Episode 01: My Aphantastic Journey

Welcome to the Aphantasia Experiments podcast! In today's episode, titled "My Aphantastic Journey," we delve into the fascinating world of aphantasia, a condition that affects the ability to visualize images in the mind's eye. Join Robin, our podcast host and self-proclaimed "woo woo" enthusiast, as she shares her personal discovery of having aphantasia at the age of 38. With curiosity and a desire to learn, Robin takes us on her journey of self-exploration, recounting the moment she realized that not everyone experiences the world in the same way. Through anecdotes, quizzes, and discussions, we explore the concept of lacking imagination and how it intersects with other sensory experiences, such as recalling smells, tastes, and sounds. So buckle up and get ready to dive into the captivating realm of aphantasia in today's episode of Aphantasia Experiments.

Transcript

Hello. My name's Robin. Welcome to my podcast. This is my first-ever podcast. I am sorry in advance that the sound is probably not the best. This is, again, my first one. I tried to borrow a mic, but I don't know, the thing's not working with GarageBand and I don't know, it's just not working, and I can't figure it out right now. My kids are homesick, so I can't go to, like, Best Buy or whatever to buy a new mic.

And I just need to start podcasting. So I'm going to okay. I will get better in the future. And as I said, I have three kids home with me, so I might be interrupted, and I will do my best to edit that out if that happens. Okay, so starting off why I came here and why I wanted to podcast, in April of last year, I found out something about my mind that I never knew. At 30 hold. Am I 38 years old? Almost 39, but yeah, so I found out at 38. I woke up one morning and I was scrolling Facebook, and I came across this test, this quiz that was supposed to tell you how good your mind's eye was.

And being someone who's super into psychic stuff and mediumship and all that stuff like consciousness exploration, all that fun stuff, I'm pretty woo woo and out there. And, yeah, I really love learning about that kind of stuff. So I clicked on it, thinking it would tell me, am I Sylvia Brown? Like, am I the next Sylvia Brown? Anyway, I clicked on it totally not about psychic stuff. The test took me through a variety of scenarios where I had to visualize different things. So the questions were like, okay, picture a horse. And then underneath, it would have four options. One that was super clear, another that was just a little less clear, and then one that was super blurry, and one that was just black. And so I sat there for a minute and thought, like, I could not see anything.

It's not black. All I see when I close my eyes and visualize a horse is the back of my eyelids. That's all I see. So I clicked the black one, and as I clicked through each question, it started to dawn on me that maybe other people could actually see stuff. Like what? Anyway, so after I took the quiz, I learned that I have what is called aphantasia, which is a term coined by Adam Zieman or Zaman, I'm not sure, in 2015. And aphantasia, it essentially means, like, if you break it down, lacking imagination. So no imagination, which is just it sounds mean, honestly, like, you have no imagination. I don't think that I have no imagination.

I'm a fairly creative person, but I really didn't like playing with Barbies as a kid. I didn't get it. I still don't. I'm like, maybe I don't maybe I wasn't very imaginative. I never had an imaginary friend. But I do think of scenarios in my head and play through things in my head, but it's not visual. Anyways, I'll go more into that in future episodes and maybe as I ramble here, but I wanted to keep going. So I read on to learn that roughly 2% of the population have aphantasia.

Now, if I only learned that I have aphantasia at age 38 and I'm like super woo woo. So I'm listening to guided meditations about being on a beautiful beach with a sunset and I've never been able to visualize that stuff. I've never been able to do that. And even though I still enjoy a guided meditation, but man, I feel like, hey, if you're listening to this and you don't have aphantasia, you should take a moment and just appreciate the fact that you have this magical superpower. And then for those of you who are listening to this, who have apentasia, I feel like there's got to be something that people with aphantasia or not with aphantasia are missing out on.

