I have APHANTASIA (and you may too...without realising it!) 

Ok! Gonna address some comments here (also THANK YOU for sharing your stories, this is absolutely fascinating to read and discuss) 1. I'm not talking about being able to actually literally see images being played back like a film projected on your eyelids (though apparently through vigorous and consistent meditation, you can train yourself to do something akin to this). If you're seeing the black of your eyelids...that's just your eyelids. I'm referring to seeing images in your MIND. Friends who can visualize describe it as being in the back of their mind? Though, again, some of them have said it's so vivid it could be real. I wouldn't know, because I can't conceptualize it whatsoever! The image streaming example (for those that can't visualize at all) only relies on the patches blackness of your eyelids because it gives you a base to try and sculpt an image around... almost like cloud gazing! You can also try doing it with your eyes open. 2. The apple example might not be ideal here, mainly because I'm talking over it and directing it a little too quickly. The point isn't specifically imagining an apple, it's visualizing absolutely anything. It could be a plastic blue cube, a china mug, stormy skies, a magical flying cat with long wispy purple fur and bright pink stripes, the subject doesn't matter, just focus on the level of clarity when imagining anything. 3. The purpose of this video was never intended to be a 'woe is me' story (not that many people have interpreted it that way). It was primarily to open up discussion about this topic. Aphantasia is difficult to diagnose because nobody see inside your visual mind. It's highly subjective. However, I think attention needs to be brought to the variety of clarity that we individually experience. It's and ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING topic! I've been asking everyone I know how they think and see in their mind, because it's such a contrast to how I work without images. I wanted to prove to you all that you can just find other ways to problem solve rather than giving up. I wouldn't be where I am today with my career in concept art and animation if I didn't push through the barriers. 4. Thank you so much for sharing such personal responses. It's a great topic to open up to with family, friends, coworkers, classmates, teachers, anyone! So go out there and find out for yourself how you compare to others! it might help you to help yourself if you need to approach creative work...or anything that requires visualization. 5. Dropping links in the description of interesting articles to check out! There's also the Aphantasia sub reddit. (will update this with anymore info if required) :)

I THOUGHT TEACHERS WERE JOKING WHEN THEY SAID CLOSE YOUR EYES AND IMAGINE IT AND I COULD NEVER SEE ANYTHING I THOUGHT IT WAS NORMAL WHY HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF THIS

People watching this fall into 2 groups: Group 1: Realizes some people can't see stuff and imagine it. Group 2: Realizes some people can see stuff and imagine it.

Years ago I worked with a director to produce a theatre show. She also had aphantasia, and that's where I first found out about it. She would bring a big pen, pencils and a pad and anything she wanted to describe or visualise she had to draw it, and we had to draw settings, props and storyboards out on paper for her to see it to get her approval. She couldn't run things through in her head, not even scripts. But she was the best director I've ever worked with.

Aphantasia- the ability to not get pictures in your mind when you hear suspicious sounds from the bedroom of your parents. It's a superpower!

'imagine changing color of that apple" me with red-green colourblind : * screams *

I just gave myself a headache trying to figure out whether or not I could “see”

This is quite shocking to me. As a maladaptive daydreamer, I can't imagine a world where I couldn't see images in my head of whatever I want to think about. When the earplugs go in, I feel like I've opened a new part of me. I'm sure there's other ways of self reflection even when you have Aphantasia. It just feels so sad that some people wouldn't be able to express themselves with little pictures in their heads.

I recently found out that this inability to visualize is not normal, and since I found out, I’ve found explanations for so many things I’ve always struggled with. I realized why I hate reading or why I am so terrible at character designs or just creating anything original. being an artist as well, I can confirm that this is REALLY frustrating, and the only good thing about it is that I don’t have to worry about remembering or seeing a visual that I didn’t want to see. Either way, I really envy those who do have the ability to visualize things.. (also I know that nobody cares, and that nobody is gonna read this, I just wanted to get my thoughts out.. thanks :>)

The hardest thing about this is't finding out that you can't imagine, but finding out that people can.

here’s the thing, i can imagine things and “see” them, but i only see darkness. it’s like watching a reflection in a turned off computer/tv screen.

