David I 'accidentally' found I also had aphantasia from the article Kate wrote in 2021 when I was 48! Suddenly my whole life of not understanding so much fell into place and I managed to find so much peace and a way forward with this knowledge of how my crazy lil brain works. Even down to my relationship with my (hyper-phantasic!) partner, who couldn't understand when he'd try and describe something to me and I couldn't visualise it (where he can visualise eeeeverything!) he'll now show me or draw me a picture and I can aaaah now I know what you mean. Your article then absolutely changed my life in ways you can never imagine, so ngā mihi nui to you and Kate! Oh and it was a shock to me to realise that people can visualise, I just assumed everyone was like Kate and I who can only see black when we close our eyes :)
This article (and update) really hit me hard. Unfortunately I lost my best friend around 10 years ago to suicide. I've spent the last decade with immense guilt that I cannot remember her voice or her smile. I can't see us together or picture all the memories I know we shared. I look at photos of her almost daily to keep her presence in my mind. I have previously gaslit myself into believing our bond wasn't as real as I thought. I felt left out and judged by our mutual friends for not being able to share my memories in the way they could with ease. Why can everyone around me recall their friendship with her in excruciating detail? It has been so painful on top of the "normal" grieving. Thank you Kate (and David) for a timely reminder that this is out of my control and not a reflection on my love for my friend.
Your memory of her absolutely does not correlate with how close you were with her, if that true I'd have to declare myself best friends with the strange lady I gave a lift to 3 weeks ago!!
I imagine this could be not an uncommon experience, perhaps forgetting is how your brain is dealing with the trauma of her loss and how she passed away? 💔
A stunning reminder that there is no one universal experience outside of birth and death. I hope that if I make a broad assumption around someone about something that person has never and probably never will experience, that they will grant me the grace of correcting me so I can go forward with more care in the future. Not that it should be someone else's job to educate me so that's why pieces like this are so very important.
I am so grateful for reading this. It took me almost twice as long to discover that I have aphantasia. I thought when people said "picture this in your mind," it was in a metaphorical sense. The funny thing is that I'm an avid reader and also a writer. When I told my writer friends about the aphantasia, they were incredulous. I have the words and the knowledge of the things I write, just not pictures. I have a neurospicy family, but no one else seems to have aphantasia.
I've always wondered about the link between neurodivergence and aphantasia (not to say it doesnt exist in neurotypical folk). I have autism and my daughter has adhd, we both have aphantasia. We are very visual and creative people perhaps to make up for the loss of our minds eye. I create from words and concepts so any sort of realism is out the window. All my art unintentionally has that uncanny vibe to it. Do you find it hard to recall the details of books you've read after a short time has passed? I really struggle with that as my brain won't hold on to the information, not sure if that is more of a general memory issue though.
“…try to remember we don’t need pictures in our heads to keep people with us. They stay with us in other ways. In gestures. In jokes. In love.”
What a punch in the gut. 😭 I had never thought about how this would impact me though. Like the memories of seeing my 3 babies for the first time. I can still see their squishy little newborn faces when I close my eyes. Moments I’ll treasure and keep with me forever. The thought of not being able to picture that is so heartbreaking to me. I love her last line there though. Holding onto the feelings and love are what’s most valuable. ❤️
I suspect people, like me, living with a aphantasia, have a greater ability to cope with some forms of, more visual, trauma, but the feelings that we experienced are not forgotten.
Thank you. I also have aphantasia and also didn’t realise that when I was told to picture myself walking along a beach that that was meant literally. Ditto counting sheep. It is hard not to feel envious of those who have a vivid minds eye, but perhaps easier to accept having never experienced it. I also have autism and adhd and the notion that other brains don’t constantly conspire against their people is confronting and depressing.
I'm so sorry for your loss, Kate. And thank you for sharing this. I wish there was some comfort I could offer or wisdom I could impart, but my words seem a bit inadequate after your beautiful essay. I will say you're not alone when you worry about forgetting. I think it's something we all share, no matter how our brains work.
I've known intellectually that everybody's brain works in different ways. But it's been very hard for me to internalize until fairly recently. So much of my anxiety is built around me projecting my own insecurities onto other people. Shying away because I'm assuming they're thinking the same thing about me that I think about me. Every so often, it's good to take a step back and remind myself not everybody is like me. And that that's a good thing.
