Jill Robinson

I first came across the concept of visualisation about 45 years or so ago. I read a book about it but found it hard to do as I couldn’t really get very much in my mind’s eye when I tried so I thought it was just me and I needed to practice but it didn’t seem to help. Around that time, I was very into different self-help techniques, many of which involved some form of visualisation which made it difficult for me to engage fully as I couldn’t really see much, if anything. For several years, I lead a meditation group I was a member of as it was more rewarding for me to read the visualisations for the group than to try to do them because, as a participant in the group, I would often just fall asleep. I saw something relatively recently about afantasia online I think and looked into it briefly because I was surprised to discover that it might actually be something other people experienced, or didn’t! Today, somebody was being interviewed on the radio about it and I had another search online and found your site. It is probably adversely affecting me at the moment as I am trying to heal what is probably neuropathic pain which I have had for 7 years’ now. Many of the mind/body techniques for pain reprocessing involve mindfulness/meditation/visualisation and I don’t feel I am making much progress. Also I practice Qigong daily and my Sensei is always talking about visualising the Qi and golden energy going my body and I find it so hard to do this. I have also always had a very poor memory and cannot recall many things from my life. My partner frequently mentions things we have done together in the past of which I have little or no memory. I was involved in a research project about memory a few years’ ago and likened my memory to a very poor video recorder. I also don’t dream or else I dream but can’t recall them except on extremely rare occasions. I tried to take up painting a few years’ ago too but find it difficult, if not impossible, to think of something to paint so I just end up copying other things.