Personally, I can see things in my mind for just a second and it just fades out of my memory slowly and I can’t remember it without looking at it again. I’VE TRIED to explain his to my teachers but they still move reallly quickly :,)

I finally found that this is why I cannot get hypnotized or follow guided meditations despite trying many times. We are told to picture things, and just like the video shows, I get highly stressed because I cannot do so and the meditation or hypnosis moves on leaving me struggling and feeling tons of anxiety. The video is spot on.

error 404 image not found

I was today years old when I found out people can imagine in colors and images and not just general feelings within blackness

i have hyperphantasia. the opposite to aphantasia. i think its so sad that people miss out on this massive part of living. i can see images so vividly in my head its like a movie or camera roll. i dont have to close my eyes to imagine anything or recall visual memories.

One time in school, a biology teacher showed us some chaotic patterns and asked what we see. It was some sort of test. Everyone in the classroom had the same answer, but I couldn't see anything. She told me I had a bad fantasy. It got stuck in my head for some reason. And it also took me off guard, because I remember having a rich fantasy when I was younger - creating stories, character designs, making up interactions that never existed, sometimes even having a hard time distinguishing the real world from the imaginary world.

Is it weird that I can visualise clearer with my eyes open than my eyes closed? 🙂

My teacher got mad at me because he said "IT'S NOT THAT HARD THINK HARDER" and I was crying the whole time because I couldn't imagine the image he talked about

I find it so interesting that this is just starting to be talked about, I always assumed everyone visualized things the way I did. I can see a 10 clearness picture but it disappears within a second. I would love to meet someone with aphantasia and hear their personal experience!

Jamie really chose nightmare difficulty for her career without realizing. Animation's great though, can't imagine how she does it without previewing the frames in the mind.

"Visualize an apple" Me: *sees golden apple from minecraft*

"imagine an apple, where is that apple?" my mind: ⬛️

I finally found another artist with Aphantasia! Ive been diagnosticed since i were 5 years old, i think its cool to find more persons like me and better if theyre also artists!

It's interesting, some of the things you're describing are familiar to me, despite having a vivid imagination. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how my brain works, and one realisation I had is that my visual imagination is built up of layers of concepts. When I imagine a street, I don't "see" every house in great detail at the same time. I just get a general visual sense of "houseness" from the direction they're located in. But if I focus my thoughts on it, more concepts come into mental focus and thus into visual focus as well. I might now get a visual sense of "windowness" from where the windows are, "brickness" from the walls, and so forth. Several of these layers are active at once. Colour, texture, lighting, shape, and so forth. I can either see more things in less detail, or fewer things in more detail. But if you set that visual element aside for a moment, it sounds pretty similar to how you say you conceptualise elements. I suppose my spatial imagination is even more vivid than my visual one. I don't know whether those are actually related. So I wonder, can you imagine a distance and direction relative to yourself? If you can, I have an interesting idea I'd like to share. Instead of trying to visualise an image, forget about the image. Just place _concepts_ in your mental space. Now you can go to those concepts and work them out in more detail. The idea here is that if you're working out those concepts in enough detail, even though they don't form an image, they could potentially _approximate_ an image by their location alone. I can imagine a window, and see its shape, reflectivity, the window frames, and so forth. But in your case, perhaps it could work to think along the lines of, "one corner of the window is in this place, another corner is there, the pane of glass is inset X distance from the edge". Once you get a feel for the key locations involved in defining an object in mental space, you can start translating that to drawing instructions. If you can go conceptually from "Here is what I want" to "Here is how I'm going to draw it" without needing visuals, it might cease being an obstacle altogether. Of course I'm saying all this knowing nothing about what it's really like to have aphantasia, so there could well be reasons this won't work for you that I'm unaware of, (or maybe you're even already doing this). I'm not saying anything about how this _should_ work, just about how I intuit that it _might_ work, knowing that I might be wrong. You know far more about this than I do. I'm sharing this idea just as much out of my own curiosity whether it'll work as anything else.

I started imagining what aphantasia is like and then quickly realized the irony of that and stopped

Wait what the hell this hurts my head I thought everyone just saw black.