I want to make a couple of points from an artist’s perspective - I often hear folks say “oh I have aphantasia so I’d never be able to draw” or something similar to Raq’s worry about needing the services of a sketch artist - and I need to assure people: as far as I can tell there is no connection between aphantasia and the ability to draw or paint or otherwise do art. How do I know? Well, I am an artist and I have a fair degree of aphantasia: if I am asked to visualise something I can under no circumstances do it, but I’m fine if I’m reading or daydreaming or otherwise. My brother, on the other hand, has no mind’s eye whatsoever. He can’t visualise anything – but he’s a brilliant artist. I think this worry arises from a misconception of what drawing is: for most people it’s a process, not something that just arises fully formed in your mind and transfers to paper. (For some folks it probably is the latter, but I suspect they’re in the extreme minority and there is probably some sharp neurodivergence or savant ability at play.) This is hard to explain, but drawing is a process of comparison. When I am drawing a picture, I am constantly interrogating a reference image, and a sketch artist is doing the same thing. They’ll start with an outline and then ask questions. “Is that bit here, or there? Is this nose longer or shorter? Lighter, or darker?” People with aphantasia can do this, as there’s not any actual visualisation involved - as odd as it sounds, the only thing in play is the ability to *see*. To extend the metaphor from the article, if aphantasia is like a computer with a blank monitor, drawing with aphantasia is like a computer with a blank monitor *that’s still connected to a printer.* Drawing simply doesn’t work the way most people think it does, and that’s good news, because it means practically everyone has the potential to be able to draw pretty well, even if they never thought they could. And for the folks who feel like they can’t recall the faces of loved ones, this might be some comfort: the memories are in all likelihood there; it may be that because your mind works differently, a different process is needed to bring them out.
I should have used my words better, to be honest, I thought I only couldn’t picture peoples faces. But I realised today I am literally thinking but not seeing.
I just wonder if I could describe my son’s face, one I see and obsess over, to someone in enough detail that they could reproduce it. When I watching crime tv shows with a sketch artist, the idea of having to describe a person without seeing them visibly seems absolutely impossible to me.
I don't have aphantasia, but when my pet house rabbit Herbie died in 2017 I was so upset that I immediately forgot his face. It was like my mind deleted him from my memory banks. This made me significantly more upset, but it wasn't until years later during a therapy session that he came flooding back to me (along with a lot of tears). I learned that day that there's a healthy way to mourn, and it's not by running away.
The feeling of pain and sorrow is so powerful and overwhelming it's natural to want to escape it, to make it stop, but by doing that I was just avoiding a critical part of the healing process. I now look at it in a different way: feeling horribly upset is a small price to pay in return for having got to spend time with this person or creature that you loved so dearly.
Not exactly sure why I shared that, but I guess it's my "aphantasia moment" :)
I'm another from 'team aphantasia' and it's always good to read about other experiences with - and discoveries of - it. My father and brother, a cousin and her father, all also have it so I'm guessing it runs in families.
A while back I wrote a response in my journal to a travel article touting the superiority of not taking photos while on holiday, which covers the role of photos for my non-visualising brain.
"Since getting the option of digital photo-taking (i.e., effectively cost-free) in 2000 I have been taking more and more photos every year on my quest to capture both things I want to remember and the ordinary things that I might not regard as significant at the time but will appreciate looking back on later.
"It was a bit of a coincidence, then, when a podcast covered how brains work and the subject of visualisation and aphantasia; if you think of something do you see a picture of it? Apparently some people do and some don't. I have always known I am not a good visualiser - those tech drawing exercises of my school days with plans and elevations, being unable to 'see' decorating or renovation ideas, during my commuting years realising that I would recognise a familiar airport as soon as I stepped out of the plane even though I couldn't 'remember' what it looked like beforehand, etc.
"And since I've been taking photos on holidays I have come to realise that when I can't take photos I generally can't remember the place. I can remember the event (I went to St Paul's Cathedral with Beth and Gary) and sometimes things about it (I can remember that there was a dome and an underground area) and some things that happened there (we were rushed through the gift shop) but images of the place elude me since I have no photographs and didn't get the chance to buy a postcard. In the case of St Paul's, we were not allowed to take photos, and I feel that that visit is 'lost' to me now, so these days I actively choose not to visit places which don't allow photos. Why bother?
