Would knowing I had Aphantasia have made a difference? 

Hi. I have autism (diagnosed in 2021) and aphantasia. I realised I had aphantasia four years ago when my husband and enrolled in a sign language class at Uni. (We needed to do the class as my husband is going deaf.) I was struggling a lot with the class and couldn't work out why. One thing I noted from the class was that they never gave us class handouts. I asked for some and they said, "No. that's not the way we do things here. Deaf people have to learn sign language organically so that's the way we teach it as well." I tried to explain to them that I needed handouts to be able to remember the signs. Their response was that it just was not going to happen and that I just had to learn to see the signs in my mind. (They also told me that they didn't believe me and that I was just being obstructive so I said that telling me to learn to see signs in my mind would be like telling a deaf person to learn to hear.) When I did some research online to find out if not visualising in your mind was an actual thing or not, I discovered all about aphantasia. (The only sense I have in my mind is sound which is not very helpful when trying to learn sign language.) I printed out some information about aphantasia and took it back to the instructors at the Uni. I ended up having to discuss it with the course coordinator. They decided that I didn't deserve any special help as they thought it would be a waste of time and effort because in their estimation, I would never be able to learn sign language so, they kicked us out of the course. They also promised to reimburse the fees we had paid for the course, but they didn't.

Thank you for all of this helpful information. And thank you for not editing your dialogue. It has helped me understand myself better, and affirm that my speech patterns are not something to be ashamed about.

Great video, thanks. I have aphantasia too and it's really helpful to hear your experiences with it. I think I have global aphantasia but I struggle to understand exactly what non-aphantasics actually experience if they can imagine (say) the taste of a peach. If they can literally taste things that aren't in their mouths then that could backfire horribly! I am a maths graduate and always found maths came naturally to me, but I HAVE to write everything down. I can't do arithmetic in my head at all 😂 . I can't spell without writing words down either. I expect having aphantasia did impact my school work too, but I can't remember specifics either because I also have SDAM! 😂

I'm a fan. I like the way that you describe and inform about the diverse diagnostics that you mention on your videos. From my point of view they are very fresh and they let me spend my time in a healthy and Clean way, these ways are better and bring results that resolve in better situations that we enjoy with you.

I too have aphantasia and I didn’t realize some people could taste stuff in their mind! I already knew I couldn’t see things in my mind but damn now I feel like I’m really missing out 😅

I actually kind of discovered about it in high school , but it scared me that I couldnt visualize like other students in my class, a teacher got really rude with me and I ended not wanting to face I was different 🤷‍♀️ so I just recently put a name to it, and discovered that Im not alone, my mom and uncle have aphantasia too 😅 but beyond that one class , I never really felt diferent 🤷‍♀️ I did art and fashion design in college so I guess it could have been useful, but I dont feel like I missed a lot! Maybe I feel Im missing out about daydreaming that I love to do 😅 As for other senses in the mind I dont have them either, my mom and uncle dont have them too, it all sounds like superpowers really 😂😂😂

Same about the math! Omg it was so hard in school

Thanks for sharing! I have a total similar experience to you. Not sure I am autistic. My mom surely is undiagnosed autistic, my brother has some traits.

i've had aphantasia my whole life but only learned about the concept in recent years, i've known about my adhd so i knew my brain didn't work the same as others, similar to you i believe i don't have taste, but i can remember other relevant information to the point that taste would 'appear', and i have proprioception so texture comes easier to me, but i can't imagine texture directly. i also didn't realize i was thirsty or hungry until physical ques like literally my stomach protesting for food or my throat and nose being dry as a desert or my head starting to hurt from dehydration, the only remedy for this is habitual eating or constant snacking. i also do the same thing you do with math but i liked it a lot more and likely didn't have the same issues you did since you can't sense anything in your minds eye. my mother actually was quite surprised to know that aphantasia is even a thing, since she experiences a vivid imagination. i haven't met a person in reality that has aphantasia, but in discussing this with people i've found more interesting phenomenon that other people go through like "visual snow" and other such things. the only gripe i have with aphantasia is the lack of facial recognition i deal with, if i hear a name, i couldn't tell you who that is, if i see the face, it helps more, but if i don't consider them important in my life then even if i know them i can't bring that information to light, doesn't help when people recognize me and i forget for a whole minute or two who they are and have to sit awkwardly trying to remember them. i could have SDAM but i can also remember some memories of my past, but not well at all. and most were traumatic in a way so i wouldn't forget them. saying that though i can only remember my past experiences in random chance moments when i suddenly just remember it all, not all, but quite a lot more than what is readily available. i can hear sound in my mind, i believe i can smell in my mind but since taste is impaired i don't really know if what im imagining constitutes smell or taste or a variation there-of. if i had to explain to someone who doesn't have these conditions how aphantasia feels in a literal sense; i'd say it feels like i'm always living in a dream like state with little to no above board sensory experience in my mind at that present moment, like im going through the motions and watching it unfold like an unwilling observer, that could also be different but that to me explains my experience with aphantasia TL;DR aphantasia is a constant dreamlike state of immersive being, there's thoughts but no fancy lightshow. sorry if none of this was coherent since i'm not going to proof read this.

I learned I had this maybe two years ago and I also thought everyone was just very metaphorical 😂😂😂

I've thought a lot about how aphantasia probably affected me in school. (And in other areas where criticism on different art forms take place.) I'm glad you approached this subject.

