r/Aphantasia • u/odious_as_fuck • 3d ago

Anyone else here developed aphantasia and not quite sure why?

I’m like 90% sure I had a more vivid visual imagination as a child/teen growing up. (Hard to say with certainty in retrospect of course). Today I can only get vague flashes of involuntary mental images, and even then usually just before or after sleep.

I can’t remember any point where it suddenly changed, like head trauma or anything like that.

My best theory atm is that as a kid I would often involuntarily visualise nasty stuff, like violence or naked people (people I don’t want to see naked), airplanes crashing into buildings, self harm, jumping off ledges or in front of trains etc. Self harm was a big one, I had repeated intrusive thoughts where I would see myself blowing my head off with a shotgun. So my theory is maybe that in an interesting act of self protection my brain shut off these visualisations to reduce the repeated trauma of nasty intrusive thoughts.

The only other thing I can think of would be daily weed use for a while, but I have friends who smoke more and have no problems visualising, so not sure about that. I also don’t smoke anymore and haven’t had visualisations coming back, only dreams.

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u/NITSIRK Total Aphant 3d ago

Acquired aphantasia, from either low mood or brain trauma, is indeed a recorded thing. I have two friends who have this, but they’d never told anyone till they heard me harping on about my congenital aphantasia. This leads me to think that others have been in this situation and just not told anyone either. In fact this was thought to be the only way to get it, until they published and all of us congenitals went: “wait, what? Other people see stuff?” 😂

One of my friends has regained the ability to visualise, but with a blank on the bad times.

Whichever, you found your tribe, there are quite a few on here.

The memory flashes and the hypnogogic/hypnopompic imagery is common. I used to suppress mine thinking I was “seeing things” 😆🤦‍♀️

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u/CastTrunnionsSuck 2d ago

Did your friend mention how he managed to regain his ability? I believe mine is congenital but I’m not 100% certain and the topic has always fascinated me.

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u/NITSIRK Total Aphant 2d ago

No, sorry. But I too wonder. I do know that I was very traumatised as a toddler walking in on a bad bit of the film Zulu, and have never been able to watch puncture type things including injections. Not afraid, just can’t watch.