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Original poster

I've just discovered I have Aphantasia - who knew !

289 replies

VictoriaBun · 06/07/2019 10:41

You might have it also.

Close your eyes and imagine a happy place, a wood , a beach anywhere that floats your boat . See the image in your mind, feel yourself there etc etc.
Now can you actually see the image in your head ? No. Well then you also have it ! !
It's blown my mind that I've got to this age and realise that when people say something like count sheep to help you sleep that can actually see the sheep in their head. Wow. Apparently 2 -3 % of the population also have Aphantasia. Who's in the club ?

OP posts:
Littletabbyocelot · 06/07/2019 12:55

I have it. I always knew (my dad has it, although we didn't know the word until a few years ago) but I didn't realise how real visualisation could be for other people. We were watching a film with a flashback scene where it was like the person was there. I asked my husband if it was really like that and he said it was and gave too examples of memories he could pull up - our dc being born, and the first time he saw me topless, 20 years ago. I can't picture his face or my dcs faces.

Re: sexual fantasy, I make up stories in my head.

I love reading. My memories of books are as vivid as of my life and its easier to revisit a book

StealthPolarBear · 06/07/2019 12:55

And if I was asked to describe something my brain would work as if it was 'seeing' it. So I'd start at its head, mention ears and eyes, then move along its back, wool, then I'd 'get to' its tail etc.

Ambydex · 06/07/2019 12:59

I would not say I have any problem visualising things but Eg I don't give characters in books hair colours, or actually imagine sheep jumping over a gate. It's more abstract then that. It's still visualising though.

Whisky2014 · 06/07/2019 13:02

Apparently 2 -3 % of the population also have Aphantasia. Who's in the club ?

Well, apparently everyone on mumsnet Hmm

Whisky2014 · 06/07/2019 13:04

She you say "see" it's not like something appears in the black space when your eyes are closed. It's basically accessing a memory and sort of picturing it but the picture isn't actually there. Hard to describe. I think people are interpreting this all a little too literally!

KoalaTea · 06/07/2019 13:05

i have a very vivid imagination.

Everything is like i'm actually looking at it, stood right there. I can see things clearly, even imagine the breeze or the scents and sounds around me.

Biggest issue is when i'm trying to remember if I did something, and I can actually see myself doing it.. i'm never sure if its a memory or my imagination!!

Whisky2014 · 06/07/2019 13:07

This is a good example. It's about your minds eye not what you see if you just close your eyes..

Can you visualize the magician pulling out the rabbit by his ears?

For most of us, it will be easy to recall images inside our head, using our mind’s eye.

However, if you could NOT see any image in your mind’s eye – no colors, no sounds, no smells, no textures, no flavors, nothing at all – you may have a condition called aphantasia or a blind mental eye.

Zaphodsotherhead · 06/07/2019 13:10

As me to imagine a wood and I can see it, the sun through the trees, I can smell it, hear it, I can tell you what type of trees and where the paths are.

But I find it very hard to imagine faces.

Am a writer of romance, so maybe I've been 'trained' to leave the faces blank so readers can put their own interpretation of who they find attractive onto the character?

thedevondumpling · 06/07/2019 13:11

My husband has this, I'm the opposite and see things quite vividly. The funny thing is he has vivid dreams and I don't.

lottiegarbanzo · 06/07/2019 13:12

Yes, 'mind's eye' and 'closed eyes' are not closely related, except in as much as many people's dreams are visual.

If I close my eyes I see the back of my eyelids but, with my eyes open, I can 'daydream' and visualise sheep, rabbits, whatever.

S1naidSucks · 06/07/2019 13:12

Wow. That actually sounds very sad. One of the things that gives me joy is my ability to ‘see’ what I’m thinking about. Strangely enough I don’t recognise faces, but I can walk into a room and ‘see’ it redecorated or with new furniture, where pictures will be placed or even if a piece of furniture I’ve seen in a shop will fit in a particular area. I don’t have to close my eyes, in order to see things I’m planning, remembering or thinking about. It’s like I’m daydreaming/in a daze and I can see things. It’s almost like when something is in the front of a photo/image and the background is faded.

