Since someone having aphantasia often comes as a shock to those who don’t have it, I decided to get some personal insight on the subject from one of my childhood best friends, Karlee Lanzafame, who discovered she had the condition in her early 20s.
When did you figure out you have aphantasia? How?
I figured out I had aphantasia during my sophomore year of college when one of my roommates saw a Tik-Tok and thought it was crazy that people couldn’t see things in their minds.
Then I was like, “Wait, you guys can SEE THINGS?”
It was a crazy moment really, but before that, no one around me, including myself, had heard of aphantasia before, so it was never even a thought in anyone’s mind. I just assumed my brain was normal.
Did you know others could visualize?
I didn’t. When someone said “imagine” or “picture” something, I thought everyone was just thinking about that thing, not actually being able to visualize it.
I really thought those were just figures of speech or something. I had no clue.
Could you visualize when you were younger?
I don’t think so, I feel like I would have noticed if I used to be able to visualize and then suddenly couldn’t.
Sometimes I think I have visualizations in my dreams though.
I’m not 100% sure, but sometimes they seem very vivid.
To what degree do you have aphantasia?/Can you visualize anything at all?
I don’t think I have it to the same extent as some people.
I have read that some people get “face blindness” because they literally cannot remember faces from their lack of visualization.
However, if I try to imagine something, no pictures come up in my brain.
It’s just blank in there.
Has anyone thought you were lying about having aphantasia?
No one has necessarily thought I was lying, but some people don’t think it’s possible until they Google it.
Then I have to try and describe to them what it’s like, and that I do indeed still remember things even if I can’t picture them.
How has having aphantasia affected your life? Learning/School? Everyday interactions?
I don’t necessarily know the exact details of how it has affected me since it’s my “normal,” but there are some things that my friends mention that I think could be impacted by [having] it.
One of them is that my memory of events is always horrible. My friends will ask, “Oh, do you remember,…?” and the answer is usually “No.”
I can’t just pull a memory up in my head, it is all more by the facts I know. For example- I know on Tuesday Bob was going to work, and he was wearing a red shirt, but I can’t picture Bob in a red shirt so eventually that memory may fade as my brain deems those details as not important.
I think this affects my long-term memory of events more than anything else. In school, I have mainly stuck to the sciences, which are a lot of facts, and not a lot of picturing things in my mind, so I wouldn’t say it has impacted me there.
I do think that is why I have found more creative outlets harder for me though because I can’t sketch things out in my head, same with spatial awareness.
Do you feel like you are “different” because you have aphantasia?/Do you feel like it’s a disadvantage?
I feel different when someone brings it up. It has started to function as a fun fact that other people share about me, so then I have to go down the whole line of questioning when people don’t know what it is.
Other than that though, it is just how my brain perceives the world as normal, so I don’t feel any different knowing I have versus when I didn’t know.
I do think it would’ve made a much greater impact if I used to have the ability and lost it.
I think in certain situations it could be a disadvantage, like if I did go into a more creative field, but where I am now I don’t think it affects me as much as people think it would.