Multisensory Aphantasia & Fibromyalgia
3 min readByJennifer Durante
Does anyone else here with multisensory aphantasia also have fibromyalgia or another nervous-system-related condition?
I’m curious if anyone else here has had a similar experience. Over the past year I’ve learned that I have fibromyalgia, multisensory aphantasia, and likely SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory).
I am not suggesting aphantasia or SDAM caused my fibromyalgia. But I am starting to think that how I adapted because of them may have contributed.
As I started fibromyalgia treatment, many of the recommended approaches were mind–body / nervous system regulation therapies — Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), hypnosis, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, medical yoga, Qi Gong, and acupuncture.
I quickly realized many of these approaches are often framed around people who struggle with rumination, intrusive thoughts, replaying past events, or imagining worst-case scenarios. That assumption felt immediately off to me. So where is my stress coming from and why is my nervous system giving up on me?
I started looking at how my brain actually works day to day and noticed a few patterns:
- My brain is always in task-oriented “go mode”
- I have limited intrusive thoughts not related to the task at hand
- I rarely replay past events
- I rarely imagine worst-case scenarios
- I never envision the future
- If there is a major life problem I can be completely consumed by it, but once it is resolved, it is behind me
- Stress doesn’t stress me out — stress motivates me
- I have very black-and-white moral standards
- I have a strong tendency toward overcontrol
After some research I landed on this (non-scientific) working theory: because I can’t visualize the present, replay the past, or conjure up the future, I think my brain may have compensated early on by relying more on lists, order, structure, and rules to control uncertainty instead of imagining outcomes.
My stress does not come from rumination and worry. It seems to come more from a brain that is always in task mode and always “on” — constantly organizing, monitoring, problem-solving, or scanning for order.
So for me, while the goal of treatments may still be nervous system regulation, the way in is less about intrusive thoughts and more about getting out of constant “monitoring mode (which includes becoming less all-or-nothing, learning that incomplete or imperfect can still be okay, learning that not every situation needs to be judged or corrected, etc).
If you have multisensory aphantasia and fibromyalgia or another nervous-system-related condition do you relate more to a task-focused mind, overcontrol, or a brain that is always “on” (planning, organizing, monitoring, problem-solving) than to intrusive thoughts, rumination and anxiety loops?
I’m starting to wonder if there may be a subset of people with aphantasia and/or SDAM whose nervous system issues are less related to intrusive thoughts or reliving the past, and more related to decades of keeping the brain in constant “on” mode — planning, organizing, compensating, and over-functioning in order to navigate the world without mental imagery or replayed memories.
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