I feel like we must have some sort of superpower. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm going to find it out. And that's another reason I made this podcast, is just to learn about how different our brains work and what our strengths and weaknesses are and how we all learn and what's the best method of learning and growing in therapy for people whose brains work differently. Sorry, I just got interrupted by my son there. I think about school and how I was in school and how I really enjoyed school until I really just stopped enjoying school. And I always thought that was because like a hormonal shift, grade seven and eight is like kind of when you're thinking you're too cool and you're into boys and whatever, and whatever it is. I just completely stopped enjoying school, like being in class. But now looking back on it, those days it switched from bit of notetaking to other stuff to my whole day was notetaking and none of that stuff would stick in my mind.

I don't remember anything I learned in grade seven and eight. Well, I don't know if I remember anything from a lot of classes, but I know that it was so much notetaking and I didn't do well. Reading notes for me is like it does not stick in any way. And even now when I'm in meetings and stuff, I will be the person who doesn't take notes. If I take notes and I don't just engage in a conversation, I will not absorb it. And I know that notes you can go back and look on. I would rather be in a meeting, have that conversation, try my best to remember it, and then write down stuff after. Because the conversations itself, like actually engaging in a conversation for me is more it will stick with me better than sitting there writing notes.

So yeah, any class that was all writing stuff down, it was not good. Not good. One of my history teachers in grade ten or eleven, I feel like it was a lot of notetaking, but he told a story. And when I would just listen to him tell the story, I would do better than if I sat there and listened and took notes, if that makes sense. So I really think that having aphantasia, or even if maybe if you have hyperphantasia, like you're on the other side of the spectrum, you might learn in a different way than other people who are just like mid spectrum. I don't know. It would be interesting. I don't know if it's part of a psyched assessment, a psycho educational assessment.

I don't think it is because my son just did one a couple of years ago, but I do think it should be part of it. Yeah. I think about doing a spelling test standing up like spelling bees. How the heck can someone spell a big long word if you can't see the word in front of you? I'm a great speller. I can spell, but I have to write it down. And it's not just like I could write it down with a pen and paper and be able to spell it correctly. I just need to see it. So standing up because I won't remember what the last letter was, I have to see it.

And if you have adventasia, you cannot do that with your mind. So I feel like you're at a disadvantage in a spelling B. I also watched a show on Netflix. Oh my gosh. The mind explained. I think that's a good show. And it was talking about memory and this woman, how she remembers all these numbers as she kind of makes a story in her head with imagery. And it was really cool.

And I didn't know at the time when I watched it that I had aphantasia, but I was like, I don't understand how anyone could actually do that. Now it makes sense to me. I can't do it because I can't do it. But yeah, I feel like I hate putting us down. I have fantastic people, but I feel like, man, we're at a disadvantage for a lot of things and like, being able to describe someone to a sketch artist. Give me a break. Are you kidding me? I would just be like, the guy had a face and a chin and a nose, two eyes. There's no way I would be able to accurately describe someone's face in detail.

There's no way I can't picture anyone ever. I know what people look like. I'm fairly good with remembering people, to be honest, but describing them, no, it would not happen. What else did I want to say about this? I plan on talking about this more going forward, talking to other people who have aphantasia or people who have hyperfantasia. I'd love to just talk about creativity with other people because I'm a very creative person. I've worked in the creative side of publishing for my entire adult life. I make beautiful things. But yeah, learning I had this, if I could see what I was going to design before I designed it, I'd be amazing.

And I'm so jealous of people who can do that. And for me, I don't know if other people if you're listening to this, let me know who have aphantasia. I wonder if I'm in a creative concept meeting and I have to explain what I envision for some design of a book or whatever. I really struggle with that. I would try to describe a book I'd seen, probably, but I have to have some time before to throw something together on the computer. I like to play around. I like to pull ideas from other places. I have everything stored in my brain of good things that look good together, like font pairings and different colors that I really like together, and what clashes and what's too light on what I know, the basics of design.

I know what looks good. But to just come up with something on the spot, it doesn't work like that for me at all. So I'd be curious to hear how other creatives deal with concept meetings. If you have no time, if you're just in a meeting and they say, hey, Robin, what do you think? What should be on the COVID of this book? It's about this. I don't like, Give me a moment, give me some time. I'll think about it. Yeah. I can remember facts about events, so if you think about memories, I can remember facts about what happened at events.

