Neal White

"put on music"... The one sense I can imagine is sound, including music. I hook some of my memories to sounds, much like others remember visuals. For example, I remember my mom playing the flute. Repetition imprints the sound into memory. I can also sing in my head (my minds ear?).

I have aphantasia and struggle to spell certain words to this day. Practice (repetition) and memorization worked for me. I remember the letters of a word as a sequence. Learning to touch type also helped. My fingers learn the sequences of letters, even when I sometimes have trouble spelling a word when I think about it. When my wife, who has hyperphantasia, learned that I don't see words in my mind, said (in an alarmed voice): "How can you spell?" She actually sees the word letters overlaying her visual field, even when her eyes are open. I wish it were so easy for me. Reassure your daughter that lots of people have trouble spelling and that aphantasia is not a handicap, but simply a different way of experiencing the world. There are some advantages of having aphantasia: My wife is troubled by bad memories and dreams that feel as real as real-life. She says she sometimes wishes she had aphantasia too.

I understand, even though I'm on the other end of the scale. My wife has hyperphantasia and has said that at times, she'd prefer having my aphantasia. Bad dreams I also understand, though mine are in total darkness. I'd suggest finding someone to talk to, a friend, counselor, or professional. Here are some ideas. I hope you find them useful. * If you're not sleeping well, it's no wonder that you're exhausted. I take melatonin 2-3 hours before I go to bed. You might try that. Or see a doctor for something stronger. * Make sure you're eating properly, which should also help with the exhaustion. * Exercising might help. I like to go on long bike rides. It's easy to sleep when your body is tired out. * Controlling your breathing can help you relax and take control of your thoughts. * I find that I can reset my mental state by breathing in for 4 seconds, holding for 16 sec, and exhaling for 8 sec. Repeat the sequence a few times until you feel your mind is at ease. * When I'm trying to fall asleep, but my mind is racing, I take conscious control of my breathing and take slow deep breaths. I count my breaths, focus on the physical feeling of those breaths (both in and out), and use the mental sequence number to drive out intrusive thoughts. I've never been able to count sheep, so this works for me. You might try counting something joyful, like kittens. * Try to learn lucid dreaming, so you can guide your dreams towards more pleasant subjects. * Is it possible for you to reframe this as a mental gift? Don't try to block the experience, but instead, divert it to a happier place. * If that doesn't work, perhaps you should try listening to upbeat music to help with the diversion. * During the day, you might try reading a good book/ebook to escape from your thoughts. * Can you try to express your images and feelings as art? Sometimes just "getting it out" can help.

I don't have children, but here's how I approached sharing my aphantasia with my extended family: I'd wait until a time when your family is doing something together, which doesn't require much thinking, like assembling a jigsaw puzzle or a long car ride. At an appropriate time, ask your kids some questions like: * Close your eyes and think of a favorite place, like a beach. What do you see? * Is it like real life, like watching a movie, like a shadow, blurs of colors, or just black? * Do you feel the wind, smell the salt air, or hear the roar of the waves? * What do you see and experience when you're dreaming? It's entirely possible that either child might also have aphantasia. I would not "explain that you don't have visual memories of their childhood". Instead, just say that you don't have a visual memory. No need to focus on their childhood at all. You shouldn't feel guilty or regretful for something you can't control. Can you remember sounds, smells, touch, or taste? If so, you can share that you, for example, still remember the first time they said a word, or dada, etc. Whatever else you do, I'd recommend taking lots of photos and videos.

