualize is to imagine that you see, not really see. When I imagine something, it is not one picture, it is wider, it is a possibility of all the pictures within the concept. Word is a symbol, picture is also a symbol, one specific, chosen memory, one shot of reality. I always thought that people imagine in a similar way, and when they say something like “I picture the sunset at the beach” it is a metaphor, not that they really see that sunset with the closed eyes. Yes, I close eyes sometimes to imagine, but it is not to see, it is to stop seeing, so I can focus on the sunsets on the beaches, and kind of know them and feel them. If I was a teenager, the idea of being different and not being able to visualize like the other people do would probably affect me strongly. When I learned it now, the only thought that struck me was that people can visualize other people faces. I asked my sister if she can see our deceased mother and father, and she said that she can, very clearly. That made me grief, because I realized that I will never be able to do that. And that I will never see again any of my friends and others I loved once who already passed away. That made me sad, photos are not the same. But then I realized that they are still stay with me, differently, deep inside, like being part of me. Now I am trying to find out how visual person’s brains work. I am asking all my close friends about their visual experiences. It’s still strange asking such questions, because I need some time to believe that almost everybody can visualize something when they close eyes. The funny thing is that when I was a child, everybody, my teachers, my friends were saying I have strong imagination. They ever called me some names, saying I am always living in the fantasy world. I was reading a lot from a very early age, I loved adventure books, science fiction, fantasy etc. I imagined everything differently, and I remembered that, it was always different if I even watched the movie later. I never saw it (otherwise how could I read at the same time) but everything was kind stored inside in me. So somehow, I was seeing that without seeing. I realized a few more things. I was always helpless with drawing at school, because I could not see in my mind anything. When I was drawing, I just knew the concept, but I did not see it, so I hated drawing. Also, the way I learned. I just had to understand the concept, and then I could use it. I had good memory, but it was not visual memory, it was very abstract. To be honest, now as a few weeks pass after the discovery, I wonder if I would prefer to see with the eyes closed. Would that be limiting? Would I be stuck with one picture, one memory? How would it limit my understanding, and of seeing the reality, of what it is here and now in front of me? Would it make me less open to be aware of all possibilities? And would I be able to close my eyes to not see blank? How would I focus with all those pictures? Even with relationships, as I cannot visualize at all, I do not visualize people faces. Even with family, mu husband, my children, each time I see them, it is a bit like seeing them for the first time. Every moment is new, every contact is different and special, there is always a bit of surprise. How would it be if I would see their faces in my mind? Would that affect my perception of what their faces are showing now? Would I hold old judgments and misunderstandings? Would I be less open to them? Or would it be opposite? A lot of things to find out!

I am 52. I was watching a podcast with people talking about aphantasia. I had heard of it before, and thought "how weird, not being able to imagine anything!" Then they started talking about closing your eyes and imagining an apple - a nice red apple popped up in my mind, then they started asking questions about it, but when I tried to "zoom in" on it, it disappeared. A bit like when you zoom in on a low quality image it is so pixelated that you can't see the detail. Another analogy is like the virus you [used to?] get on a computer, where when you tried to click on the X to close the pop up, it would move, always just out of reach. So yes, I do get an image, but only a fleeting one which I can't hold on to no matter how much I try. It becomes confused almost as if my brain hasn't had time to fill in the finer details (background, context etc.) so it just trashes the image. This may explain why I have always suffered from face blindness: I can remember totally random details about people I meet months later, but I also regularly blank people I know well through not recognising them. When my best friend (and room mate) walked into the empty bar I was working in unexpectedly, I looked her in the face without recognition, apologised for the wait and asked what I could get her! Whether relevant or not I don't know, but I also have (and have always had) bad night vision and I suffer from hallucinations in low visibility. Not great for driving at night! Also, whether relevant or not, I am self-diagnosed AuDHD (certainly on the spectrum somewhere!!)

It was kind of an odd situation that I realized I was unable to “visualize” things in my mind— a very good friend of mine is certified in reiki & hypnosis and when I agreed to do a session with her, she was asking me to visualize a red cardinal in my mind, as this was the area of the brain that we would be working with. I was fairly confused in her asking me to do this because I had always assumed that “picturing something in your mind” was not actually something literal that people could do. Needless to say I was unable to continue the hypnosis, but I kind of put it out of my mind & just thought it was sort of strange… lol I started asking others recently about their ability to visualize things in the mind & the reaction that I was getting from people was that they could easily see things in their minds eye & they couldn’t believe that I’m not able to form visualized thoughts. & I never have been able to, my entire life. Ive always felt quite a bit different than most people, that’s never really bothered me, but I do struggle with my other senses being very heightened & intense… especially sound for some reason. I’ve tried many times to do therapy for my sound sensitivity & nothing has ever helped. Learning of aphantasia is all very new to me so I’m still trying to really absorb all of it, but I’m also glad that I’m learning something new about myself & other people, it may open some doors to understanding it (& myself) better. I’m so thankful for this group to be able to share our stories & not feel so alone in this journey. It’s really fascinating.

