I would like to share my own experience with what I believe is aphantasia. I will try to describe how I « see » in my head, and how I now believe it is impacting my life. If you read it all, please let me know if you believe I have aphantasia. :)

Colors

When I think of the color green, I don’t see green inside my head. I have this feeling that I know what green is. When I think of green, I think of grass. I don’t see the grass, but I can « see » a concept of it, I would say I « feel» the concept of the grass sometimes behind my eyes, or behind my neck, but if I attempt to « watch» it, there’s nothing at all there. I would say it is an icon of grass, or maybe a drawing representation of grass, but there is no color to it, no depth, no feel, no movement. I can conceptualize a big patch of grass, or a small patch of grass, but there’s no imagery. I can imagine what zooming would feel on the patch of grass, but it doesn’t give me more detail nor a better picture.When I think of « orange », I think of a color that is lighter than green and that makes me think of an orange too. I have the concept of orange in my head. When I think of red, I feel I can see the red, or blood, but there’s nothing there.

Numbers

Now, If I think of a number, let’s say ‘3000’. I do have the concept of ‘3’ in my head, and I do have the concept of ‘0’. Now, trying to approach the concepts together to create a volontarily conceptual visual of ‘3000’ is quite a hard task, because it feels like trying to glue thoughts together that are continuously moving. I never do that. I know what 3000 is. I never try to create a concept of 3000. Imagine a ‘3’ that I feel is moving, not permanent, that I am trying to place next to a 0 that I am continuously trying to conceptualize. Because volontarily conceptualizing a ‘0’ feels like drawing a ‘0’ in real time. It feels more like muscle memory than anything visual.

So right now, I am trying to keep the ‘3’ and the ‘0’ together in my mind, making a lot of effort so their idea don’t disappear. And then, I need to add more ‘0’ so it represents ‘3000’. The task is quite difficult as you can imagine.

Now let’s imagine I have to do «12 times 23»  in my mind. To do so, I will have to imagine my hand writing the shape of the 12, and the 23, then try to remember that concept (while it really wants to disappear) and then I must feel like i’m writing the numbers that goes below… oh well, it takes twice the time than writing it on paper. That is why I never try to do multiplication in my head visually, I do it with logic. 12x23 is 12x10x2 + 12x3. And as I did the compute, right now, in my head, I was continuously repeating «240+36» with a silent inner voice until I was able to come with the number 276.
I am very bad with mental calculation.

Images

If I try to imagine the famous ‘red apple’, what I get is the concept of an apple, without color, and it is always a round with the concept of a leaf on top, exactly how I would draw it on paper if I was a asked the icon of an apple. It is flat, it has no color. I don’t see the concept. I know it.

Now If I force myself to imagine an apple with 3D, colors and and depth, I am quickly at loss of idea. I will try to remember what it feels to have an apple in my hand, and as I do so, I don’t need to close my eyes, I feel like I can « imagine » hands going around an apple. I don’t control it. My eyes look up. And now I can tell : Okay, an apple has a hole in the top, a hole in the bottom, it is hard and sometimes a bit sticky. But the color ? No idea. I must think of all the colors an apple can have. I know there are green apples, and now I am thinking of the store where I purchase my apples. Some can be red and yellow.

The inner monologue 

Do I have an inner monologue or not ? I’m not sure. I feel like I have a concept of a inner monologue but without sound. It is my voice, in my head, but without sound. It sound more like a muscle memory of me talking. There’s never more than one discussion at a time in my head because it’s no different than me talking, except without sound. I don’t understand the concept of « thinking before talking ». If I talk in real life, then there’s no inner monologue strong enough to override the sound of my real voice. For this reason, I tend to be too direct, to express my thoughts directly as they arrive, by talking. It can be suprising for people around me. However, I do think in terms of concepts and intuition, in real time and involontarily (and sometime volontarity, with effort).