"I can't SEE it in my head, I just know that's what it is." I understand your situation. I also got a 16 on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and my wife has extreme hyperphantasia. Since I discovered that aphantasia was a thing (and I had it) a few years ago, my wife and I have been able to overcome some of our difficulties communicating. We were living in very different worlds. For me, it feels like I'm missing some sort of connection in my brain. When I close my eyes, I only see black, yet I can somehow sense something is "out there", like my vision is blocked by a wall of black glass. I can sometimes see things when I (rarely) have a lucid dream. The easiest is painting splats on the wall, with dark colors. Sometimes I can even punch holes in the wall, to see what's behind it. This is something that happens at most a few times a year. You might try to have lucid dreams, which is something which can be triggered with practice. Oddly, I have a few skills that would seem to be highly visual. I'm very good and very quick at identifying those "which one of these 3D rotated shapes match?" questions on an IQ test. I just "know" which one is correct, often before I even finish looking at each of the possible solution shapes. The same thing happens with jigsaw puzzle pieces. I'm also quite good at remembering shades of color, even though I see nothing but black in my mind's eye. I just "know" when a color matches the one in my memory. If I draw a map, even a complicated one, I can find my way to the destination, even when I've lost/forgotten the map. It doesn't help to study the map; I have to DRAW it to remember it. Even though I see only black with my eyes closed, I can still trace an image hiding behind the wall. One of my difficulties is that I'm partially face-blind. I now believe that's due to my aphantasia. Seriously, I might walk right past my sister without recognizing her, if I'm out in public. You're not alone. There's nothing "wrong" with you. 0.8% is still a lot, considering there are billions of people in the world. As it turns out, my 2 best friends and my doctor (GP) also have aphantasia. It's likely you know people who have aphantasia (and they might not even know it). My friends had no idea they had aphantasia until I told them that I had it. When I tell others of my aphantasia, I usually start with a seemingly simple question: What do you see when you close your eyes? Here's something to consider: My wife says she sometimes wishes she had aphantasia instead of hyperphantasia. She had some trauma in her past and is troubled by vivid memories and dreams (nightmares). At least in some cases, aphantasia might be a blessing, not a curse. As a Software Engineer, aphantasia might even be helpful: I can close my eyes and concentrate on the problem at hand without visual distractions. My suggestion is that you concentrate on things you enjoy and not focus on your limitations. Take lots of photos and videos, so you can relive the memories you can't see.

Yes. I was never able to read music. I could decipher the notes using mnemonic phrases, such as "every good boy does fine", but it was a laborious process. I stopped taking piano lessons by the time I was about 12 years old.

I too have aphantasia. I can sometimes paint blurry shapes in my mind's eye. Dark blue, dark purple, and dark green are easiest; bright colors like yellow or white are very hard. I can control the colored splotches to a limited extent. I can increase the area covered by a splotch and even swirl the colors around the center, if I concentrate.

I have both system 1 and 2. Sound is actually the only sense I can imagine. For example, I hear my thoughts as I compose this sentence. I also hear and remember songs and sounds, like the sound of a lawnmower or a door squeaking open. As for voices I can't control, here's an example: Whenever I wash my hands with a bar of soap, I remember my mom saying, "you need to pick up the soap, don't just rub your wet hands on it." The voice is hers, not "my internal voice". This is a memory of an actual event, not my imagination or a new conversation with voices in my head (which don't occur for me).

I have extreme aphantasia. Everything is black when I close my eyes. The only sense that I can realistically imagine is sound, and yes, I do "hear" a song "stuck in my head". The name for that is an "earworm". My wife has hyperphantasia. When she imagines something, she is fully there. Sights, sounds, smells, touch. She says it's as real as real life. When she needs to spell a word, she apparently actually sees the letters floating in front of her open eyes. When I said that I don't see that, she said, "How can you spell?", with some alarm in her voice. She also doesn't understand how I can remember visual images, if I can't see them. I think I store memories as linked concepts. For example, I can clearly remember the house I grew up in: Two stories, red bricks, dark green shutters, white trim, etc. even though I can't actually see anything in my "mind's eye". Sometimes she says she sometimes wishes she had aphantasia too, because when she remembers something bad from her life (usually in dreams), she relives those traumatic events as if she is really there.

I am also on the extreme low end of aphantasia. Everything is black when my eyes are closed. That is a good analogy. The one I use is that there's a wall of black glass blocking my view. During lucid dreams, I am sometimes able to punch holes in the wall, or paint rough patches of color on the wall. Why do I call it a glass wall? Because I can tell something is behind it. I can even trace the outlines of something I can't see.

Do you find that some colors are harder to "bring in"? As I mentioned above, very dark blues, greens, and purples are easiest for me. Lighter colors like yellow are much harder, and white is extremely difficult.

