i may not be aphantasic anymore?
On this blog, I've previously talked about struggling with aphantasia - a lack of being able to imagine something mentally. Reading books, playing DnD campaigns and similar things didn't produce an image, and I couldn't imagine art in my head before bringing it to paper, and I couldn't see a mental image of the people I know even when I tried. At best, I would see short flashes, a brief detail, shadows, and that's it. I couldn't rotate an item in my mind, either.
The past few months, I've made a concentrated effort to train myself to have more of a mental image. I had previously just given up and not even tried to imagine things when the situation would lend itself to that, but now I did; trying to imagine what my friend or my wife experienced while they tell the story, or trying harder to visualize things in my Pen and Paper groups, or trying to think of the art I wanted to make while falling asleep. It got better the more I worked on it, and I noticed that the closer I was to sleep, the easier it was to vividly and strongly see a mental image, without being fully asleep or dreaming yet. I think acknowledging and appreciating whenever that happened helped make that mental wall crumble. I knew it was possible, and it made it easier to happen on purpose outside of trying to fall asleep, too.
The better I could mentally visualize something and just let a little movie run internally of whatever I chose, the more I noticed negative side effects that I had completely forgotten about. I was experiencing vivid flashbacks to traumatic situations again, and I had rather gruesome mental images triggered by fear.
Let me explain: Sometimes, I might see a situation that is risky, or a close call, like a cyclist crossing the red light at an intersection. And in real life, nothing happens, everyone is safe, because no car crossed at that time... but my brain will repeat this situation internally and show me how that cyclist is mowed down by a car gruesomely. It's like I get a replay of what would have happened otherwise. It is triggered by me either seeing something that could have ended badly, or randomly thinking out of nowhere "What if this awful event happens?". It's always very graphic and upsetting, and I can't control it.
I haven't had this in so long, I had completely forgotten about it, maybe even repressed it. But now that it was happening again, I recognized that this used to be a big issue, until it suddenly wasn't. This led me to think that maybe, I have simply shut off all mental vision to deal with these graphic mental images, and in turn made myself aphantasic. And while trying to lift this repression and train my mental eye, it returns. This fits to a feeling I briefly mentioned at the end of my old post linked above: I had a theory for how this happened for me, because I knew I used to be able to visualize things, I just didn't know when or why I had lost it. Now I know.
This has definitely caused me to regress again, not training for it anymore. I don't know how to proceed yet and if I will ever have a mental image without this disturbing side effect; I guess I'll see.
This is kind of sensitive and weird to share, but on the other hand, I know a lot of research is still done on aphantasia and others struggling with it sometimes try out things to treat it, and I didn't want this realization to be lost. If you struggle with aphantasia and have maybe in the past struggled with disturbing or violent visions or maybe even are diagnosed with (C-)PTSD like me, maybe this helps you connect the dots.
Reply via email
Published 17 Sep, 2025