Juan Pablo Fierro

I’ve just taken the VVIQ and apparently I fall into the extreme aphantasia range, the 1st percentile. I still think this field is young and the statistics aren’t fully reliable yet, but the result makes sense when I look back at my experiences. For example, I’ve always felt puzzled when guided meditations would say things like “picture a forest” or “see yourself on a beach.” I assumed these instructions were metaphors, a poetic way of saying “relax.” I could put myself in those places and feel the atmosphere/aura of the scene, but I never imagined people were actually seeing images in their mind. Years ago I participated in a psilocybin ceremony with an Indigenous community in Cauca, Colombia. The experience was unusual because it was full of intense bodily sensations and pain but not a single vision. I simply thought that was my way of experiencing it and focused on the meaning of the experience rather than the absence of images. Later I did a sound healing session with Tibetan bowls and in that altered state I did have visuals. I saw myself as an eagle flying over the Himalayas while my body moved spontaneously through what felt like yoga kriyas with complex asanas I normally cannot do. Another important moment happened during a regression therapy session. The guide kept asking me to describe what I was seeing and I had nothing to report. He grew frustrated and suggested that I needed to practice visualizing. That was the first time I sensed something about my inner world might be different. I still did not connect any of this to aphantasia because I have very vivid dreams, sometimes even lucid ones. In the first minutes of waking I can generate movie-like visuals in a way that resembles how people describe mental imagery. So I assumed everything was normal. The real turning point came during a recent meditation that was part of my preparation for a therapeutic psilocybin session with my psychologist. The mindfulness exercise was simple: imagine a lemon, smell it, taste it. Nothing happened. I found the exercise almost silly because there was simply nothing to imagine. And that was the moment when everything clicked. The difficulty/frustration visualizing the lemon, the absence of visions in my first mushroom ceremony, the challenges in regression therapy. I searched online and discovered the concept of aphantasia. After taking the VVIQ, it left me wondering why I was able to have visuals during the sound healing session if I supposedly have extreme aphantasia. Maybe the deep relaxation shifted my brain into a dream-like state where imagery becomes accessible, the same way it briefly does as I wake up. Images worked seamlessly when coming from other parts of the brain. As I read more about aphantasia I realized I have probably lived my whole life assuming everyone else’s mind worked like mine. My thinking is built on concepts, words, structure and intuition rather than pictures. What surprised me was not the lack of mental imagery. I have always lived that way. What surprised me were the claims that aphantasia is linked to reduced sensory or emotional sensitivity. For me it is the opposite. I feel deeply connected to external sensory experience. Spaces, materials, textures, sound and light affect me. I relate strongly to being an empath. Social and political issues move me deeply. If anything, I suspect I am more sensitive to the world outside because I cannot summon it internally at will. I do not retain images but I feel the world intensely as I encounter it. My work depends on that sensitivity. I am a designer, architect, photographer and woodworker and my process relies on perceiving form, proportion, atmosphere, light and material presence in real time. So I was puzzled and even slightly offended when I read claims that aphantasia correlates with reduced sensory or emotional depth. Maybe these findings say as much about the perspective of the observer as they do about the phenomenon itself. Scientists who do not have aphantasia are trying to understand it from the outside and that point of view naturally limits what they can detect. My experience, and the experiences of others I have read, suggest that the relationship between aphantasia, imagination and sensitivity is far more complex.

I just discovered I might have extreme aphantasia, and your post resonated because I’ve had almost the opposite experience of what some studies and videos I’ve been looking at suggest. What surprised me with this discovery wasn’t the lack of 'mental imagery', as I always assumed everyone thought the way I do, but how often aphantasia is described as being linked to reduced sensory or emotional sensitivity. For me it’s the opposite. I feel deeply connected to external sensory experience (spaces, materials, textures, sound, light) and I even relate more to being an empath (social and political issues affect me deeply). If anything, I suspect I’m more sensitive to the outside precisely because I cannot summon it internally at will. I don’t retain images, but I feel the world intensely as I encounter it. My work (I’m a designer, architect, photographer and woodworker) depends on that sensitivity on perceiving form, proportion, atmosphere, light and material presence in real time. So I was also puzzled, even a bit offended, by claims that aphantasia correlates with reduced sensory and emotional sensitivity. Maybe these findings say as much about the vantage point of the observer as about the phenomenon itself. Scientists who don’t have aphantasia are necessarily observing it from the outside, and their perspective naturally limits what they can understand or detect. Your experience, and mine, suggest that this relationship is much more complex. I’m curious to hear how others experience this. Thank you for opening the conversation.