Christina West

"I am 57 years old, and just a few months ago I discovered that I cannot visualize when I attempted some visualization exercises and struggled with them. I then saw a Facebook post about Aphantasia and was shocked to realize that others saw images in their mind. I asked my family if they were able to see pictures in their mind; both my husband and son do, but my son's are more colorful and vivid, as it turns out. They too had never realized that people had different experiences. Since then, I have had several chats with ChatGPT on the subject, which have been quite interesting. I was actually directed to this network through a recent chat. ChatGPT gave me a number of tests. It seems that I have Aphantasia when I close my eyes, but that I have minimal visualization with my eyes open, particularly if it is geometric, such as a map or floor plan, or if it involves motion (spatial/relational imagery). For example, I can warm up for tennis in my mind or rehearse for a presentation in my head with minimal imagery. The images are a faint grayscale and not very detailed. I can't see faces or other static images (object imagery), however. ChatGPT says that I probably have hypophantasia. The reason I was directed to your site was because I am deeply interested in neurology and brain development, so I was inquiring about ways I could not only learn more about Aphantasia but also become involved in some way, such as clinical trials, community science, etc. I've started by making my way through the surveys before I dive deeper into what your website has to offer. So I'm in the early stages of my journey, yet at the same time I'm already starting to see some overlap with neurodivergent characteristics. I believe I have ADD, though I have never been diagnosed. But that's an entirely different story for another day, perhaps. I'm thrilled to have discovered your site. I wish I had known about all this earlier in life, but at the same time I'm a strong believer that life throws things at us when we are ready to deal with them. I'm excited to see where this journey leads me. Thank you for all of your work and for creating these resources and this amazing community."

"I discovered aphantasia as a term around 2023-2024 and felt joy and relief for finding the name for this experience. I am self-diagnosed autistic and have always struggled with autobiographical memory, which other autistic friends of mine don't struggle with so I was doing some research and found that aphantasia is my 'missing link', being associated with both autism and autobiographical memory issues. I know my autobiographical memory issue is not a general memory issue as my recall of facts and information both spoken and written has always been above average. I had a feeling from a young age that I was missing something in the visualiasation department, mainly due to the trouble I had with spelling. I was a voracious reader from a young age and started reading before I started school, however despite having a wide vocabulary and no trouble reading or writing, I could not spell accurately. Teachers couldn't understand, they said, "but you read so much, just picture the word like you see it in the book", now it was my turn not to understand, I just said, "I don't know how to do that". Maths too was a struggle unless I was able to write it down on paper, the teachers said, "picture a blackboard in your mind and write the maths problem on that", oh my god, I thought, that is even harder than just trying to work out the maths! But everyone else could do it, they didn't look confused by the instructions. Over time these instances built up; asking my talented artist friend what she could see in her head to allow her to draw without a reference was illuminating for me, in that it confirmed that other people had internal visual experiences and some had more detailed ones than others. I also struggle greatly with navigating, I can recognise places but not visualise what comes next on the path, I have to learn a path by rote in order to navigate confidently; other people would find this surprising and make references to mental maps and picturing landmarks to navigate, so I figured my mental imaging deficit was connected to this."