Hypophantasia

I was floored by a realization yesterday – people can actually visualize things.

Like, when they're told to close their eyes and picture themselves walking through a garden, they're not all just swimming in the darkness of their eyelids like I am.

It's all been said by aphantasics a hundred times before – I thought being told to picture something was metaphorical, daydreaming was being lost in thought, imagining everyone in the audience naked was hypothetical (whoa there)…

That said, I guess I have hypophantasia rather than full-on aphantasia. Under certain circumstances, I can visualize things. If I'm tired enough, or if I've looked at a bunch of pictures of something, then sometimes when I close my eyes I see random images. But I have no control or influence over it. I certainly can't do it on command.

Memories I can sometimes picture, but it's like a single frame flashing by in a video. It happens so fast, I can't pin it down or say how vivid it is or not. It only happens when my eyes are open and I hesitate to even call it seeing.

But when I'm told to close my eyes and picture something, all I've got is darkness. The best I can maybe conjure is woefully simple shapes of black pasted on blotchy black nothingness, and even that is fleeting.

I don't want to disregard the amount of visualization I can do, when I know that some people can't do any at all. I used to think my ability to look at a bunch of pictures and then randomly generate one of my own for a couple seconds was pretty dang cool. But knowing that the norm is to be able to do that at any time, on command, with the ability to make it move or change color or play out an entire scene? That sounds like magic.

I would so love to brainstorm with my eyes closed... I'd love to daydream when I'm just waiting around, or experience guided meditations like a pseudo-lucid dream. I'd love to not have to wing it with pen on paper to actually see the ideas in my head.

That said, I've lived my whole life like this and only recently found out it's not the norm. So it must not make that much of an impact on how I function from everyone else. I have my own ways of drawing and understanding and remembering things that are probably different from others, but the end results are generally the same.

Still, I feel grief, like most everyone has a gift I inexplicably lack. A gift I would really like to have. I know it varies for everyone and some people are even plagued by the things they see – but all the same, I wish I could picture things too.

Can you tell the image above isn't just solid black? It's my rendition of the most vivid scene I could picture when told to:

“Think of a country scene which involves trees, mountains, and a lake.” (This is from a little visualization test you can take too: https://aphantasia.com/study/vviq/ )

What you see of that image is hugely dependent on your screen and the lighting conditions around you, but if you feel annoyed staring at it, insisting there's nothing even there – if it weren't for the shadow of a doubt that maybe you saw a vague shape in one spot or another – then it's an accurate recreation of my experience.

Hopefully I don't sound too complainy about all this. It's something I wanted to share here because it really makes me think of how people like me must approach art differently than those who can visualize their subject and desired outcome from the start. It makes me wonder about the differences in how we all think and experience the world, and how I might write my characters with those unique differences in mind. It still blows my mind to consider how other people can conjure up things in their mind, and that they, too, are surprised to find out that I can't. How has there been this unknown difference between us all along?

Brains are amazing. I'm pretty sad right now but I'll get over it.