I discovered this about myself about 1 year ago. It answered a lot of questions I had about not being able to remember of describe faces when the person was not in front of me. I would never be able to describe someone to those amazing crime artists who do workup sketches of suspects. I can relate to the part about not being able to read fiction, and to not be able to deal with guided visualizations. Same thing about not being able to imagine being on a beach. I DO think that aphantasia was a tremendous handicap in my attempt to pursue a degree in art. I also go through tons of images to create art or design. I don't do much art these days, and I think that aphasia played a large role in that. I have trouble catching visual detail even when my eyes are open. Maybe it is just because I can't remember the visual details that contributes to the fact that I notice something new whenever I go for a drive or a walk. I can go down the same street hundreds to thousands of times and ask, "was that there before?" The answer from my husband is always, "yes."

Seeing this video now is making me realize that I have this too, and I’m also an artist. I tried to figure out a way to explain it to my therapist and now I’m getting it tested as well as something else- thank you for this video!

I actually have the polar opposite to this: hyperphantasia. I can see, hear, taste, feel, and smell anything just within my mind. A close friend of mine has aphantasia so she and I talk about the differences in our minds all the time.

The fact that people can’t visualize things in their mind is crazy to me. I can literally picture myself walking through places I’ve been as if I was actually there.

I knew i wasn't the only one!!!! i cant picture anything either, but the way you describe knowing what something looks like, but not REALLY see it is exactly what I see(or dont haha)

You have changed my life. I had no idea I had aphantasia. My life makes so much more sense now. Thank you.

When she said change the colour of the apple My dumass brain: maGeNtA appLe

I now understand why people like books I guess they can imagine pictures but I can't see anything while I am reading I just see words

OHHHHH I REMEMBER YOU! I JS GOT RECOMMENDED UR COMING OUT VID I was tryna figure out why I remembered ur animating style.

rewatching this is makin me realize how well the transition is goin congrats my man

As a cartoonist, I feel sad that everyone else can just make the page up in their head, while I stare at my paper for hours:D

I feel like I can PICTURE something but not SEE it.

Oh my god i thought it was normal to not see anything in my mind thank you so much for teaching me a bit of on myself!

This was really interesting to watch! Thank you for sharing your experience 😊

I literally found out YESTERDAY that my BF of 5 years has aphantasia, bc we’re in the process of buying our first house and while talking about paint he casually mentioned that he’d have to see swatches bc he couldn’t picture it in his head, chuckled softly, and finished with “I can’t picture anything in my head actually.” He said he knew most people weren’t like that but he had no idea there was a name for it.

is it weird that i can’t tell if i see something or not?

I *don't* have aphantasia, but I've heard about it before and find it fascinating! I WISH that i could trade brains for a day with one of you who has it. I think it'd be enlightening for both of us!

I love reading, especially fantasy. And while I can play out scenes in my head it has always been limited range, like a fog on the edges of everything no matter how vivid I can focus the scene. "Lets climb that mountain". I can see the mountain, but nothing beside or behind. Like I'm in a first person shooter with the rest of the scene waiting to finish loading. And I love playing first person shooters, but I only starting playing video games in my 20s, and I've been reading since I was little. Thank you for helping me learn this about myself, that I'm not broken! This also explains why I have trouble learning art techniques, because when I try to put into action something I've just seen or heard or learned, everything seems fuzzy and transparent and far away, just on the edge of recognizing. Thank you!

My dad asked me to imagine something and I said I can’t and he’s said “yes you can you’re just not trying”

I don’t know how, but I can picture an apple, but I can’t see it.

I can’t tell where I am on the aphantasia scale because I can definitely recall images from memories but when I try to create new images, they’re very text based. I have to vocalise in my mind a “red apple” to “see it”, and even then I’m not sure whether I’m seeing the apple or the words or the memory. It’s such a confusing concept!

You explained my experience so well! I haven't been able to explain how I can see things in my dreams, but not when I close my eyes (only blackness). I'm excited to try the exercises you suggested.

What's weird is when my eyes are open I can imagine perfectly anything. But when I close them I see nothing, nothing.

If you tell me "close your eyes and visualize an apple" I can't do it. But I'm a huge reader and can visualize novels really well. And I daydream all the time.

