Felix Bunke

"Worse"?! I never said that, not would I. I am proud to be autistic. It is a very fundamental part of who I am, affecting me and shaping me at the deepest possible level, MUCH more so than aphantasia ever could. I see neither autism nor aphantasia as "bad." Autism does disable me in certain ways, though, mainly because of how society is set up, meaning I have to try to make my way in a world that is not made for people like me, but I wouldn't want to change what I am by "curing" it. Nor would I want to "cure" my aphantasia, although I have not found it to be nearly as profound of a difference, nor have I found it disabling in any way.

Well, it was gradual as people talked about it more after Zeman coined the term and it gradually spread. I have congenital global aphantasia, and I, too, thought that terms like "visualize" and "mind's eye" were figurative language, especially since I could recall and imagine visuals even though I could not literally see them (although those visuals would likely not be as detailed as they would be for someone who can visualize) and not merely describe them verbally. the best metaphor I've come across for that is a computer with no monitor, or with its monitor turned off -- it can still have image files in its memory and process them even though it's not displaying them. So, I didn't have the experiences that some other aphantasics have apparently had such as being confused about 'counting sheep" when going to sleep (I just thought that meant imagining the sheep jumping over a fence -- but without seeing them -- and counting them, but it still didn't work for me, maybe because it made my brain too active to go to sleep) or being told to "visualize" something in meditation or some other exercise (again, I thought that just meant imagining it without seeing it, so, no problem for me). That might help to explain why it took so long for me to discover it until I started hearing and reading about people not being able to visualize, and, at first, I thought that meant they couldn't do the type of imagining I was doing (i.e., without literally seeing it), but, gradually, I came to understand that some people -- most people, even -- actually WERE literally seeing it, meaning that there was another way in which i was different! (More on that in a bit.) I do remember one time in 2nd grade, though (in the USA's educational system, that is) when the teacher asked us to close our eyes and imagine an animal. I can't remember what animal. After a moment, the teacher asked us if we could see the animal. I thought it was probably meant figuratively, but the thought did cross my mind, "What if other people are actually seeing it?" I figured I probably shouldn't ask -- I thought I'd probably be laughed at for suggesting such a fairy-tale notion and told that it was obviously figurative language. I am also autistic, and I had to endure a lot of bullying, etc., growing up for being different, although, back then, no one, including myself, knew that that difference was actually autism. I also had a hard time understanding "normal" people, why they did what they did, why they socialized the way they did (and so much) and had status and hierarchies that seemed completely nonsensical to me, why they constantly dishonestly said one thing but meant another (and why I was expected to somehow magically know what they meant, anyway, or know what extra stuff they'd "read into" what I said but never meant, and, therefore, did not say), etc., etc. So, I was used to "normal" people not speaking literally, so I figured that talk about "visualizing," "mind's eye," etc. was just another example of that. I discovered aphantasia a few years or so after discovering I'm autistic, and after a lifetime of knowing I was different (and being told in no uncertain terms that I was different and that that was unacceptable for some reason). So, being different was nothing new to me at all -- indeed, I'd spent most of my life feeling as if I were an alien that somehow was stranded on earth among these strange creatures called human beings, and that wasn't because of my aphantasia. So, discovering aphantasia was like, "Well, that's another thing I can add to the list!" Compared to autism, aphantasia is more like a curiosity to me, as it has not affected my life to anywhere near the degree that autism has. When I've mentioned that in online aphantasia groups, though, I've gotten a few negative comments claiming I was minimizing aphantasia or something like that, but it seems to me more like they were minimizing autism, not realizing what a profound difference being autistic is by comparison. Or, maybe they were just new to the idea of being different and found it scary, which, frankly, I find hard to have sympathy for, having had to deal with abuse for so much of my life from people who found difference scary. As for me, I am abnormal and proud of it!