About a year ago I came to the equally earth-shattering, and unimportant discovery, that the way that I make my way through the world is very different from the vast majority of the population of Earth.
If you’ve spoken to me recently, there’s a reasonable chance that I have brought up Aphantasia.
Growing up, I would hear phrases like ‘picture in your mind’, and assumed it was a turn of phrase. I never actually understood that lots of people are actually seeing things. Pictures (and sometimes smells) are formed in a space inside their heads.
When someone said ‘imagine a crocodile’, people were actually seeing a crocodile.
I do not, unfortunately.
Finding out about Aphantasia has led me to understand that the inside of my head is relatively quiet, compared to my peers.
I do not see pictures.
Additionally, I do not have an ‘audible’ internal monologue; or any voice in my head that has an auditory aspect to it.
I can think to myself, intentionally, and I have ideas ‘pop’ into my head. But these things don’t have an audible or visual component to them. Maybe this is actually ‘internal monologue’; it’s hard to tell when I only have one data point.
I very rarely, if at all, dream. On the once a year cadence that I might have one, it is more like I woke up with an idea, not that I was having a mini-adventure in my downtime.
When I am asleep, I am off.
My other half describes it as if I were a computer being placed on standby. I have been known to continue sentences many hours later, which I was halfway through when I ‘shut down’ for the night.
It is odd knowing that others live an almost separate existence from the one they exist within. A private world of wonder in their head whenever they want.
When trying to explain to others about ‘what I see’ in my head, I describe it more like ‘concepts’. When I think of a ball, I don’t see anything, I just think ‘round’, ‘sphere’, ‘bouncy’, or whatever type of ball I choose to think of initially.
Interestingly I don’t tend to assign colour initially, until I either think ‘what colour should the ball be’, or someone prompts me to add a colour to the ball, at which point I add another concept to the pile.
It is hard to explain because you are probably trying to picture in your head what this is like, which you can’t, because by creating a picture — even of words flying around in a void — you have lost.
Sometimes I wonder how much of my day-to-day is affected by this. What does Aphantasia add to my life, and what does it take away?
I am extremely good at conceptual reasoning of large software systems, carrying a lot of complexity in my head. I also find it easier than most to break complex issues down. These may be related. They may not be.
Maybe being unburdened by visual information, and smells, results in my ability to talk about disgusting things and not be put off of my food.
I am however terrible at remembering faces. I have to keep my partner as my phones wallpaper, as I cannot picture their face otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, I recognize them immediately when I next see them, but my memories lack that visual component which you probably use to remember your loved ones.
It is hard to know how my experiences differ from others, but I hope the knowledge that they do — that we are not all experiencing the same things, even in the same room — gives me a greater appreciation of others.
Maybe I don’t have Aphantasia.
Maybe it’s all in my head.
But I can’t imagine why.