First, like many things, aphantasia is a spectrum where some have no mental picture at all while others have fuzzy or dim mental pictures. I feel that I’m more towards the end where there is very little mental picture. When I am able to mentally picture something it fades very quickly and usually isn’t very detailed or at least I can’t tell how detailed it is due to how fast an image fades. I also usually can’t try to recall the image again, I just kinda get nothing. Most of the time when I close my eyes and try to visualize something it’s just a dark/black velvety nothingness.
Trust me, it’s weird to me too. I think I tend to think in concepts and logic chains or it’s more like I’m telling a story in my mind or basically a fairly constant internal monologue, although it does quiet down at times.
I’ve always had a hard time creating art, because I can’t picture in my mind what I want to create or at least I can’t hold a glimpse of an image for more than a fraction of a second if at all, so that makes it hard to try to sit down and draw anything from my mind. However, I have found that I’m able to create art when it’s more abstract or I take a shape and just play with it, I usually like to say I have an exploratory or experimental approach to creating art where I’ve learned how to use the tools (e.g. photoshop) and will try to think of creative ways to use the tools to manipulate something like a concentric set of squares or circles. I really enjoy making op art.
Weirdly, I have very good spatial awareness and memory of where things are located, but it’s not based off of imagery, it seems to be based off of directional relationships and where something is in relation to my body’s orientation in space. It’s all very difficult to put into words as language can be quite limiting.
How do I remember a route? It takes me a while really, but I think again it’s all sort of base off of proximity/directional and spatial relationships. I would liken it to walking around in your house when it’s really dark and you can’t see anything in front of you, but you know to get to the bathroom you can go forward for a few steps then turn to your left, take two steps, and then take a right. When it comes to cardinal directions, I usually learn where some big landmarks are around town and I usually have what feels like an intuition as to where I am in relation to a landmark and from there I can figure out what direction North is. I don’t really know if any of that is a good explanation or not.
Tabletop RPGs, reading, and audio books are definitely difficult for me. I didn’t know for the longest time that when people read books it can be like a movie is playing in their mind. I don’t get any of that and I think that’s why I’ve always struggled with books keeping my attention as I’m purely just reading the words and hearing them as my internal monologue says them to me in my mind. I did better with tabletop RPGs when there was a map with a grid on it and when we used mini figs.
I would also struggle to be able to describe what my best friends look like apart from basic descriptions such as hair color, height, general body size/shape, but I couldn’t describe specifics of their face. I don’t have face blindness though, I know someone that has that and that is a completely different experience than what I have. If all you did was ask me to describe a friend, I’d probably talk more about their personality, interests, and things we have in common before I’d give physical attributes.
Weirdly enough, when I do dream it’s incredibly vivid and sometimes even cinematic feeling. I do lose memories of my dreams quite quickly and it usually feels like most nights I don’t dream, but I can’t really tell if it’s just because the memory of the dream fades so quickly or if I actually didn’t dream. I have experienced lucid dreaming before, I tend to lose it pretty easily and still have trouble conjuring things that aren’t already in the current “scene” of the dream.
What’s easiest for me to picture in my mind is strong memories, but even then it’s pretty brief.
You didn’t ask, but psychedelics have been very interesting to me and they have caused closed eye hallucinations for me, but it was almost always abstract geometric shapes and colors. The trips that I’ve had are basically the only times I’ve ever had imagery in my mind when I closed my eyes and it stayed visible for long periods of time.
Thanks for asking about this as it’s always an interesting exercise in trying to better explain my internal experience and I feel like I get a little better at explaining it every time, but it’s still pretty difficult.
Of course, I’m glad what I said made any bit of sense at all. It’s fun to talk about even if it is difficult and even more so trying to write it out, but it was a good mental exercise for me.
Classic psychedelics I’ve tried would be LSD, mushrooms, and nn-dmt. I’ve not had a full blast off with nn-dmt, but I did flirt with it a bit where I saw transparent ribbons of color flowing out from my perspective with my eyes open. I’ve also done MDMA, ketamine, and 2cb. All of those have at some level produced closed eye visuals. The strongest were with LSD and the longest lasting when I took a half hit of LSD and then after hitting the peak of that I took .1g of mdma (candy flipping).
I don’t know that I would suggest candy flipping or any combining of substances any more, because even if the two substances are considered physically safe it’s more the potential mental risk that exists due to most combinations having a potentiating effect which makes the experience much more intense. I’ve had good experiences as well as difficult ones and at this point I’ve mostly laid off of the classical psychedelics, but will occasionally take a low dose of mushrooms once or twice a year.