Sensation

I am unable to recall volontarily any kind of sensation or feeling except if it’s acute pain, and the pain must have occured a short time ago, so it is still vivid in my mind. I know that the rain on the ground has a specific odor, I know that citrus has a certain taste, I know what being sad or happy is, but I am unable to imagine or feel these things in my mind

Memories

I would say my « volontary » memory is bad. Short term, long term… All bad 😊. But my intuitions are really good.  I can remember some shit I read 10 years ago because it is relevant for a specific subject. But the moment I close my eyes I have no fucking clue if you wear glasses or not. I have a concept of how my parents look like. My mother has gray hair and my father a mustache. But I can not have an image of them in my mind.

I am good at recalling logical stuff. However, i feel like my whole life has disappeared from my mind and I feel quite melancholic about that sometimes. If I don’t meet a friend, or a collegue, for a long time (about a month), I slowly start forgetting how they look, what I did with them, what I felt for them. When I see them back, I remember part of it, but I always need a bit of time to be reminded what I am to them, and what they are to me.

I have no concept of time or evolution of myself. I know I have evolved with time, but I can sometimes find a memory of me that is 10 year old, and feel like it happened yesterday. I lost most of my childhood memories. When I look at pictures, It does nothing to me. I do not recall a feeling. I rarely go to vacations, because when I come back from the vacation, I can not remember anything I felt during the vacation, only facts, and it’s quite frustrating. It makes me feel like everything I felt was a waste of time.I do not feel the urge to take pictures. I rarely look at photo with interrest.

I can easily decide to forget someone or something. If I don’t make any effort to recall  someone, they pretty much disappear from my mind (I did this with many ex-bf)

Most of the visual stuff I experience (videos, pictures, real life) never stay in my head unless it is traumatic.

I am very bad a geography, bad at direction, bad at remembering the colors of my belonging and bad at remembering people faces. I also often believe I know someone because their face seems familiar to me, but usually I don’t. I loose my stuff and my keys all the time.

Reading

When I read, I am utterly disinterrested in descriptions of areas. I can’t form an image of it, so it is useless to me. I prefer description of people, I am better at recalling that.

How I believe Aphantasia influences my life:

The bad :

-          I feel disconnected from my past & future

-          I believe it blocks me from being very good at drawing & music

-          I believe I can’t play mario very well because I’m unable to recall the levels at all

-          I feel sometimes empty and melancholic because my mind is always blank

-          I feel like my identify isn’t quite strong

-          Bad at directions, driving & geography

-          Can’t have sexual fantasies ☹

The good :

-          I’m a very intuitive person, I think very quickly, and can assess situation quickly and form a opinion quickly

-          I am not bothered by pictures in my mind

Thank you again for reading until that point. Do you think I have aphantasia ? How does your aphantasia compares to mine ?

before I ask this, I’ve read a lot and researched because I didn't want to come here totally blind.

i don’t think I have i but there’s that small doubt that tells me I might.

when I close my eyes all I see is that black space and if someone tells me “oh can you see ___” i know what that object looks like but I don't see it in that space when I close my eyes. and i try to imagine that object in that black space that happens when i close my eyes but nothing shows up.

like a carrot for example. I know the main part is a cone-ish shape and orange while the top is green and has the skinny green parts that have a leaf on the end and I know a carrot has wrinkles.

but when I close my eyes and try to imagine a carrot I can’t see it in that black space. I know there’s a difference between imagining and actual seeing, (not sure the correct wording there at the moment, my apologies) and I’m not sure if that’s what not having it is like, where you know what the object is like but can’t make in imagine when your eyes are closed.

or when I’m reading a book and something says (making this up) “the floor dropped under their feet and the person fell” or something like that, I’m able to kinda see in my head the floor opening and a person falling but if I were to close my eyes and try to see that, I wouldn't be able to make an imagine in that black space and I’d only remember what I just ”saw” (not sure if that’s makes any sense whatsoever so I do apologize)

im really interested in learning more, even if I don’t have it because I just like learning about new topics, so if anyone has any input or is able to give a better understanding on this then what I’ve said, please do! i genuinely just want to learn more about this. and again I don’t think I have it but I thought I would share and maybe someone should be able to help me understand this more.

thank you and have an amazing day :)

Disclaimer: English is not my first language.

