Irma Vermeer

Purely having Aphantasia would not really cause you to suffer significantly with Object Permanence, as having Aphantasia doesn't stop you from creating memories. Sure it means you can't visualise your partner from memory, but there are other means by which people with Aphantasia remember them. How you feel when you're with them, the sound of their voice, or even things they did for you that you found impressive or surprising will still be a strong memory even without visualisation. Being anxious during separation or having an inner monologue that's constantly pushing your buttons while separated from your partner I believe stems from a lot more from your past than simply having Aphantasia. (Disorganized Attachment Style, or Anxious Attachment Style), but only you can choose to look into that to see if anything resonates with that. As for methods to help you out, you could bridge the gap of being unable to visualise your partner by carrying a photo of them with you, or keep a photo of them on your phone. So when you become anxious, you can give yourself a few minutes and just look at their photo. Fighting your abandonment fears is more difficult because you'll have to start to question the reality of what your inner monologue tells you, and compare it to the actual experiences you've had with your partner. To "call yourself out on your own bullshit" kind of thing. I know this is difficult to do, because I've had to do this myself (It's CBT). It's also not an instant fix, but over time it definitely helps as you start to automatically realise some of your thoughts are suspicious, and those thoughts will stop "touching" you as much as they do right now. Ideally, this will eventually lead to you bringing up issues to your partner only when your inner monologue and the facts of reality match.

For what I've read, I'm not sure if Aphantasia can be acquired due to any form of trauma or (C)PTSD, there are too many variables to give a definitive answer on that. What I've read is that as you go through traumatic events or had a less than perfect upbringing, the mind can develop defensive mechanisms like you say which can start off as suppression and as you grow up, become automatic and turns into repression. That means you can "lose" the ability to do things people take for granted, such as feeling emotion, and possibly part of your visualisation ability if your attachment style developed into being Dismissive Avoidant, or even completely "block" memories and such when reliving a past trauma, or to prevent you from reliving a past trauma. Another thing I've read is that people's natural sense of smell, taste, hearing, interoception etc can be numbed or partially numbed when you live in a constant state of survival, as certain things are automatically deemed to be less "important" in that state than others. One of the things that apparently isn't uncommon to happen is when you go through therapy or do a lot of inner work to "rediscover" yourself, that those things I mentioned can return, or become more intense or profound than you know them to be. In particular, working on improving your interoception for what I read is one trigger that can make this happen. Does all this include acquired Aphantasia through trauma? I have no idea. But I personally wouldn't rule out the possibility without more concrete data specifically on the subject of Aphantasia. I believe Aphantasia was first discovered when someone had a brain injury and reported that they lost the ability to visualise afterwards, which quickly spiralled into other people with Aphantasia contacting the author of the news article, so that part of what you say is true.

Not usually, but sometimes I have something like that. I'll be lying down in bed and randomly get the sense that I'm "the wrong way round" or something and it's disorienting enough to start thinking about it. I know I'm in the right place, but it feels like I'm not there the right way, if that makes any sense? I have to open my eyes to see the familiar wall or the door or something and then everything snaps back into place. It's weird.

I haven't got much info on this yet but I have CPTSD and waiting for therapy to start. For what I read, traditional therapy was heavily reliant on visualisation methods for grounding etc which aren't exactly effective when you have Aphantasia, and neither is the lack of visual imagery which would usually serve as an "identification" of sorts, so deeper digging is required for people with Aphantasia as stuff is hidden and "overcomes" us while we're left scratching our heads, not knowing why. It could lead to us placing the blame on ourselves because we can't find the real underlying reasons. More recently there's been a "shift" to alternate methods that don't rely on visualising... I *think* that's what it may refer to.

My memories are for the most part a pile of facts, but it's like a spider web. If I recall an event and list the immediate bits I remember, those bits act as a memory jog where I get access to more and more details about the event. The amount of stuff I remember from an event I'm told is very impressive, but unfortunately a spider web of bits doesn't have a chronological order, so it's a mess! In turn the side effect is that people find it hard to believe what I'm saying because they're wondering whether I'm making things up on the spot. As for sensory details, just emotion. Emotion is so vivid, it's as if a memory can make me feel the way I felt when I was there. If my mind gets bored, it's a game of chance which memories will come up, but the most "emotionally loaded" memories have the highest chance, until the replays slowly desensitize the memory. With both CPTSD and Trauma Anxiety, being able to "bask" in the emotion from different memories is both a blessing and a curse. The good is really good, the bad is really bad. The only good thing my mind seems to do about the most traumatic memories is that they get "blocked" to a degree, so I'm left with a "rough outline" of what happened and their emotion, along with the full physical symptoms which leave me scratching my head half the time.

During a discussion about my lack of direction. I'd narrowed the discussion down to locating all the shops on the street I lived at, and noticed other people I lived with could recall every stair, every shop, every building, every nook and every cranny, and every other random object on the street. When I asked them how they did that, they said they see it. I was like ???? and decided to do some investigating. I came across Aphantasia and had a light bulb moment.

Aphantasia and a Hearing Imbalance here (affects internal GPS and orientation). Direction? What is that? Please make google maps functional inside buidings, including inside public toilets, so I can find my way back out. Been trying a new trick, I talk to myself while navigating. I remember what I said to myself and it actually seems to help despite remaining completely directionless and unable to notice if 2 routes merge later on.

Understanding if you indeed have Aphantasia could help you deliberately use other memory types to help remember things. If you know visual memory is missing, you could for example tell yourself things, which uses auditory memory. Visual memory is only one type of memory. Trying to rely on or use visual memory, not knowing you have Aphantasia, can feel like a lost cause or you could even frustrate yourself.