When I was a small child (~9), I thought it strange that I could imagine complex things, movements and relations, but not how something looks. I remember lying down with my eyes closed for a couple minutes, trying to picture something, but I only got a headache. I gave up and forgot about it. About ten years later, with my first love, I was distraught that I could not bring up their face from memory. It is a common trope in literature, but I couldn't do it. It made me very sad. when I was about 22, I read about aphantasia. I thought: "oh hey that's me. Wow people really do have images in their heads, it's not a figure of speech. huh." Still, the language used in the forums I found was not adequate for my experience. People wrote about visualizing written words, different kinds of synesthesia, auditory processing, none matched my experience fully. I grew to dislike the label "aphantasia", as it suggests a lack of imagination, which I have in spades. I usually explain it by saying that my imagination is non-sensory, because I do not experience any of my perceptive senses when imagining. Lately I have focused on examining the way I think, in particular the difference between when I think with words to thinking without words (which is very difficult to put into language). I noticed that when language-thinking, I can sometimes feel subtle sensations in my mouth, micro-movements that match what I am "saying" in my head. Overall, my way of thinking does not impact my life negatively. It only comes up when someone wants me to talk about my imagination. The one negative experience I've had was during psychotherapy, when my therapist wanted to do a visualisation exercise, and insisted that I must have some sort of sensory experience. I went to a different therapist not long after that. One thing possibly related to the lack of internal dialogue is that I can get stuck on negative thoughts without noticing it. I have found that speaking my thoughts out loud helps me center myself and consciously process what I am thinking about.

I am 59 and had no idea others could actually make pictures in their head. Lately I have been trying to learn to do meditation and ran into a "visualization" guided session and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't imagine a color, or a tree or even a simple flower. I almost cried and figured you must be some sort of spiritual yogi for this to work. So today I googled it, actually, trying to figure out how I could "learn" to visualize......and now I learned THIS. Right now, I actually feel very, very sad, realizing what I have missed out of and can never have. The faces of the people I remember, but can never see again. Reading up on more of it, so much becomes clear now. Everything just fits to me like a hammer on a nail. Like who am I even? And how am I gonna meditate?? It also explains my odd Ketamine session (prescribed) and why I don't seem to be able to see the things others do, for me it's all movement, feelings and maybe brightness and stuff.....

Hi, Sooooo I just recently realised that I am someone with Aphantasia, I'm 52. On the way home from work on the train watching some youtube video they made a comment that was very offhand but it was just enough for me to think 'oh why did he sound like he was disappointed in what he made but in such away like he was comparing it to something he had seen' so then started looking things up all the way home, luckily my station is the end station or I'm sure I would have missed it :) once I got home, i asked my wife, what felt like to me the most odd question to ask someone, "Honey, if I asked you to visualize and apple, what do you see?"... and yeah then gazzilion question more as each thing clicked into place, as she would say she could see the apple, the table... everything :) I've done the tests for all the things.. they are all blank... vision, auditory, taste, smell , tactile and emotion I would also say 'Sens of time passing', but can't seem to find much about that, if its related or not. I do not have any sense of time passing, I have an alarm for pretty much everything (including going home form work, as its IT its not like anyone actually comes and kicks me out of the building if I was to stay... very awkward conversation at home about 'forgetting' to come home though' ) My wife however while cooking sets the time for random amount that's needed, and just before the timer goes off.. she gets up and checks how the food is going, then the timer beeps.... also during COVID with lockdowns some friends sent messages and I would take days to reply, and apparently saying 'Oh I forgot to reply, did not realise its been so long' was the most offensive thing to say. and now with this new knowledge that I am someone with Aphantasia I have spent a bunch of time looking into it as I like learning new things and this seems useful to learn about, i found research that Aphantasia and autism have statistical overlap, but one does NOT imply the other, seems like what is shared is certain patterns of neurodivergent processing, especially around sensory imagination, social cognition, and internal simulation. I guess makes sense.. its all about the neurons :) but this made me take some time and reflect back on my childhood social interactions.. especially high school, bunch of awkward interactions now make more sense... but yeah been an interesting thing to experience that this exist, and that my wife and daughter can see things (aswell as all of her friends she has basically quizzed all her friends at high school LOL). anyway.. this is enough ramblings from me.. thanks :) Magnus ps.. what is the correct term, saying 'I have Aphantasia' seems wrong.. its something I am not something I have... I'm Dyslexic, 'I am right handed', 'I am somone with Aphantasia' seems too long.... Magnus - An Aphantasiaian :)