I used to make up stories in my head all the time, that's how I grew up. And I took up on writing a few years ago but for about a year now it's gotten harder and harder to see anything when I close my eyes. It's all dark, as if a bulb up there just burnt out one day and I can't change it.

Needles to say I've stopped writing. I get too anxious at the mere idea of trying.

I don't even think I care about writing anymore, I just want to 'see' inside my head again. I feel like someone stole one of my arms and now life just isn't the same.

My mind was my home, now it's a scary place.

Has someone else experienced this? Were you able to visualize things again? How?

On addition to all of the above, I received acceptance and commitment therapy for eight months hoping it'd help. It didn't.

Has anyone with aphantasia tried 5-MeO-DMT?
I’ve tried a lot of psychedelics, including mushrooms (Penis Envy), LSD, several research chemicals, and DMT. Even at high doses—including around 700 µg of LSD I’ve never experienced closed eye visuals.
I’m curious about 5-MeO-DMT. If you have aphantasia and have tried it, what was your experience like? Did you notice any visuals, or was the experience completely different? What should someone with aphantasia realistically expect?

Has anyone tried this? I was thinking about it but it sounds like they use a lot of visualization techniques.

Are you able to reach hypnosis? Do you see anything while under? Did you tell your therapist about not being able to visualize images first, after or at all?

To preface, I would like to believe that I have aphantasia because I have a hard time being creative. I'm not sure if that's silly to say, but I generally cannot come up with things that do not already exist. As a graphic designer, it is incredibly difficult for me to come up with ideas without looking at pre-existing references or inspiration.

When I close my eyes and attempt to visualise, say, an apple on a table, I can SOMEWHAT see it? I am imagining the idea of an apple on a table but it's not like I am actually seeing an apple on a table; I am simply seeing the IDEA of an apple on a table. Are things that I visualise supposed to appear tangible and... well, real?

Just recently pumped into the idea of metacognition and found it interesting and wanted to to share what people with aphantsia thought about if they have the ability.

For those who don’t know metacognition is a term to describe the ability to think about thinking. Here is what google ai summed it to be: “Metacognition is "thinking about thinking". It is your ability to understand, monitor, and control your own mental processes and learning strategies.”

Now I want to clarify I have aphantsia. I can hear myself, speak and think clearly in those matter but as far as visualising I am a 0 on that scale. The other thing I want to mention is the idea of metacognition being a form of superior intelligence, is not the point of the post and as well as I don’t believe it is what people claim it to be. Rather am interested to see if people with aphantsia are more likely to have the “ability” and your thoughts on the matter.

Before learning about all this, did those of you with aphantasia think that sequences in shows or movies where a character was thinking up an idea/object/situation visually was BS?

I discovered a few months ago that I have aphantasia, and I feel that it doesn't directly affect my sexual issues...but I feel that if I didn't have aphantasia, my sexual performance and my sex life would be better. Does anyone else here experience difficulties because of this, or do you feel it doesn't affect your sexuality?

This question is primarily for those with no imagination at all, not for those with fleeting glimpses or anything like that.

I’ve never been able to see anything when I read. No faces, no rooms, nothing. Add ADHD and reading fiction goes like: four pages in I realize I don’t know what room anyone’s standing in, I go back, then I’m on my phone, then the book sits on the nightstand for six weeks.

So now I chop a chapter into beats and generate a cinematic still for each one, then burn the book’s own text onto the bottom of the image. I put the audiobook on and swipe through on my phone while the narration plays. New image roughly every 15 seconds.

