Zara Parkes

I am 52. I was watching a podcast with people talking about aphantasia. I had heard of it before, and thought "how weird, not being able to imagine anything!" Then they started talking about closing your eyes and imagining an apple - a nice red apple popped up in my mind, then they started asking questions about it, but when I tried to "zoom in" on it, it disappeared. A bit like when you zoom in on a low quality image it is so pixelated that you can't see the detail. Another analogy is like the virus you [used to?] get on a computer, where when you tried to click on the X to close the pop up, it would move, always just out of reach. So yes, I do get an image, but only a fleeting one which I can't hold on to no matter how much I try. It becomes confused almost as if my brain hasn't had time to fill in the finer details (background, context etc.) so it just trashes the image. This may explain why I have always suffered from face blindness: I can remember totally random details about people I meet months later, but I also regularly blank people I know well through not recognising them. When my best friend (and room mate) walked into the empty bar I was working in unexpectedly, I looked her in the face without recognition, apologised for the wait and asked what I could get her! Whether relevant or not I don't know, but I also have (and have always had) bad night vision and I suffer from hallucinations in low visibility. Not great for driving at night! Also, whether relevant or not, I am self-diagnosed AuDHD (certainly on the spectrum somewhere!!)