OMGG! You've been literally explaining it the saame way I did about the same time you released that video, but I just found it now. About 6 years ago or so I was watching a series with facts when I firstly found out about it. About every 7th person was supposed to have it! And I'm one of them! I did small research paper for my psychology class about it. I had a questionnaire about the vividness or absence of people's produced visual imagery - some of them having hyperfantasia, imagining moving scenes when reading a book! And some with aphantasia had black-and-white dreams. I have normal dreams, I know what it's like to "actually" picture things in my mind because of these dreams. But as soon as I gain conscience, the visualization poofs! And ever since I found out about aphantasia, I was trying to figure out if it was a thing I was born with (or should I say without...) or if it was some kind of trauma response, a coping mechanism... I don't know. I was also explaining that I could recall things, for example what someone wore on the day before, etc. - but instead of picturing it, I was stating facts about it. Like a 0-1 code. Or visualizing - just invisible. And ever since I know about my condition... I hate people insisting on IMAGINING something in your head, and saying to try harder, when you tell them you LITERALLY cannot 🙈 I tried to explain to people that it's as if you want to draw something - like the thing in front of you -... But you don't know how to draw, so you cannot reproduce what you see in front of you on the paper/canvas... I see things, I just cannot draw them in my head. Not in color at least. Sometimes I feel they occupy the space in my head though. As if they had shapes. Just invisible. Not even outlines. It is weird. But I can hear voices in my head - as in songs playing. But I would say it appears rather unconsciously than having control over it. I was just trying to play some sounds in my mind and couldn't - it was the same as picturing them: they were there but not "actually" heard. Like the feeling of someone watching you - you may not see anyone watching you, but you feel it! It's there, and it isn't. Boggles my mind. 😅

so... i kinda knew i had this for a while, but i never realized PEOPLE CAN PLAN OUT WHAT THEY WANT TO DRAW????? i actually had to stop the video and sit there for a while because i was so shocked... holy moly maybe im not THAT bad at drawing, maybe it's just the fact i cant plan things out in my head!!! tysm for making me realize this tbh. WAIT THIS MADE ME REALIZE THATS WHY I "FORGET" MY CHARACTERS' DESIGNS AND I CANT DRAW THEM CORRECTLY IF I DONT HAVE ANOTHER DRAWING OF THEM AT HAND. IT'S BECAUSE I CANT IMAGINE THEM AT ALL. HOLY SHIT.

My brain is telling me what the apple looks like like for example: Red,round,in a fruitbowl- but I can’t see it in my head

When the teacher said to "Picture/Imagine this..." I always just went along with it but the entire time thinking."No one actually sees this stuff, right?"

You have just blown my f$@ing mind, so many answers and questions..

coming here after the coming out video is like whiplash LOL, congrats dude

This is sad, it would be horrible if i couldn't imagine a map of a resident evil 2 speedrun.

When I was younger, I used to sort of visualize stories in my head before I slept. I would do this nearly every night and these fictional stories would last for months, continuing around where I left off the previous night. Is that weird? Anybody else do this too?

Hey, thank you for making this video, I always strugle in art class because I couldnt imagine anything, and my classmates where making bob ross type paintings just from their imagination, I never knew about this until now, now I can try to "fix" it. tysm keep goin like this

Thank you for making this video. I don't think have full aphantasia but just like you said I can't conjure scenes or objects in my head correctly. I also happen to be a big fiction reader so it's very seldom that I'm actually able to see the character's faces and poses don''t even acsk me about action scenes. But similar to you my dreams get so vivad that I actually think they might have actually happened. But I do like coming up with character designs and art scenes but they rarely actually come to what I desired and just ends up being random Pinterest images. Sorry for the long comment I'm just happy that what's going on in my brain actually has a name.

so i have a tradition: every night when i go to sleep i came up with a story, same as a movie just adjusting the story for a third character as me, or making a new one. and i try to imagine it. I've got a situation, the story go on for a minute and puff... i fell asleep. Next night I make a little recap, maybe change something happened yesterday, and when the new part should come puff I asleep. And that's happens every time, for example: I needed a month sleep to arrive to a ball (step out from the carriage and go up on a stairs) it's fun, but sometimes annoying

"Now imagine this in your mind..." People with aphantasia: _h o w_

definitely a difference in perspective over everything after finding out about Aphantasia. People who are always saying "The books were better than the movie" make so much sense now. Actually Hallucinating a whole ass movie from paper is a gift in itself.