"For me, the act of taking the photo also seems to help lay things down in my memory. I remember why I took a particular photo, and along with that comes other memories about the event. Photos are often the cornerstone of memory for me; on holidays and in every day life."
My brother who is age 41 just recently discovered he has aphantasia. He always thought when people said to picture something in their mind it was just an expression, not something people could actually do. He says he doesn't really have dreams either. He was texting me and my mom about this and she immediately was confused as well, then she realized for the first time (she is age 81) that she can't picture anything either. She also had no idea other people could do this. Both of them started to feel like they were missing out on something.
My Dad died in 2020....and as the three of us were discussing my mom and brother's newly discovered aphantasia we were wondering whether my Dad was able to visualize things like I could, or whether he couldn't either. As we were discussing this I realized I was picturing my Dad and it immediately felt so unfair that I could see my Dad's face when I thought of him and they couldn't. Definitely interesting to understand how everyone is processing things differently as we all move through this crazy world.
It's a bit dense, but in summary, he describes exactly what you said. People we are close to, we absorb some of their mannerisms and quirks, and they live on within us even after they have passed. He may go in depth on memory and visualizing the person,I can't recall, so perhaps that won't be so helpful for you 😔
Your upside of not being able to imagine the Trump image is a total blessing. As a hypervisualiser I didn't need to click on the link to get a mind pic of that. Its horrific, the world needs l4ess of that! On a less flippant note though, I'm so sorry for your loss Kate, and really appreciate you taking the time to share. Aphantasia is definitely something more of us should be aware of and might smooth some of the interactive frustrations that can occur. I'm going to try and suss out which of my friends has this in future and not make so many assumptions.
This is so beautiful, heartbreaking and also uplifting, thank you Kate for sharing your story and for honouring Sam’s memory. Our brains are such strange wonderful things.
David I 'accidentally' found I also had aphantasia from the article Kate wrote in 2021 when I was 48! Suddenly my whole life of not understanding so much fell into place and I managed to find so much peace and a way forward with this knowledge of how my crazy lil brain works. Even down to my relationship with my (hyper-phantasic!) partner, who couldn't understand when he'd try and describe something to me and I couldn't visualise it (where he can visualise eeeeverything!) he'll now show me or draw me a picture and I can aaaah now I know what you mean. Your article then absolutely changed my life in ways you can never imagine, so ngā mihi nui to you and Kate! Oh and it was a shock to me to realise that people can visualise, I just assumed everyone was like Kate and I who can only see black when we close our eyes :)
Wow that's fantastic! I love how he has adapted by drawing for you, hopefully he is artistic! 😄
This article (and update) really hit me hard. Unfortunately I lost my best friend around 10 years ago to suicide. I've spent the last decade with immense guilt that I cannot remember her voice or her smile. I can't see us together or picture all the memories I know we shared. I look at photos of her almost daily to keep her presence in my mind. I have previously gaslit myself into believing our bond wasn't as real as I thought. I felt left out and judged by our mutual friends for not being able to share my memories in the way they could with ease. Why can everyone around me recall their friendship with her in excruciating detail? It has been so painful on top of the "normal" grieving. Thank you Kate (and David) for a timely reminder that this is out of my control and not a reflection on my love for my friend.
I'm so sorry for your loss 😞
Your memory of her absolutely does not correlate with how close you were with her, if that true I'd have to declare myself best friends with the strange lady I gave a lift to 3 weeks ago!!
I imagine this could be not an uncommon experience, perhaps forgetting is how your brain is dealing with the trauma of her loss and how she passed away? 💔
A stunning reminder that there is no one universal experience outside of birth and death. I hope that if I make a broad assumption around someone about something that person has never and probably never will experience, that they will grant me the grace of correcting me so I can go forward with more care in the future. Not that it should be someone else's job to educate me so that's why pieces like this are so very important.
I am so grateful for reading this. It took me almost twice as long to discover that I have aphantasia. I thought when people said "picture this in your mind," it was in a metaphorical sense. The funny thing is that I'm an avid reader and also a writer. When I told my writer friends about the aphantasia, they were incredulous. I have the words and the knowledge of the things I write, just not pictures. I have a neurospicy family, but no one else seems to have aphantasia.
