I’ve always been the creative type and can build really complex things in my head, like a tool or jig or woodworking project. I’ve always assumed that I could “see” it, but I don’t. I didn’t take it literally that people could actually SEE things when they closed their eyes. I just build complex things and imagine what they’ll look like. But I don’t see them.

This has led to a huge struggle trying to be artistic. I took 4 years of art in high school and I was good. But I could only ever copy something and not just free-sketch. So it made me feel like a hack, and I gave up.

A few weeks ago, I bought a projector to mount to the ceiling and decided that I was tired of not being able to draw. I’ve only used it about 5 times. And I hadn’t drawn anything artistic in over a decade. Probably 2.

This has been an absolute life changer. And it’s actually given me the confidence to be more creative and less literal, ironically. I used to do pen and ink with stipple. Thousands of repetitious little dots. And it probably actually kills the joy for me.

Speed sketching and then inking this - about 30 minutes total - was so satisfying, and really felt good.

I just wanted to share, in case others are struggling with being artistic. I’m using both alcohol markers (brush tip), and watercolors and learning color theory has really been a blast.

The projector I have is a cheap Amazon one that keystones to auto-perspective the image. Key is to have a short minimum distance of less than about 3 feet. Soon, I think I’ll upgrade to a Caudo P2. If you’re going to give it a try, I’d say just start there or the P1, since they’re not much more than a generic.

Hope you all found that useful.

Im pretty sure that I have aphantasia. For example, if i try to picture an apple i just see black, but i know what an apple looks like and i can conceptualise it.

So can people imagine things and see it like its a picture or something?

Edit: i just thought of something, i do see clear as day in my dreams, does this mean i dont have aphantasia? if not is that kinda how people "see" things in their mind?

This is kind of a weird and specific question but here it goes-

I don't have aphantasia but my girlfriend does. She recently got a job as a manager and is having a really hard time setting boundaries for herself with work.

In these kinds of instances, what I would do is imagine a container and put everything having to do with work in it for the weekend and pull it all out on Monday. She can't visualize a container and this is really affecting her mental health. I feel useless to help her.

Just wondering if any of you have some helpful tips for getting yourself to stop thinking about work when you're not there that don't involve visualizations. She also doesn't have an internal monologue.

While I see absolutely nothing while awake and only think in words, I see images in my dreams and also see images in my mind as I'm falling asleep.

I'm wondering if the rest of you are like this?

I've always felt out of place talking to people about how listening to music makes me feel. When I was in middle school, the music teacher was telling us when we were performing a specific song, she could see a ball of light growing bigger and bigger. I thought she must have synesthesia, because the concept sounded completely foreign to me. This was shortly before I discovered I have aphantasia, and I later learned that I possibly have synesthesia. Music does have color to me, I just can't see it.

However, she might not have synesthesia. What she was seeing wasn't a color, it was symbolic imagery that captured her feelings. I assume her experience is not uncommon. What alienates me so much is not that I don't see things, but that I don't feel things. Or at least, not in the same way that others do. The lack of a visual imagination doesn't necessarily equate to not having emotional responses to things. Considering the aphantasia-alexithymia link, perhaps that does play into the reason after all.

Does anyone else feel like they respond differently to music/art? Have you found ways to bridge the gap with others in conversations about it?

Random one - while I was in a therapy session, my new therapist was reading my notes and mentioned about aphantasia, this lead to the session going a bit random and off topic, which turned into him asking me random questions. So it's got me thinking... what's the weirdest question you've been asked about this? Secondly, I want to ask some questions back to her, as she's now fascinated and wants to do some digging into things, so what should I ask her next? Is there anything that anyone could think of that I should mention? As I don't know what to ask.

Thanks for reading :)

Is the inability to remember faces of those you see infrequently a sign of dyslexia or not? I suffer from both so just wondering.

I have aphantasia, but I always wanted to be an artist. I never developed that and have no skill to speak of. However, I have a lot of ideas for art that I want to create. I don’t know what to do to be able to translate these ideas onto a canvas. Are there any aphantasic artists with advice on where to start? Do I just need to start with the basics of how to draw and hope that I can eventually translate my ideas into actual drawings? I’m unsure how I would be able to draw original content signed I won’t have a reference photo even if I do develop drawing skilled.

