Magdalena Balliet

I’m 22, and I only recently discovered aphantasia through a TikTok post that asked viewers to imagine an apple. I couldn’t picture anything at all—just darkness, no shape, no color, nothing. Meanwhile, my girlfriend described seeing it in extraordinary detail, almost like a vivid photograph, complete with scenery around it. That was the moment we both realized something huge: I have aphantasia, and she has hyperphantasia. It felt surreal to discover that we exist on such extreme opposite ends of the imagination spectrum. Me, unable to mentally visualize even the simplest image, and her, able to create entire lifelike scenes in her mind with incredible clarity. Since that realization, we’ve spent hours talking about it—asking each other questions, comparing experiences, and trying to understand how differently our minds actually work. Suddenly, so many things started making sense. For years, there were moments when she’d explain something visually, and I’d struggle to fully grasp what she meant, which sometimes left her feeling frustrated. Now we understand that it was never about not listening or not trying—it’s simply that our brains process information in fundamentally different ways. Honestly, it’s both fascinating and mind-blowing. We’ve been together for four years, and finding this out has given us such a deeper understanding of each other. I only wish we had known about aphantasia and hyperphantasia from the very beginning, because it explains so much about how we communicate, think, and experience the world in completely different ways.