I've always wondered about the link between neurodivergence and aphantasia (not to say it doesnt exist in neurotypical folk). I have autism and my daughter has adhd, we both have aphantasia. We are very visual and creative people perhaps to make up for the loss of our minds eye. I create from words and concepts so any sort of realism is out the window. All my art unintentionally has that uncanny vibe to it. Do you find it hard to recall the details of books you've read after a short time has passed? I really struggle with that as my brain won't hold on to the information, not sure if that is more of a general memory issue though.
I have this, I always think about if I had to explain what my son and partner or my darling cats to a sketch artist - how would it go?
I hadn’t ever thought about it as what I could be missing out with reading, now I kinda wish I hadn’t read this haha 😩
“…try to remember we don’t need pictures in our heads to keep people with us. They stay with us in other ways. In gestures. In jokes. In love.”
What a punch in the gut. 😭 I had never thought about how this would impact me though. Like the memories of seeing my 3 babies for the first time. I can still see their squishy little newborn faces when I close my eyes. Moments I’ll treasure and keep with me forever. The thought of not being able to picture that is so heartbreaking to me. I love her last line there though. Holding onto the feelings and love are what’s most valuable. ❤️
I suspect people, like me, living with a aphantasia, have a greater ability to cope with some forms of, more visual, trauma, but the feelings that we experienced are not forgotten.
Thank you. I also have aphantasia and also didn’t realise that when I was told to picture myself walking along a beach that that was meant literally. Ditto counting sheep. It is hard not to feel envious of those who have a vivid minds eye, but perhaps easier to accept having never experienced it. I also have autism and adhd and the notion that other brains don’t constantly conspire against their people is confronting and depressing.
I'm so sorry for your loss, Kate. And thank you for sharing this. I wish there was some comfort I could offer or wisdom I could impart, but my words seem a bit inadequate after your beautiful essay. I will say you're not alone when you worry about forgetting. I think it's something we all share, no matter how our brains work.
I've known intellectually that everybody's brain works in different ways. But it's been very hard for me to internalize until fairly recently. So much of my anxiety is built around me projecting my own insecurities onto other people. Shying away because I'm assuming they're thinking the same thing about me that I think about me. Every so often, it's good to take a step back and remind myself not everybody is like me. And that that's a good thing.
So sorry for your loss, Kate.
I want to make a couple of points from an artist’s perspective - I often hear folks say “oh I have aphantasia so I’d never be able to draw” or something similar to Raq’s worry about needing the services of a sketch artist - and I need to assure people: as far as I can tell there is no connection between aphantasia and the ability to draw or paint or otherwise do art. How do I know? Well, I am an artist and I have a fair degree of aphantasia: if I am asked to visualise something I can under no circumstances do it, but I’m fine if I’m reading or daydreaming or otherwise. My brother, on the other hand, has no mind’s eye whatsoever. He can’t visualise anything – but he’s a brilliant artist. I think this worry arises from a misconception of what drawing is: for most people it’s a process, not something that just arises fully formed in your mind and transfers to paper. (For some folks it probably is the latter, but I suspect they’re in the extreme minority and there is probably some sharp neurodivergence or savant ability at play.) This is hard to explain, but drawing is a process of comparison. When I am drawing a picture, I am constantly interrogating a reference image, and a sketch artist is doing the same thing. They’ll start with an outline and then ask questions. “Is that bit here, or there? Is this nose longer or shorter? Lighter, or darker?” People with aphantasia can do this, as there’s not any actual visualisation involved - as odd as it sounds, the only thing in play is the ability to *see*. To extend the metaphor from the article, if aphantasia is like a computer with a blank monitor, drawing with aphantasia is like a computer with a blank monitor *that’s still connected to a printer.* Drawing simply doesn’t work the way most people think it does, and that’s good news, because it means practically everyone has the potential to be able to draw pretty well, even if they never thought they could. And for the folks who feel like they can’t recall the faces of loved ones, this might be some comfort: the memories are in all likelihood there; it may be that because your mind works differently, a different process is needed to bring them out.
I should have used my words better, to be honest, I thought I only couldn’t picture peoples faces. But I realised today I am literally thinking but not seeing.
I just wonder if I could describe my son’s face, one I see and obsess over, to someone in enough detail that they could reproduce it. When I watching crime tv shows with a sketch artist, the idea of having to describe a person without seeing them visibly seems absolutely impossible to me.
