I can’t visualise

Can you?

Aphantasia. Ever heard of it? I hadn’t. Until a couple of years ago, when it was revealed to me by mistake.

Actually, it wasn’t a mistake. The person in question had meant his words, but he hadn’t intended to rock my world on a Monday morning.

We were in a work meeting, which if we’re being honest, are largely forgettable. He said he’d only just learned that not everyone could visualise, but naturally assumed all of us could. After all, we’re creatives. I smiled. I nodded. I pretended I knew what he meant.

All it took was a quick Google search to discover that people - most people - can see through their mind’s eye. A superpower I had not been afforded, that to this day, boggles my mind.

On that fateful day, I confirmed myself neurodivergent, which did not come as much of a surprise.

I’ve always done things differently, and not in a “I’m so alternative” kind of way. In an “am I okay” kind of way. Not that neurodivergent people aren’t okay, we’re just different. You walk in a straight line, and I walk in a squiggle. We both get there. Eventually.

Apparently aphantasia affects up to 4 percent of the world’s population. We’re a minority, and we all know minorities are the best. Maybe you have it and you don’t even know. Maybe you’re about to find out.

If I ask you to close your eyes and think of an apple, some people can’t see anything. They’re people like me. We can conceptualise what an apple looks like because we know what an apple looks like. But we can’t see the apple.

But like most things, aphantasia exists on a spectrum. Some people see a black and white apple. Some see one in colour. Some see something in between. What do you see?

Apparently people with aphantasia can find it hard to follow directions or navigate new surroundings, which spoke to me, because I’m the kind of girly who walks to a public bathroom and gets lost on the way out. I’d always put that down to general cuteness, but maybe it’s deeper than that.

People with aphantasia can also struggle to remember people’s faces. Something I’ve never had trouble with. Actually I’m really good at it. So as with everything, everyone’s experience is different. We all have our things and we all make it work.

But the more I learned, the more I saw myself. Without actually seeing myself, if you know what I mean.

I learned that daydreaming isn’t just some fantastical concept we speak of, but a real thing that people really experience. They quite literally picture things happening in front of them. People are wild.

I started to understand how different my brain and other brains were. I learned that when reading, neurotypical people can actually picture the characters they’re reading about.

When people say they imagined Hermione looking a certain way, they were actually seeing her a certain way. People can create a motion picture in their mind, which really blows my mind.

I learned that aphantasia can be a trauma response. Or it can be something you’re born with. It can also develop after serious head injury. One day you were counting sheep. Next, just counting. But one man’s superpower is another man’s weakness, said someone sometime.

People with aphantasia are lucky they can’t recall horrifying scenes they’ve watched or experienced. We aren’t up all night replaying that cringe thing we did. Maybe it’s easier to be present that way. Maybe that’s our superpower.

Some of us dream. Some of us don’t. Some don’t have an internal monologue. There’s so many different ways to experience life and it’s cool knowing we only really understand our own. We don’t know how the person next to us is perceiving life.

It took me more than thirty years on planet earth to learn that visualising meant something different to different people. Everything from our biology to our environment colours how we experience existence. The way I see myself will be different to how you see me.

But even with our different brains and ways of being, it seems like we all kind of want the same thing. It’s how we get there that makes all the difference.