I can tell how well my brain is working on a specific day by trying to imagine myself doing something like eating, visualizing images, or how vivid something feels. Like right now im tired so I can only create level 2 or 3 images which I can't even remember what they look like after my mind wanders for a split second. Other times I can even imagine the entire world as my playground where I can just create anything I want or simulate certain instances like how object would react in midair or making a model of something I want to make and the small interal machining to get a desired result and come bsck to it like a tab in my head. Wish I wasnt an idiot 98% of the time 💀

I remember trying to draw when I was a kid. I asked my older brother how he can draw so good and he said you just close your eyes and picture what you want to draw, then open draw, close look at what you want to draw again, open draw ect. I thought he was joking.

Legend has it that I’m still trying to visualize that apple

I have this too! I am an electrical engineering student, and sometimes it helps me understand things that other people struggle to understand, because by definition they are inconceivable to the human imagination (>3 dimensions, complex signals, etc…) and most people like to understand things visually. This is just because I have to understand things from a non-visual perspective all the time! It’s pretty unhelpful most of the time, but occasionally it comes in pretty handy! If you got this far, have a great day!

This video was just randomly on my recommended, and I'm so glad I watched it. I had no idea that people could easily picture images in their heads as I also only could see just blackness. I found it surprisingly frustrating when someone told me to "imagine this and imagine that". I would put myself as 1 or 2 though because some sort of imaging appears when I daydream, but other than that, I cannot imagine things on command.

...are you telling me there's people who can actually *SEE* images in their mind when they think about it??? i always thought that was just like. what you call it, but that no one was *actually* able to do it. what the heck.

Oh man I didn't even know this was a thing! I'm glad you've found ways to manage and figure it out. Keep on keepin on~

i can see something but its in a really REALLY dark place because my eyes are still working to see, so everything i see in my eyes is dark-ish and when i look at something with no context(in my mind) i can see only a little, but i can still see something its just darkened out, really. i learned i have "low functioning phantasia" or just prophantastia.

I learned about aphantasia a few months ago and have been asking all my relatives to visualize a blue sweater. I remember seeing a book in elementary school called "the girl who thought in pictures" which inevitably backed up this thought that it was normal to not, until I was talking with my dad and he asked me to visualize myself. I told him that I could describe it but actually seeing it in my head is impossible (pointing out how the statement was flawed) and he went "uhm, no?" yeah that was a weird conversation....

Oddly enough I also dream in third person, but when I recall the dream, I visualize in first person. Huh.

I can imagine an apple but I also see the darkness behind my eyes. I can image the apple but also see the darkness of the underlying eyes.

Wow this kinda opened my eyes, i have never been able to visualize things in my mind and i just didnt question it. Then when i would go to create characters or landscapes i would beat myself up for not geting it like you said!

Being dyslexic people have always told me you have a gift, you can do things others can’t. You can picture things in 3D! But I actually can’t, it’s so weird like I know what things look like but I can’t picture anything. I always thought my brain was dyslexic and broken. I lied a lot about this. There is no colour in there no image nothing! And I also don’t know if it’s always been this way. Thank you for making this video. I really don’t feel alone anymore.❤️

WAIT OTHER PEOPLE SEE THINGS OTHER THAN DARKNESS WHEN TOLD TO PICTURE STUFF???

I'm Strange. I cannot picture things with my eyes closed, my mind just goes black, i see nothing. But when my eyes are OPEN, i can visualize something perfectly fine.

an interesting variant of this is with music, as a guitarist I can't visualize sounds, but there's something there in my mind's theater, the way something is 'supposed' to sound with distinct character

Thank you for animating your experience with this! I’m in grad school studying mathematics and topology (the study of spaces) has been IMPOSSIBLE for me for years! I’ve only learned last year that my struggle is that I can’t imagine spaces! (which is a topologist’s main mode of communication) Perhaps it’s a neurodivergent thing? And isn’t a “problem” that needs to be “solved.”

