Eric Dessert

"I do not think I ever really thought about the issue in these terms; since I am already neurodivergent in other ways, I just assumed that this might be part of it, or that it was the same for other people, or something like that. I think I only realised it when I first read about aphantasia as a newly defined symptom on BBC or some other mainstream media outlet. I _had_ previously heard about the fact that some people have an inner voice and some don't – “(an)endophasia” if you wan to look it up –, but never extended that to images. For the record, I _do_ have an internal monologue – is there any data on correlation between (an)eendophasia and aphantasia?"

"About a decade ago, my daughter said to me, "Hey! There's a term for what's wrong with you! It's aphantasia." Prior to that, I just thought I was the only person who can't see pictures in the mind."

"I was talking via Discord to a co-worker in Ireland and she mentioned she had aphantasia and had just discovered that another coworker was also aphantic (is that the right word?) When I asked what it was, she explained it and it was like a truck hit me because I had the same experience. Apparently, however, I'm hypophantasia as I can occasionally see vague, fuzzy images of very familiar things. I suffered a closed head injury when I was 20, so I'm wondering if it goes back to that or if I was always this way."

"I always had this, it was just completely normal for me and I never really thought about it. But I at the same time always had many issues with visual memory, remembering people by faces, in arts class, with describing places and things from memory. I never really had any kind of visual memory or memory of things that was experienced more or less visual only. Yes, I remember my school days, but only a few things that I have a strong emotional or acoustic connection with are really present in my mind (but not at all with any kind of visual representation, but I can play back the connected emotions or acoustic part and the information about the connected experience (without visual info) just fine. I never understood when people talked about the inner eye or when I someone said that they can picture it in their mind, for me it was always only a figure of speech and that was it for me, just something that people say. My non-existing visual memory I had put done as that, as a bad memory, as something that I just had. "Oh, I am just bad with faces and I don't care about most what I see all day so my brain filters it out. Nothing strange at all" That went this way until I was about 40, so 4 maybe 6 year ago, when on some of the many RSS feeds that I am subscribed to a article was published about aphantasia. The article was describing me, was describing how my mind, my memory worked and I was completely blown away. After that I started to read as many articles and publications about it as I could find. I had a name for how my mind was, how I was and I had published articles and even peer reviewed scientific papers as proof that it was real and something other people was experiencing too. That I am able to say "Oh, that I can't because I have aphantasia" is often such a relief, because it is no longer a "you don't try hard enough" but a "that is how my brain works, here read those papers if you don't belief me". It is no longer my "fault" but just how the combination of genes (or whatever factor else responsible for it) made me."

"There was a Facebook post a few years back by a Silicon Valley software engineer who described aphantasia and how it blew him away to discover it. My wife actually sent that post to me with the line "Read that .. I think that is you. " ... my mind was blown. All of a sudden my life started making sense. Why i was useless when my wife sent me to the store to get paint in the color of our living room. Why i can watch horror movies all day long and not get nightmares. Why i settled on an entirely black wardrobe years ago. Why i was never able to create cool looking slide decks at work. Why, even though I'm an absolute cinephile, i found it impossible to imagine a movie of my own. It was a revelation."

"I've always had Aphantasia.I was so frustrated when I was young because I would try to explain that I didn't see pictures when I closed my eyes, and I was told I was wrong. That of course I did. I was asked if I dreamed. And yes I have vivid dreams in color. But then I would be told if I closed my eyes I'd see the same types of images as my dreams. When I said that wasn't so, they would reiterate that something I was experiencing wasn't true- it messed with my self esteem and my own self-validations.I never daydreamed. I can't daydream because I can't picture the process of what those daydreams would be. Again I was told that of course I had day dreams- again another truth I was living being told it wasn't so. I can't just sit and listen to music. I can sing and I can dance along with music, but just sitting there listening to music is incredibly boring to me.In talking with friends they visualize and daydream when they listen to music. My self esteem when it comes to my looks ( American woman- oy vay!) is always based on how I feel not on how I look , I think that is because there isn't some perfect image of myself in my minds eye...as I don't have a minds eye." When I feel good I look in a mirror and see a pretty lady and when i feel bad I look in the mirror and see an ugly/fat/whatever gal. When it comes to members of the opposite sex their looks mean very little as I can't really remember what they look like. I used to have a friend in my teens who hated that I could never tell her the eye color of the latest crush I had. I also have a dear friend from my youth who is a fashion designer and it drives him nuts that I never remember any outfits unless it was something we took a picture of.When things were difficult someone suggested meditation and the amount I hated it surprised everyone who knew me. I believe now that seeing thing in your minds eye is a necessary part of the meditative process. One that I am woefully unable to do. It was suggested over and over and until I knew the word and definition and reality of aphantasia.As we devolve into turbulent times I find the lack of truth clicks into the sense of reality, or lack thereof that I had growing up with this. It's being told over and over that something that is happening to you , cannot be happening to you that really messed with my head in this journey."