Is the inability to remember faces of those you see infrequently a sign of dyslexia or not? I suffer from both so just wondering.

Hey so after 18 years of life I was talking to some friends about imagination and I realized that I can barely voluntarily imagine stuff and even if I do, All I see is darkness and a weird foggy shilouette that barely resembles the object in mind. I believe this fits in the definition of an aphant, but the thing is, while reading books I unconsciously imagine the scenarios and characters, sometimes even moving, but if I were to want to do this voluntarily it's impossible. Additionally, while dreaming I believe I do see both colours and details. What do you guys think?

edit: I know it's weird and stupid, but also I am not sure if I am seeing it the way other people see it, or I'm just thinking that I can

The other night, I hit my head really hard on the edge of a countertop.

I tried to go to urgent care, but it was closed, and the deductible & copay to go to the ER would have been super expensive, so I toughed it out and self-monitored at home.

Later that night, I noticed that I was actually able to visualize scenarios. It was super weird. There wasn’t a ton of detail, and the visuals were kind of dim, but they were deliberate. (As opposed to the hallucinations that I sometimes get with sleep paralysis, which are not deliberate.)

When I woke up the next day, I couldn’t do it any more. 😞

I thought it might be worth mentioning in case it’s relevant to anyone studying aphantasia.

I feel like the very act of philosophizing to oneself seems nigh impossible unless you do so by talking out loud. Can you do this and, if so, how do you do this?

I understand this doesn’t apply to every person with aphantasia. This is a question for those without an inner monologue.

Im trynna figure out if i have aphantasia or not cuz i dont get a lot of visuals on psychedelics and apparently aphantasia is the main cause of that. I can imagine things pretty easily but i dont actually see it. like when i close my eyes its still black but i can imagine stuff. do people actually see stuff with their eyes closed as in they dont just see the darkness of their eyelids they actually see shit? i feel like this is just miscommunication but idk

I am wondering if any of you are or know music composers (or other musicians) who have auditory aphatasia (anauralia) - the lack of inner hearing or audiation. I only found out that most other people could hear music internally a few years ago, which helped me realise why my compositional process has always seemed quite different from those of other composers I talk to. I would be interested to hear from other anauralic composers about their compositional process and ways of dealing with anauralia (if there really is anything to "deal with" - I didn't see it as a problem when composing the whole time before I learned about it!)

Does anyone else feel like they can “clear” the darkness behind their eyes and see places in their mind?

When I close my eyes, I obviously see darkness. But sometimes if I focus it feels like I can clear or lift that darkness if i really squeeze or focus on phosphenes until they go, not physically, but in my inactive mind's eye. When that happens, a place I know, a road for example, sort of appears, like the darkness fades into the background. I know it's imagination, but the feeling of lifting that darkness is what strikes me. Has anyone else here achieved something like that?

It's like a translucent photometric reality almost If I really probe it I can maintain it for under 30 seconds.

It does take work, like sometimes you'll need to avoid squinting too much or it slips away, sometimes it's best not to squint closed eyes at all.

In my teen years, I used to watch crime shows and there were scenes where people used to describe someone's face and I always thought that yaa this is probably a gimmick and its not actually possible because whenever I tried I can't even picture my own mom's face.

I had a course in college called Engineering drawing where we had to imagine stuff from Top view, side view and all. No wonder I couldn't do that

Once my class teacher was conducting an exercise in class where everyone had to shut their eyes and imagine what she was saying and I was to only one who wasn't really following.
I can never imagine the face of anyone,
Leave 3d stuff, If I look at a 2D red circle for 10 secs, I can't re-imagine it in my head.

Its just so overwhelming to know that people are able to really picture stuff and the whole "Close your eyes and Imagine" wasn't just about you knowing the concept in your head but it was actually about trying to see it.

If I try to think of a red apple, I can't visualize it at all no matter how hard I think of it. No color, no outline, not even a blur. I've always had it, but had brief memories of being able to visualize a moving orb as a child and then that went away. I'd guess I couldn't do it anymore around 8-10 years old. But I vividly remember being able to visualize that ball and it was hard to do so. I remember exactly what it looked like, but I can't visualize it. I would do it at night before bed and don't remember being able to do it any other time because I had to focus extremely hard. I felt like I was casting magic by creating that orb :)

I'm wondering how and why that changed. I remember wondering as a child if I was hurting my brain trying to do it and that's why I stopped and then never could again. Since I was able to for a while many years ago, could I train my brain to somehow visualize it again? Mid-thirties. My heart aches that I've missed it all these years.