I just assumed when people said “picture x thing” they meant like.... metaphorically

I don't know whether I can visualize or not... that's so weird. I can like imagine things in my head, but I'm not sure if I really "see" them? It feels like they are far away, but still there. Idk.

Much love and I'm glad I am old enough to understand I have this and I can work around it.

I honestly cannot even begin to imagine what it’d be like without the vivid pictures in my head.

wait wait wait wait a minute are you telling me that not everyone is like this and people actually can visualize things on their minds? I'm speechless

So when someone says “I can’t get the image out of my head” they actually meant it!?

I could spent all days daydreaming, fantasizing and entertaining my own self by just using internal imagery and monologue I create, it feels like having your own ultra private cinema, and you direct it yourself

this blew my mind... I've always had a hard time picturing stuff in my mind but I don't think I have aphantasia. I mean I can picture stuff but just for a split second and never in 3D. like I find it way easier to imagine a simple drawing. Other stuff just won't compute in my brain...

As someone that lived life in fantasyland and being a daydreamer I had no idea that this type of condition existed and I am so fascinated! Thanks for sharing!

This shit made my art degree WAAAAAAY harder than it needed to be. Teachers are always saying to "visualise the end result" and I've always been like FUCKEN HOW???

We're in the same boat here, I only found out about it a few years ago, I am into my 40s. Also I am extremely good at replicating the sensory of anything except visuals, especially sound. I have given up on painting entirely, it just makes no sense to me, the chose of trying stands in no relation (for me) to the results. I was always more the auditive person. It even translates into my learning stylee, hardly taking anything away from reading or images but more from doing, explaining or listening. I sometimes feel as if my brain developed a host of compensating abilities to trick me into believing I am functioning normal. So what I sometimes wonder is: I am very good ad drawing connections between things and thus analyzing better than others. I saw other videos that this connection making sometimes serves as a replacement of imagination. I wonder if there is a direct connection between those two factors. Just as between my better auditive imagination and memory and the lack of visual imagination.

I have aphantasia, and when i first discovered it, i didn't really mind, but watching this video (and a few others) i realize how that is, almost impossible for "normal" people to imagine, and that really makes me see it from another perspective, BUT, i discovered something, just like the blindness of the eye enhances your other senses, the blindness of the eye of the mind enhances other senses, i can really feel and imagine concretely things like smells, sounds, touch, and more, when i asked more people how they thought (like, the way they think) they said it was through images, but i think with like, a little voice in my mind, that nobody that i know has (its not schyzophrenia, even though some of my friends thought it was) its like, talking to myself, but with another point of view, another version of me, long story short, i think its a tradeoff, and due to the fact that i preffer working in math related field i think it doesnt really affects me

I've always hated guided meditation because it's always a damn beach they talk about. I want skyscrapers with infinity pools, jungles, space. I'm tired of these damn beaches

when I'm reading, I can see the characters and how they'd look, what their voice sounds like, how it would change with emotions, the landscape around them, like a full moving animation! same with songs, I'll go through it like an animation. I find a character I feel fits the song, figure out the landscape, then listen to the song and "play" the animation in my head. the first few times it's choppy, like an animatic, but as I replay the song and video in my head, it becomes smoother, my brain making small changes, and eventually, whenever I hear that song, my brain plays the animation in my mind. honestly, I thought everyone could do that, that it was normal. guess not, but- am I the only one who can do this?

1:08 0.8, I see nothing, but I can *feel* the apple in my brain, like it's just outside my FOV

When I try to imagine anything, I sort of draw it in my head, with no colors, but if I ever try to look at the whole image, there‘s nothing there. I can always sprt of think that there is a line supposed to be there. I thought this was normal, so thanks for giving some insight on how ‚normal‘ people are apparently able to see things with their mind‘s eye. Reading is still enjoyable for me though, even if I can‘t really see it.

I was closing my eyes and trying to visualize and I fell asleep

I didn't know people could see colors and images in their head.

Cool video, glad to see someone else with the same problems! I will say though, I find it interesting you dream in a 3 person view. That's something I've never done, it's always been a first person view for me!