PeriComoToes · 06/07/2019 13:13

Me. I found out that people actually saw things in their head a few years ago. I could not believe it and was gutted that I can't. Still am really. Feel like I'm really missing out, especially when some people say reading a book is like watching a film (various threads on here). I am, however, a prolific dreamer and these are always in pictures which is bizarre.

CalmConfident · 06/07/2019 13:13

I am like whisky...I totally see things in my minds eye but in back of my brain somehow rather than visually in front of me...hard to explain !!!

Sissy79 · 06/07/2019 13:21

I think closing your eyes and seeing is confusing some people. I don’t have to close my eyes to picture something, I see it in my minds eye which is kind of in my brain at the front of my forehead.

If people are diagnosing themselves with this because they only see reddish black when they shut their eyes, we all do. The images are in your eyes, they’re in your imaginative brain,

Sissy79 · 06/07/2019 13:21

Arent* in your eyes

SirVixofVixHall · 06/07/2019 13:22

My DH has this. I was so shocked that he couldn’t see with his eyes closed !

SirVixofVixHall · 06/07/2019 13:24

I have the opposite, hyperphantasia.

BeyondMyWits · 06/07/2019 13:25

I see things too. I was shocked and surprised that others don't when I found out. I have a world inside my head - I have my "happy place" - I told DD that when she was feeling a bit down or stressed to picture her happy place - that mine was a beach, with a palm tree bent over the ocean, sitting on the branch, letting the warm greeny blue waters lap gently over my bare feet, the buoy bobbing in the distance, the sun glinting through the fronds warming my skin - I can see it all vividly, the greens, browns, blues, hazy sunshine, individual grains of pale yellow sand glinting - it makes me happy.

she looked at me like I was crazy - "what do you mean picture" "where is the picture" "you've never been to a beach like that, how can you picture it" - My brain makes it up, and pictures it in my head - between my brain and my eyes - very real - like I am looking at it.

I understand much more now why she cannot lift her mood like I can.

MenuPlant · 06/07/2019 13:26

Whisky that is not the definition of aphantasia that I have read.

That sounds like when you close your eyes your brain shuts down entirely!

StealthPolarBear · 06/07/2019 13:26

On a similar note. Those mindfulness thingswhere you have to relax your shoulders... Your arms.. Hands... Fingers, can anyone do it? I tend to find my muscles wont go any more relaxed

MenuPlant · 06/07/2019 13:26

I'm not sure why you're so determined that what people report is not what they feel, if it's 3 % of population and there are thisands and thousands in mn then yes there will be lots!

thedevondumpling · 06/07/2019 13:27

Feel like I'm really missing out, especially when some people say reading a book is like watching a film (various threads on here). I am, however, a prolific dreamer and these are always in pictures which is bizarre. I see it all happening when I read a book. I was trying to work out if I'd watched Bosch series 4 or if I should go straight to series 5. Well lots is like his books but some details are different so I was watching bits and thinking, "Oh yes, I've seen this." Then some new characters appeared and they were the wrong people! Well they weren't the people I'd seen when reading the book.

I remember feeling this as a child, the BBC used to do a children's classics series on a Sunday afternoon. I watched one, it might have been Jane Eyre and I was most indignant that they'd used all the wrong people. I still feel a bit like that but can rationalise it.

PerspicaciaTick · 06/07/2019 13:30

When I close my eyes, I see blackness. However most of the time I do not think about looking at the inside of my eyelids so I have consciously look at it .
If I sink into my imagination I can visualise stuff (real or imagined). The blackness is still there and it can be distracting from the visualisation. I find visualing a lot of detail to be hard work and most of the time I just do imagining without the pictures because it is easier and more satisfying.

Terry Pratchett wrote about a dreamworld where stuff only came into focus when you looked directly at it, the rest of the scene was just sketched in. Which is a fair description of my visualising imagination at work.

MenuPlant · 06/07/2019 13:34

"I understand much more now why she cannot lift her mood like I can.'

Maybe try something she is actually capable of doing then!

Silene · 06/07/2019 13:41

I am so relieved to read these posts. I can’t visualise faces, just an impression of them somehow, although there are one or two I can ‘see’ in my mind’s eye they aren’t close, it’s strange. I feel sad that I can’t visualise my Mum’s or aunties’ faces, and even my children, who you would think would be the clearest, are not. I wish I didn’t have it, and I had no idea what it was till recently.