Hi Amanda! New to the channel, just shuttling between various videos! I'm absolutely fascinated by your description of aphantasia! I have the opposite, or close to it. Apparently very few people count as having "hyperthymesia" without being able to put exact dates on stuff that happened to them, but at least compared to most people I've met, and especially most people with childhood trauma... my autobiographical memory and sensory memory are both very sharp. And until recently, maybe a couple months before discovering your channel, I hadn't heard of aphantasia at all. It was wild and strange to me. Still is a bit strange, but people's ongoing descriptions of how they process have been really insightful and lovely! What you're saying about music is very real. The things that you're sort of "meta-imagining," right? Imagining what it may be like to imagine... yes, those things are real to the musically inclined. I'm also autistic, but I do have that passionate and intuitive drive towards music. It's interesting to point out that you can certainly write a descriptive scene using reference, the same way you can draw a picture using reference... why DON'T we get taught that more? If anything, that might really show kids that you can be describing the same thing as somebody else does, but the words you choose endow it with a different overall emotion and quality. But yes, again you're saying "I thought it was all metaphor" and yet the mind's eye uses much of the same brain space as the literal eye. "It's like I'm there" isn't even exaggerating when you're really into a piece of fiction or what have you. The observations about spelling hit home for me very hard. I can't NOT picture words in my head when hearing them. They are always there. Unless I can't spell them, in which case they appear smudged or redacted. I'm told this is highly unusual. But it explains why I'm good at learning languages with the same alphabet as English, yet bad at learning languages with different alphabets or characters. Can't see the words hovering over people's heads when they talk? Good luck remembering anything... my brain's weird. And all of that spirals into layered feelings over visual art, songs with lyrics, poetry... because it's all building on the interactions of this imagined stuff. There's definitely some cool stuff about aphantasia that makes some aspects of life way better. Feeling like your experiences are brand new every time would be really amazing. And obviously I could do without SO MANY negative autobiographical memories. I'm not even deliberately holding grudges; I just CANNOT FORGET so many bad and mean things that some people in my life have said or done. It's so hard to move on. So hard to accept that they may never truly change or grow. If you don't remember a sharp sensory impression, a tangle of feelings that hit like a truck, and it doesn't block out everything else you're doing that day... safe to say you can get a lot more done with your time. The weirdest thing is recalling autobiographical memories that you have cognitive dissonance about, years later with the new lens attached. Just like you're swapping the filters on a photo, but it changes the entire thing. That's such a big topic by itself that it simply cannot be covered here. There are plenty of positive memories I wouldn't trade... but disability is value-neutral. It's not all good, and it's not all bad either. It's just our lives and we're living things differently. Thanks for being yourself and living your truth. I promise not all my comments are this long! Going to watch more of your great videos now. :)

I really enjoyed your video - thank you. There's something I noticed while you were talking that I'd love to hear your take on: Every time you mentioned (not) seeing something in your mind (and I accept that you can't), you basically pointed to it! It was clearly there in space, in a particular place and even a particular shape, in front of your eyes. You mentioned numbers, for instance, and pointed confidently to each digit. So you DO imagine it, at some level, even if you can't see it. Maybe it's like blindsight, where people believe they're totally blind and yet can post a letter through a letterbox that they insist they can't see? I have a good mind's eye myself, but smell might be like this for me - I can't bring smells to mind and always assumed that nobody can, and yet they're not exactly absent. I do get glimpses (whiffs?). Some sense of them being in my mind, even though I can't smell them. There's something there for me to focus my attention on. So when you pointed at those imaginary numbers, what were you pointing at? How did you know where they were? Why were they there and not somewhere else? I'm genuinely interested.

My God!! Is it possible to remember flavors too? I can remember textures and sensations when they are linked to a word, I can remember sounds and touch but I never even imagined that it was possible to remember smells and taste... I thought that aphantasia only affected the sense of sight but apparently that's not all.

I learned when I was about 57. I'm 63 now. Still there are things I never thought about. One of my hobbies is coffee, exploring coffee from different origins and various blends. It's frustrating that I can't identify the tasting notes - stone fruit, blueberry, etc.

Music sounds normal to me and, unless it's those songs where you hear the damn instruments louder than the actual person singing, I actually find quite enjoy music. Not sure if that's what it is (I'm not a doctor) but I know a lot of autistic people also have Sensory Processing Disorder on top of it so I wonder if that could be what's making music sound more like noise to you.

I learned english with manga in english language 😂 in school I wasn't that good. I also learned pronouncing english words with the help of RU-vid Videos 🙃

hi Amanda, I wonder, do you have visual dreams (sleeping dreams)?

See more and more videos without "add to" function (like with content for kids, but without "for kids" mark), so to bookmarks it goes. So you mean some people also imagine smells and tastes? Thought that aphantasia was simply no video or pictures :-)

I suspect that the right sort of therapy could help you discover how to awaken multi-sensory imagination. You seem to be thinking that your live sensory experiences are not internal experiences, but they are. You do not see with your eyes,, but see in your mind what information is supplied to your mind by your eyes. Similarly, you do not hear with your ears, but hear, in your mind, sounds, triggered by signals passing through your ears to your mind. Same with all your other senses. I think a series of simple musical exercises might flip the switch that lets you generate auditory experiences triggered by your working memory of recently heard sounds or your imagination, using the same hearing process that is already taking place in your mind, but driven only by live signals from your ears. Your memory or imagination are essentially different microphones that you learn how to plug into your hearing mind.

Good afternoon