Being unable to visually remember important events, such as what the flowers or dress looked like on a person’s wedding day, can also be disheartening. Even simple imagery tasks, such as counting sheep to fall asleep, is a challenge. Zeman A, Dewar M, Della Sala S. Lives without imagery - Congenital aphantasia. Cortex. 2015;73:378–380. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2015.05.019

Everyone I've come across who has aphantasia came to the realization by reading an article, seeing a social media post, or chatting with someone about the mind's eye. My editor, for instance, had no idea she was aphantasic until I pitched this piece. And if I hadn't stumbled across that article in 2018 I might still be under the impression that my visual imagination is perfectly normal. One possible explanation could be that because [individuals with aphantasia] have trouble with this task, they rely on other strategies such as verbal-coding of the space. Their verbal representations and other compensatory strategies might actually make them better at avoiding false memories.”The teapot will have no meaning as it is as if your are seeing it for the first time; seeing it in the context of returning from no thoughts, or nothingness. After gathering the data, the team adjusted for age, differences in art abilities, and visual recognition performance, and compared the participants’ abilities to perform imagery tasks with individual objects versus spatial relations among several items. Find creative solutions. Once you've gotten into the habit of using your imagination, you'll need it to help you come up with creative solutions for problems that you face. This means trying to come up with solutions that are outside the norm. [5] X Research source The is initial thought of realizing that you weren't thinking is always a jolting, maximal adrenaline-type of experience. It's incredibly brief though.

Everything you think of is something (something that you think). In that sense, when thinking about nothing, we must admit that nothing is a kind of something. That's one of the fundamental paradoxes of thinking (and of being in general). So yes, you can think of nothing, just like you can think of anything else. On a summer Friday a few years ago, I collapsed on my living room floor in a transformative defeat. I sprawled out in the middle of the carpet, tightly clutched a throw pillow to my face, and squeezed my teary eyes shut before impatiently repeating the words, "BEACH. SAND. OCEAN. LIFEGUARD CHAIR. COME ON." I said them out loud — with real feeling — in hopes that the sheer sounds would trigger my brain to do what I'd just learned it wasn't capable of: creating a mental image. It’s like a list. A very detailed one that i can remember. I don’t think it hinders me in any way whatsoever but I do spend a lot of time wondering just what it would be like should i suddenly be able to ‘see’ these images. After a lifetime of no images I think it would be very intrusive and I worry that I'd lose my mind by being bombarded with things I've never lived with."

Mind blind

A good little test for me is drawing. I can copy things almost like for like if they are in front of me, but if I were to draw from my imagination it would look terrible. It doesn’t mean you cannot be creative; you just have to adapt.

Interestingly, a recent article in Scientific Reports notes that people with this condition experience images while dreaming, although they are not as vivid or frequent. This observation suggests that while unintentional visual imaging may remain mostly intact, intentionally recalling images is more challenging.

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On the flip side, I suspect it’s helpful in cases where worry may be overwhelming, in that I don’t ever spiral into crippling fear and imagine a situation over and over, as some people do.