Me and my blind mind's eye

On super powers and self-diagnosing

Photo courtesy of Cora Pursley via Dupe.

As much as I’d love to be, I’m not a big visualizer. It’s not like I’m too lazy to get around to it, it’s that I simply can’t do it. When I close my eyes, I see nothing. When someone tells me to picture something in my mind, I can’t. If it weren’t for yoga classes and meditation exercises, I would think everyone was like me in this way. And if it weren’t for TikTok, I might not know it’s a real thing.

I discovered it a couple years ago when I stumbled on a video of a girl prompting the viewer to close their eyes and picture a red star in their mind. I almost scrolled past, knowing I wouldn’t be able to see anything and therefore thinking the video wasn’t for me. However, she said she sees nothing, which immediately caught my attention. She then showed an image of six black boxes, each with a varying degree of a star shape in the center, with the exception of Box 1, which was just black. She said when prompted to picture anything in her mind, red star or otherwise, she sees Box 1.

Box 1 is exactly what I have always seen. So when she said this, I couldn’t believe it – there was someone else out there who couldn’t visualize, it wasn’t just in my head. All this time, I had chalked my inability up to not focusing hard enough or not being enlightened enough. I’d attempted to describe it to others in my life, but no one knew what I was talking about. By default, as I do, I figured it was a me problem.

However, according to this TikTok video and other sources I’ve since found on the internet, it’s a real condition called aphantasia, or a blind mind’s eye.

Image courtesy of Reddit.

People with aphantasia, like me, can’t visualize anything in their mind, whether it’s thinking of a shape or remembering a face. The best way I can describe it is that it’s more of a knowing than a seeing. For example, I obviously know what my husband looks like. It’s not that I can’t recognize him, it’s just that I can’t picture his face in my mind. This is why the red star graphic from the video is so helpful in conveying this phenomenon. I know what the color red is and what a star looks like, I just can’t conjure a mental picture of it.

I will say, having a blind mind’s eye has its downsides. I believe it’s why I’m particularly terrible with things like directions and spacial concepts. I remember my dad showing me the blueprints for the rebuild of our family cabin when I was young. He rolled them out on the desk in his office, pointing out the various rooms and features like doorways and beams. I looked where he was pointing, but could not picture how all these lines could turn into something three-dimensional. When the cabin was finished, I was amazed. I never thought it could possibly look like that. Granted, I was five and obviously not a general contractor or architect, but it goes to show that aphantasia is a lack of visualization, not imagination. As a five-year-old, I was brimming with ideas. In fact, it’s the age at which I started writing and illustrating stories.

Aphantasia has never stopped me from drawing or writing. I tend to just go off what I know – or better yet, a real-life image. Though I will say, it does make being a reader an interesting experience.

I’ve been a reader all of my life and have always been excited to see the movie versions of the books I read because I’ve never been able to see any of it in my mind. I can vaguely picture various settings, but they’re always based on places I’ve been to many times in my real life, like my godmother’s house or my grade school, and they always kind of look like Box 2 or 3 from the red star reference image. When I’ve talked about this with friends, they’ve commented on how sad this must be, since reading for them is essentially like watching a movie. I imagine that’s why so many people are obsessed with books that I just can’t get into.

When I read, I essentially have little choice but to focus on the words, which makes me a rather critical reader as a result. Maybe I’m a snobby English major, or maybe words are all I have. Either way, I need something to be written decently well in order for me to enjoy it. “Written well,” according to me, means it includes one of two things (both are ideal of course, but beggars can’t be choosers and writing is hard, so I get it). The first of which is a strong sense of voice, syntax, and diction or even a poetic writing style. The second is the ability to evoke emotion.

Where most people visualize what they read, I feel. I’ve written before about having the high sensitivity personality trait and how I learned as early as fourth grade that not everyone feels quite to the same degree as I do when reading (or otherwise, for that matter). If an author takes me on an emotional journey, it feels more visceral to me than visualizing ever could. I think that’s partially why I can get more into some books than others. Fantasy books, for example, take a lot of imagination to write but also to read. Sometimes I’ll read a fantasy book and feel lost. Even if the author provides ample details, without any emotion to ground me, I can’t connect with it. However, in a series like Harry Potter, despite describing countless imaginative creatures and settings, J.K. Rowling includes so much emotion and creates such palpable characters that I don’t necessarily need the mental image in order to immerse myself in the story.

In a way, having a blind mind’s eye is similar to losing my vision in that my other senses are stronger as a result. Almost like how a blind person has a heightened sense of touch and sound, my inability to see anything in my mind allows me to lead with feeling. Whether or not my high sensitivity is a result of my aphantasia, I’m not sure. What I do know is that I’m trying to view both of them as super powers and not as hinderances.

At the end of the day, the best books I’ve ever read are the ones that have evoked emotion. To me, it’s a beautiful thing to be able to write in a way that moves others, that makes them feel seen, that makes them feel something. That’s exactly what I aspire to do, and maybe that’s exactly why my aphantasia exists.

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Author’s Note: Ever since I discovered aphantasia, I’ve been obsessed with learning more about it and talking about it with others. I’m curious, do you have a mind’s eye? Or is it blind like mine? Let’s chat about it!