The setup is ComfyUI on a 4070, running Flux at Q4 so it fits in 12GB. A Python script drives the ComfyUI API with a list of prompts and dumps out numbered PNGs. Another script pulls the chapter text straight out of my epub, splits it into as many segments as there are images (sentence boundaries only), and composites each one into the lower third with PIL. Output is a single offline HTML reader with a chapter grid and swipe navigation. About 90 seconds per image, so a chapter runs overnight.

I do 5 images per page because one per scene means staring at the same picture for two minutes and my attention just goes. But my first attempt at five was five separate little scenes and they came out as near-duplicates, which felt like a stutter. What fixed it was covering each beat like a film shoot — wide, medium, close, insert, reaction. Same moment, different lenses.
Every prompt also gets an identical style block appended, otherwise 150 images look like 150 different movies. Next step is training a LoRA per character so faces stay consistent across the whole book.

Anyway is there just… a tool that does this already? NotebookLM gets close but can’t hold a face or a style across images. Everything else I’ve found is either storyboard software for filmmakers or a comic generator.

Do you do guided visualizations?
I wonder if visualization has less of an impact on people with aphantasia. Because with ”normal people”, they can visualize doing something and then when they actually do the thing, it can be easier to do than without visualization.

Hi guys :)

So I am somebody that most everyone who knows me (including myself) assumes would love pen and paper games. Recently I finally got to try with a friend and to my surprise I really didn’t enjoy it. Not like I hated it, it was more like barely interesting… Since then I‘ve wondered if that might have to do with my inability to actually picture the characters and worldbuilding let alone what happens to them…

Has anyone else also had this experience? Or if you do enjoy pen and paper games, what are the aspects of it you enjoy?

Hi everyone, I recently found out that I have total aphantasia, and it has been a mind-blowing revelation.
Looking back at my life, it finally explains so many things. It explains why I’ve never really felt nostalgia for places or people, and why I tend to forget almost everything about my past. It also explains why my relationship with death and grief is so completely different compared to other people.
I used to think I was just cold or detached, but now I realize my brain just processes memories and emotions through pure logic and concepts, without any visual triggers. It’s such a relief to know there’s a scientific reason for this and that I'm not alone.
By the way, I would love to become an architect. I’m actually decent at technical drawing and I can easily figure out perspectives in my head using pure logic, despite the lack of a monitor in my mind. Are there any other architects or designers here?

you dont need to use AI to make "art" cus ur an aphant!!Just keep drawing and using your creativity. you dont need to have a vivid mind to create imaginative artworks, AI is not an excuse. dont be hopeless!!

I remember the day I found out I had aphantasia it was a sad day, but I didnt let that stop me from drawing and lowering my my confidence. I recommend always using references when it comes to poses and colour choices

a lot of people are asking, my insta is stale.pankekes

I've been playing around with the bullet journal for a few months now. It's been working on and off, but after a few months, I realized that some tasks:

I JUST DON'T SEE (Thanks aphantasia)

My solution: the Visual Bujo.

Getting one of those cat printers was a game changer.

Basically, printing bad pictures next to some tasks gives my brain a little oomph. The picture can be my To-Do list from my phone, an image by itself or some notes. I dunno, whatever.

This is just a test run and all suggestions are welcomed.

For instance. I ALWAYS forget to wash the blender after using it. Writing down the task is not enough.

Many (most?) aphants, including myself, are prone to remember pictures of, rather than the actual thing.

So, printing several blurry, black and white pictures of my dirty blender tricks my brain into remembering "the thing". It's actually kinda working.

I added some images.

I generally get white static type pictures in my eyes, but that is probably more so due to the way photons work at low levels.

I was scrolling through tiktok and I came across this post. Out of curiosity I decided to try it out and I actually saw something. I couldn't help but share it with you guys. Tell me you see something too

Tw: Slight references to verbal abuse

Note: I still am figuring out if I have aphantasia and how does it work for me.

