Lois Tucker

"I have known since about age 6 or 7 (65+) years ago, that I was blind like the two blind from-birth twin girls in my class, that I saw nothing when my eyes were closed. Dreams happened with my eyes open or a word/verbal concept of an experience upon waking. Until I learned to read, I did not understand what people said for the most part and made it up what they meant. Odd duck I was. The world changed when I read See Jane Run. Run Jane Run. I earned straight A's in school without taking books home, ever. I realized early that the 'answers' would show themselves as needed. I did not need to KNOW or remember everything. It is all in there as a text file. [(anything!) I have family still locked into the pictures of pain and angst from incidents in childhood. Aphantasia is a superpower. All there is, is NOW. Nothing is left of yesterday and tomorrow comes when it comes. I operate in NOW. Having thoughts is not thinking. I suspect picture believers use thoughts that appear creating pictures that are not real, but they believe they are, holding on to them in upset or pretend happiness, BLIND to reality. I've worked with people who have photographic memory. It comes at a price. If the picture is deemed reality, they are afraid to process what is actually real, stuck in their head with an answer that often does not work in the real world. Once you get that success is nothing more than a series of learning experiences, failures for some, life is really easy."

"I've taken rotation puzzles for job interviews and have found them relatively simple. Doesn't having multiple choices do most of the mental imaging for you? Instead of trying to form and manipulate a mental model, I can compare points and count cubes"

"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."