I don't have aphantasia, but when my pet house rabbit Herbie died in 2017 I was so upset that I immediately forgot his face. It was like my mind deleted him from my memory banks. This made me significantly more upset, but it wasn't until years later during a therapy session that he came flooding back to me (along with a lot of tears). I learned that day that there's a healthy way to mourn, and it's not by running away.
The feeling of pain and sorrow is so powerful and overwhelming it's natural to want to escape it, to make it stop, but by doing that I was just avoiding a critical part of the healing process. I now look at it in a different way: feeling horribly upset is a small price to pay in return for having got to spend time with this person or creature that you loved so dearly.
Not exactly sure why I shared that, but I guess it's my "aphantasia moment" :)
I'm another from 'team aphantasia' and it's always good to read about other experiences with - and discoveries of - it. My father and brother, a cousin and her father, all also have it so I'm guessing it runs in families.
A while back I wrote a response in my journal to a travel article touting the superiority of not taking photos while on holiday, which covers the role of photos for my non-visualising brain.
"Since getting the option of digital photo-taking (i.e., effectively cost-free) in 2000 I have been taking more and more photos every year on my quest to capture both things I want to remember and the ordinary things that I might not regard as significant at the time but will appreciate looking back on later.
"It was a bit of a coincidence, then, when a podcast covered how brains work and the subject of visualisation and aphantasia; if you think of something do you see a picture of it? Apparently some people do and some don't. I have always known I am not a good visualiser - those tech drawing exercises of my school days with plans and elevations, being unable to 'see' decorating or renovation ideas, during my commuting years realising that I would recognise a familiar airport as soon as I stepped out of the plane even though I couldn't 'remember' what it looked like beforehand, etc.
"And since I've been taking photos on holidays I have come to realise that when I can't take photos I generally can't remember the place. I can remember the event (I went to St Paul's Cathedral with Beth and Gary) and sometimes things about it (I can remember that there was a dome and an underground area) and some things that happened there (we were rushed through the gift shop) but images of the place elude me since I have no photographs and didn't get the chance to buy a postcard. In the case of St Paul's, we were not allowed to take photos, and I feel that that visit is 'lost' to me now, so these days I actively choose not to visit places which don't allow photos. Why bother?
"For me, the act of taking the photo also seems to help lay things down in my memory. I remember why I took a particular photo, and along with that comes other memories about the event. Photos are often the cornerstone of memory for me; on holidays and in every day life."
My brother who is age 41 just recently discovered he has aphantasia. He always thought when people said to picture something in their mind it was just an expression, not something people could actually do. He says he doesn't really have dreams either. He was texting me and my mom about this and she immediately was confused as well, then she realized for the first time (she is age 81) that she can't picture anything either. She also had no idea other people could do this. Both of them started to feel like they were missing out on something.
My Dad died in 2020....and as the three of us were discussing my mom and brother's newly discovered aphantasia we were wondering whether my Dad was able to visualize things like I could, or whether he couldn't either. As we were discussing this I realized I was picturing my Dad and it immediately felt so unfair that I could see my Dad's face when I thought of him and they couldn't. Definitely interesting to understand how everyone is processing things differently as we all move through this crazy world.
Kate, thank you so much for sharing. I am so sorry for your loss 😞. Losing someone to suicide especially is so heart wrenching.
You may take comfort from reading "I am a strange loop" by Douglas Hofstader
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123471.I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
It's a bit dense, but in summary, he describes exactly what you said. People we are close to, we absorb some of their mannerisms and quirks, and they live on within us even after they have passed. He may go in depth on memory and visualizing the person,I can't recall, so perhaps that won't be so helpful for you 😔
Your upside of not being able to imagine the Trump image is a total blessing. As a hypervisualiser I didn't need to click on the link to get a mind pic of that. Its horrific, the world needs l4ess of that! On a less flippant note though, I'm so sorry for your loss Kate, and really appreciate you taking the time to share. Aphantasia is definitely something more of us should be aware of and might smooth some of the interactive frustrations that can occur. I'm going to try and suss out which of my friends has this in future and not make so many assumptions.
This is so beautiful, heartbreaking and also uplifting, thank you Kate for sharing your story and for honouring Sam’s memory. Our brains are such strange wonderful things.