My understanding is that if you experience "associated sounds, textures, and the feel of wind" AND visuals, you'd have hyperphantasia. Given your description, it does sound like you have aphantasia. Apparently, the senses people can imagine vary more than most people realize. I can imagine sounds, but none of the other senses. As for the cat in the tree, I can imagine the tree's structure and could sketch it, but it's not in shadow. Instead, it feels like it's behind a wall of black glass. Somehow, I know it's there, but all I see is black. I can sometimes get vague visuals when I (rarely) have a lucid dream, and can sometimes even punch a hole in the wall for a few seconds and see something, then it's back to black.

I have aphantasia (on the extreme low end of the scale). My first experience with hyperphantasia was when I discussed my condition with my wife and discovered she has hyperphantasia (and as it turns out, she's near the top end of the scale). This likely explains why we've had communication issues.

I only found out about aphantasia a few years ago. I didn't feel a sense of loss. Instead, I felt a sense of understanding: This explains a lot. Your description of an "invisible wall" sounds similar to my experience: It feels as if there's a wall of black glass blocking the vision of my mind's eye. I'm on the far end of the aphantasia scale. It's almost always black. However, I can somehow sense what is behind the wall. I can imagine a familiar scene and sketch what is hidden behind the black. For me, aphantasia hasn't felt limiting. I score very high on those 3D shapes you need to mentally rotate on an IQ test. I often seem to know the answer before I've even scanned all the choices. I've learned to punch holes in that glass wall or even smear colors across the blackness, when lucid dreaming. There have been 2 times in my life that I've seen something other than black when I was fully awake. The first was scary: I was playing an early arcade video game "Star Fire" which flashed the whole screen during tie fighter attacks, possibly triggering something akin to epilepsy: I continued to see the game after I quit playing. It would reappear whenever I closed my eyes. I was freaking out because I was SEEING THINGS WITH MY EYES CLOSED! At the time, I couldn't understand why my friends were not as alarmed as I was. The blackness faded back into place after an hour or so. The second time was when I lost 1/6th of my field of vision, due to an "aura without migraine". My vision was missing in a curved pie shape regardless of whether or not my eyes were closed. What did I see in that pie wedge? There were impossibly thin lines of red, yellow, and blue, which were so thin and sharp it almost hurt to look at them. They bounced outward along the edges of the wedge at a frantic speed. What was in between those lines? Nothing. Not black. Not gray. NOTHING. If I were to draw it, I'd use dark gray, but that's not what I saw. There was no color, just nothingness. I suggest you don't dwell on what you can't do and concentrate on what you can do and what makes you happy. Do what you can to capture the moments you can never relive with photos and videos. Try to learn how to experience lucid dreaming. It's entirely possible that you could learn to see SOMETHING with your eyes closed. If your life feels incomplete, perhaps you consider getting a pet or two. A dog will be your friend for life. Kittens are best adopted in pairs.

My wife has hyperphantasia. She is sometimes troubled by bad dreams and memories, which feel completely real to her (sight, sound, and touch). She has said that at times, she wishes she had aphantasia like I do. I do think the difference between our subjective reality has caused communication difficulties. I'm the artist, not her. Interestingly, I can somehow sense what I'm imagining and can sketch what I can't actually see. I also have superior color matching skills with remembered colors. I can't see the color, but I "know" when it's right.

My aphantasia wasn't much of an issue for me in school. I was even on my high school math team. Here are a couple of my main techniques: for physics, I used memorization: the first thing I did on a test was to write down the formulas in the margins. I only memorized the basic formulas and would then derive any other formulas as needed. Yes, that does waste precious time, but I usually was able to get a passing grade. For history, I would write down what the teacher said in class. Writing it down embedded it in my mind, so I could regurgitate it on tests.

No idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was. I have both.

Sorry, no, I haven't.

The darkness was just normal for me, so no I did not need to counteract it in any way. I have been a night owl most of my life and stay up far too late sometimes, but part of that is due to waiting until I actually feel sleepy before I go to bed. Otherwise, my mind may run frantically, like a like a hamster on its wheel. As an adult, I learned to breathe slowly and count my breaths, to counteract those frantic racing thoughts. That works, but only if I really focus on my breathing, to avoid intrusive thoughts. These days, I take melatonin, which really helps.

Very rarely and only when I've been sleeping in an unfamiliar place.