"I didn’t know I had aphantasia until early 2025. I was listening to a CBC program, half-paying attention, when the host invited listeners to imagine an apple. I paused and tried. Nothing appeared. No colour, no shape, no suggestion of an image. I tried again, then with other familiar things, but there was still nothing. Just awareness without a picture.When I told my husband, he was genuinely startled. He couldn’t believe I didn’t see anything at all. I, in turn, couldn’t believe that he did. He described images in full detail, even colours that seemed to accompany certain sounds. I remember thinking that he must be speaking metaphorically. Surely people didn’t actually see things in their minds.I called my daughter. She was in her forties and, as it turned out, just like me. She couldn’t picture anything either. When she realized that others truly could, anger surfaced, anger at something unnamed, unrecognized, and therefore unmourned. I felt it too. All those years of being told, “Why don’t you remember that?” or “Didn’t you see it?” We had taken those words at face value, assuming they were figures of speech. We said that ourselves, I can picture that, I see what you mean, never suspecting that other people meant it literally.When my daughter’s husband learned this, he paused and said, “Oh. That explains a lot.” My husband began noticing small things as well. He saw how I sometimes hesitate before opening a cupboard, or reach into the one beside it before finding what I want. It’s a fleeting misstep, I quickly adjust, but I don’t have an internal picture guiding me to the right place. I’ve always thought of it as a quirk, nothing more.There are moments when I feel a quiet resentment at the advantage others seem to have. But more often, I notice what my daughter and I don’t carry. We don’t replay scenes from the past. We don’t relive arguments in sharp detail. We don’t sit with old hurts, revisiting them again and again. We rarely stay angry for more than a few minutes. Our inner worlds are calm, unburdened by images that linger or intrude.I’m beginning to understand that vivid mental imagery can be both a gift and a weight. It can haunt as much as it delights. We may not be able to summon palm trees on an ocean beach, but neither do we re-experience cruelty or loss in graphic detail. We know what those images are, we just don’t see them. And in that absence, there is a kind of peace I hadn’t understood until now."

"I didn’t really thinking or know about it until my wife and I were talking about reading and I said I struggle with staying with a book. I didn’t know why until she asked me about the visuals in my mind, and I said what do you mean…..she said don’t you see what you’re reading in your mind? I didn’t know that’s how you read a book. I didn’t even realize that you pictured the story. To me it was always just words, and I’ve always struggled with finishing books. She’s a big reader and I wanted to do something with her and we just kind of stumbled on it."

"There are two points in my life i could pull up equally here, so i'll do just that. First, when i was a child, my parents took me to a hypnotist, i dont remember what they tried to achieve, but i remember one thing: the hypnotist told me to visualize a red ball rolling up a hill, i asked her «What do i do if i cant see the ball?». However this wasnt really the awakening, as i didnt think much of it afterwards. The second one was when discussing imagination with some people on discord, i was already aware of the word aphantasia, and said that i had it, but thats the first time i realized how most people think, they said they could literally, not figuratively, see everything they thought of as like another layer of reality. Thats the first time i heard what people mean by visualization, it sounded like a superpower to me honestly, i still cant believe it is THE NORM! Hallucinating at will? How?! The weirdest part of my experience, to me at least, is that i can make complex «images» full of detail, both abstract and not, then manipulate them like a god, but i am not able to see these things myself? I can make a guy kick the sun out of the sky, but i am not allowed to see it? Its honestly a bit unfair. Most of my thoughts are what others would call an inner voice (just without a single sound), my thoughts often consist of words, but i can freely switch between the invisible images and the soundless words, its weird, very weird."

"A few weeks ago at a small family gathering, my son asked us to close our eyes and picture an apple. The group responded with descriptions of colors, light and dark, details. I had no idea what they were talking about. I'm 77.?error=INVALID_TOKEN"