#aphantasic

This turtles pic was one that really helped as I was dealing with the fact I’m aphantasic. Going from that initial scribble to that second sketch on the turtles was huge for me. I think it took about half an hour for all four of them and I barely erased anything, it just sort of, fell out. It’s been a few years since I realised I was mind blind, and it’s gone a long way to explaining why I make a lot of choices that I do when it comes to art and a lot of other things.

Aphantasia is a rabbit hole, which I’ll save for a different post. I’ll concentrate on the AuDHD…

Apparently, women and girls are under diagnosed or diagnosis has been missed completely. It seems we women/girls have the ability to “mask”, a term I have only just become aware of but completely relate to!

As a masker, we can “fit in” with neurotypicals, but at a price. Masking is expensive, it costs us our mental and physical health. The constant vigilance causes anxiety and stress which in turn triggers inflammation and pain (just to start). As a masker we naturally become a people pleaser and mentally bend ourselves into the shapes that those around us demand. We’ve had the mask so fully “on” that many of us lose ourselves, and blame ourselves for being “broken”.

My inner dialogue was AWFUL! I was horrible to myself and it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t my fault. My brain works differently than others, that’s all. It isn’t anything to be ashamed of, and I’m not. Not anymore. That being said, I still have to live and work in a neurotypical world, so I’ve had to come up with my own ways of doing it, and I’m still working on it.

I chose medication as one of my tools and luckily I found an ADHD med that work for me. With it, I’m better able to focus on tasks and emotionally regulate…MAN, I wish I had been diagnosed at an earlier age.

I’m 44 and was diagnosed over the summer, now I wonder if I had known why I didn’t easily “fit-in” and why everything was so hard, would it have made my life easier. Not that a diagnosis and medication magically made me neurotypical, it didn’t. I still struggle…every day…but as G.I. Joe used to say, “Knowing is half the battle.”

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, an aphant is someone who has aphantasia, or someone with a blind mind’s eye.

What the eff does that even mean, you ask? Well, let me explain:

If you ask a person with aphantasia to close their eyes and picture an apple…they see…NOTHING. That’s right…nothing…just darkness. Not even a faint outline of an apple. Just a blank screen.

When I realized I had aphantasia, I was shocked, bewildered, and quite upset. As someone who always considered themselves one with a rich imagination and the ability to daydream the day away, it was quite Earth-shattering to realize that my daydreams are NOT the same as 96%-99% of others on Earth?!?

I felt completely ripped off!

Aphantasia affects 1%-4% of the WORLD’s population! That’s it! (Though I think it is probably higher, because if people are like me, they aren’t aware of it…)

You see, when most people “count sheep” to try and sleep…they actually close their eyes and see SHEEP! …or…at least some version of sheep. Sometimes the scene is very faint, just vague shapes, others see black and white, or just outlines…yet still others, (like my husband…the lucky SOB) see a technicolor movie of sheep jumping fences that he can manipulate, adding a saddle with a monkey on the back of one, if he wanted to.

Me…I. See. Nothing. Darkness. An infinite void…no matter how hard I try.

As an aphant, I don’t have the ability to visualize. Instead , when I had to “visualize” in an exercise at school, or during meditation, I didn’t see anything…I conceptualized…I just, sort of, knew it.

Some aphants describe it like a computer with all the information and memory, but no screen to show it. I guess that is accurate…though it feels cold. I can daydream for hours without seeing a single picture in my head. Though most of my daydreams are more about the feelings and inner thoughts of the stars of the daydream.

Which makes sense to me, because when I write, the scenery and exterior atmosphere is second to the emotional noises going on in the hero, heroine, villain, or villainess’ heads…I connect with the character not the environment. I always have to go back and fill that part in later.

Any other aphants relate? Or have your own experience?