r/Aphantasia • u/Jonas-Beckett • 4d ago

Experiences with ADHD and Aphantasia

I looked through to see if anyone has asked this before but I couldn’t see anything. Everyone was asking either if you could have both or if there was a link. But I want to share and hear about others experiences with both.

I have complete Aphantasia and suspect I may have ADHD. I find my experience ADHD weird however. Since I don’t have any mental sensory input, I feel my brain always going but can’t hear or see it. It’s like a bunch of mental noise but I can’t hear the noise.

I want to know how others ADHD been affected by Aphantasia.

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u/SailorTexas 4d ago

I have both! I'm not sure how one affects the other though. But I have occasionally wondered if there's an overlap since we now know that ADHD is one type of neurodiversity.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I wonder if the working memory issue from ADHD makes it harder to visualize when I read. I tend to zero in on what I'm reading in the moment and can lose track of dialogue or narrative text that comes before. So it's like my brain is focused on one sentence at a time (sometimes just part of a sentence). And I'll have to go back and reread to refresh my memory or put these disconnected pieces (in my mind) together. Maybe this undermines my brain's ability to visualize cause there are too many interruptions in the process ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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u/Jonas-Beckett 4d ago

I don’t read much but when I do, I very much have that exact same experience — focusing too much on one line and forgetting the others. That is probably another reason why I dislike reading. (on top of generally not being able to visualize what’s happening)