Sometimes I can even remember what people are wearing, but I can't bring up the visual in my head. I learned that people with aphantasia are less likely to suffer from PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder. This is because they can't recall visual imagery. And that totally makes sense to me. I feel like I've lived a fairly good life. I don't have too much trauma, but maybe some of the things that have happened in my life would be more traumatic to people who didn't have aphantasia. I'm not sure. I've never lived anything other than my own brain, so that's hard to say.

The other flip side to that is sometimes when something traumatic happens to you, you can become afantastic. You can have aphantasia because trauma can also shut down your visual imagery. So that's interesting. I don't think I've had any trauma in my life that would have done that. Unless I joke. My mom says that I fell down the stairs. We had one of those rolly saucer things. What are they called? Saucers? I don't know.

But when in the 80s they had wheels on them so you could learn how to walk. They don't do that anymore because I think a lot of kids fell downstairs and I did it twice. So that's the only thing that maybe I had a concussion or something. I don't know. I don't think so, though. Who knows? But I've lived this way my whole life, so clearly I'm okay. Yeah. I don't know. I think about it all the time.

Now I'm playing with my kids and my kids are like, what are you building with Lego? And I'm like, I don't know. Do people know what they're going to build before they start building? I just start building and then it becomes something. Is it why I didn't have an imaginary friend as a kid? Is it why I didn't like playing with dolls? These are all good questions and I don't have all the answers, but I want to use this podcast to learn more about our minds and how they work and ask weird questions. I went to the cottage with my family in the summer and I started asking questions to my nephew. He's ten. I asked him if you could picture something. And yes. And then I move on to other questions. And I said, can you feel the emotions of other animals? And he was like, yeah. I'm like, can you feel the motions of your dad? No. Anyway, so I feel like there's so many things that we don't know. I can completely feel the emotions of other people when they walk into a room. It's like a vibe thing.

I can immediately know if someone's in a bad mood. And I thought that that was like a normal thing that most people could sense without someone saying, I'm in a bad mood if someone walks in the room says nothing. I thought that most people could sense that, like, if they were in a bad mood or not. But it's not true. Not everyone can do that. So if you're listening and you have Aventasia and you're like, oh, yeah, I can totally sense someone's mood, I'm with you. But like, my husband who has it, he does not sense that stuff at all. So it's very interesting.

And even though he can't visualize, he has almost like a photographic memory without the photograph. It's crazy. If he puts something in a drawer and it's a certain way. If he was away from that drawer, and this is such a weird example for a month, he would still know exactly how everything was placed where. I'm like, even if I organize something completely perfectly, the next time I go to put something in it, I'll forget where the thing is supposed to go because it's just like I don't know. That's probably me having like ADHD and stuff, too. But it's interesting. We all just store our knowledge differently and I find it really fascinating.

And yeah, the emotion thing. Oh, I asked him another thing I asked was because he's a teacher, he was doing presentations in his class and I said, oh, are some of the kids just really nervous? Because I remember from grade seven and eight, we would do like, speech competitions. And you knew before? Well, I knew like, each kid in the class that were going to be nervous. I knew the ticks that people had. I knew which ones would pace. I knew which ones would speed up their talk. I could sense all those things.

I've always had that. And my husband, he was telling me about these presentations. He's like, no, I don't know. I can't tell if someone's nervous. I was like, what? I feel like that is so obvious during a speech. But yeah, I feel like not everyone has the ability to pick up on little things that for me are so obvious. Anyways, so I'm here to talk about all the things and to talk about some woo woo stuff because I'm into spirituality and stuff and I believe that. I believe a lot of things and I like discussing our minds and consciousness and all of those things.

And now I'm just rambling and rambling because I don't know how to end a podcast. But I hope you come back and listen some more. I'm going to do another podcast podcast on dreams soon because I've had some crazy experiences there. No, I'm not just going to ramble on about my dreams and what else. I got a bunch of ideas in my mind, so stick with me and I hope you listen again. Thanks so much. Bye.