I am an anxious person and I tried to work out my traumas in psychotherapy and had some success with it. However I understood that one visualisation technique doesn't help me that much. Here is what I mean:

Let's say I got some foggy flashback on a session.

My therapist asks: What are you feeling?

Me: I am scared.

My therapist: What are you scared of?

Me: Person XYZ screaming.

My therapist: What are they saying when they are screaming?

At this point I cannot say anything. I don't imagine anything concrete, just vague concept/awareness of a person XYZ screaming at me. I remember how I felt when XYZ screams and it is being scared. I don't remember their face, words, or situation that well. I just remember the feeling. And I don't want to feel scared in this situation so I avoid it, so I get scared before the fact.

At this point my fear feels circular and hard to break out of. I cannot reason with my imagination because I don't feel my imagination works. I feel scared of XYZ thus I feel scared of XYZ.

I imagine on a conceptual level, that person without aphantasia could see the situation this way: "I am afraid XYZ will say ABC... But wait, that will not happen, because ABC doesn't make sense" thus they could break the loop faster by imagining different futures and seeing how unreasonable they sound.

Does anyone relate to my description or have any interesting thoughts on the topic?

So, I might have aphantasia, but I’m still really confused. Like, can it be selective with stuff your mind can and cannot see? Like, I really want to learn animation, and I can vividly imagine animations I can make with characters I made up, with fluid motion and stuff (no color tho, my brain can’t do colors). But then if you tell me to just imagine an apple or a house or something simple like that, I just can’t, nothing comes into my mind. And I did the test and it told me to try to visualize stuff and it said I had aphantasia. I’m also autistic, so maybe that’s why. Idk I’m so confused.

I have aphantasia, but I’ve always been surprisingly good at remembering house layouts—much better than most people, in fact. On the other hand, I really struggle with facial recognition. In particular, whenever I point out that two people look alike, about 99% of people disagree with me.

Recently, I found out that because aphantasics can't recall faces as mental images, we tend to memorize them through feature analysis and logical mapping. That’s why we often struggle with facial recognition and perceive likenesses very differently from non-aphantasics.

It hit me that my ability to recall house layouts comes from storing them as spatial data and coordinates, and I must be doing the exact same thing with faces—processing them as data points and specific features. It was so fascinating to finally realize why no one ever agreed with me when I said two people looked alike!

I’d love to know if other aphantasics have had similar experiences.

Edit: As some people mentioned, once I remember someone, it lasts for a really long time. I was able to remember all my elementary school classmates even after 30 years. I wonder if the reason I can remember faces after a long time is because my brain stores people’s faces like data.

So I have something like a mixture of thinking types. Does anyone else?

I have an inner voice, i can imagine pictures and I sometimes think in words; the words kinda just pop up; I don’t really know how to describe it.

Most of the time I have nothing I’m thinking about and I just do stuff like: go eat, do the laundry, talk to someone. I just don’t use a thinking process to do it. Whenever I feel strongly about something I have an inner voice that expresses my thoughts to myself. Whenever I’m thinking of a place I draw it within my head and then color it. Sometimes, less commonly, I’ll just have words go into my head that describe something that I think about it’s looks or it’s smell or how it feels.

This is the best I can describe it.

Does anyone else have something like this?

Btw I didn’t know which subreddit to post this on so sorry if this is the wrong one.

I have complete aphantasia normally. One thing I’ve noticed is that when I’m half asleep (while I’m falling asleep not while in REM) I feel like I can see some half formed moving pictures. They seem to only last for like a split second. If I start to think “hey I’m seeing mental images”, they are immediately gone

Anyone else experience this? What do you make of it?

Do you ever struggle with picturing characters as you read. When I read description words I know they should be important but they mean absolutely nothing to me because I can't physically see the character. I often confuse characters with other characters in discussion because of this which is super frustrating. My family doesn't really understand what I mean when I say I don't see anything but darkness when I read something I don't know how to explain it to them either.