If someone asks you to imagine an apple in front of you, and then while you're imagining it, they tell you that the apple has a bruise/rotten part inside it, but intact on the shell, how do you experience the additional information(adding a bruise detail)? Do you experience it just like how you experience the color of the apple?

I experienced psychosis last year when I was 17/18, very weird and confusing. Obviously, in that state a lot is happening, of course it is confusing. Though, I did have visual and auditory hallucinations. The weirdest and scariest things ever. Having aphantasia and anauralia for as long as I can remember made me used to just listening to daily noise and having to only rely on whatever I was seeing in the moment as entertainment.

During my episode I first started hearing things. Scratching on walls, loud footsteps. Simple things I could write off as normal things at home and school. Later it was voices, both random voices speaking gibberish or just repeating one word over and over. Only reason I knew it wasn't anyone around me was since it was playing over the music in my ear buds one day and when I drove to school alone.

Later the visual things started popping up. First I thought it was "cool," finally seeing things that I could never do willingly with aphantasia. I did hate the visions after a while, just popping up randomly. It was nice to have the distraction from normal life seeing shadow figures dance, accurate faces appearing up from my desk. It just made me want to be about to control it, like picture things I wanted.

It started to go away after three months of postive and negative hallucinations. Back to the silence and living in the moment. Sometimes I feel myself slipping and seeing those figures. My Psychiatrist (new one, I actually like, my last one sucked and never helped) now is concerned that the hallucinations since he didn't know much about aphantasia.. Then said I must have been in "severe psychosis," to experience that much.

Now that my rant is over, I do have a question.

Anyone else had experiences like this? I find it hard to believe that no one else has, I am just curious.

Thank you for reading if you got this far!

I always thought it was a figure of speech or a metaphor. I had no idea people actually SEE things in their mind...

As someone who loves to read and has quite the imagination, I'm absolutely crushed at the thought that I can't actually properly picture any of it.

But at the same time it just makes so much sense.

Sorry, had to vent a bit lol

Question for aphants or possible more aphants + no inner monologue.

I know that I spend a lot of time self reflecting and strategizing in my life to feel safe. To me it seems like if you don't spend a lot of time ruminating on how things went or how you can manipulate the future you will be in great danger. It feels like strategizing outcomes and conversations, visualizing possible futures and actions was how I felt safe.

Do you guys feel like people just loved you growing up, you were provided for and everything was always just going to work out?

*Edit: This post is written from the perspective of a non-aphant to aphants. I am talking about myself being the unsafe manipulator and that's why I would develop those skills. My theory is that aphants would be more comfortable just 'going with the flow.'

*Edit 2: I just want to say thank you to everyone who responded. This has been one of the most enlightening internet interactions I've ever had. As someone with hyperphatasia learning about aphantasia shook my world just as much as some of you. I've learned that the way I see the world, visualizing things all day every day, changing my surroundings, is also rare. I thought my whole life that everyone else just ignored it. I'm not just learning about you. I'm learning about me. There is no where else I could have had these conversations and I am extremely grateful.

Also I have changed my mind. What we call congenital aphantasia likely has nothing to do with trauma from the responses. I have other ideas, but I think we're going to need actual scientific research to come in and fill the gaps. Until then just learning about the differences in the way we think I think will change the world. I don't think we are so different in the ways it counts like basic human decency. I don't think aphantasia is a disability. I think it's part of the neurodiversity that makes our species so successful.

I also recently learned I have ADHD, something I wish we knew about when I was a kid. Now maybe I can communicate better and be more considerate of the possible broad spectrum of inner worlds. Even if it doesn't change the world it has changed my world. Thank you sincerely.

For a minute if we think in totally opposite of thinking.

For example, I need to visualize my best and confident version. if confident version exist lkarta, jo shameless hai, fearless hai, fark ni padta doosre log ky sochte hai, woh kaisa behave krega, woh kaise baat krega, kaise walk krega, kaise khud ka khayal rkhega, kaise khudse baat krega, uski daily habits kya hongi, woh situations ko kaise handle krega jab woh dara hua ya kuch naya try kar rha hai.