Aphantasia Quotes

“It would certainly have helped me if there had been alternative methods of teaching – particularly for visual lessons like history or geometry!”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“and even after discovery, agree that it hasn’t hindered them in any way. It’s just a quirk of brain function.”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“can pull up pictures on request as if from a library, while most get pictures of objects or people delivered automatically to their mind at the mere mention of them – something I might consider intrusive and potentially annoying,”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“I always assumed daydreaming was simply staring blankly out at the view because your mind was occupied thinking about other things, I had never appreciated the fact that people were genuinely creating movies in their minds, or “seeing” their dreams played out in images in their heads. Mad!”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“When a book is made into a movie someone without a mind’s eye will never comment on the casting to say… “oh that’s not how I pictured him” – We don’t picture anything at all when reading a book!”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“Difficulty reading fictional novels, particularly those with more than a handful of characters. In my experience, these books typically have a heavy focus on describing each character visually at the start which, because it is pointless for me, can get tedious to read after a while. I then spend the remainder of the book flicking back to the start to remind myself who each character is each time they crop up. It is tricky to hold the storyline like this.”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“Challenges in recalling visual details of past events. While others recount the color of guests’ outfits worn at a wedding, or the look of a favorite restaurant from a trip years ago, individuals with aphantasia might only remember they were pleasant experiences, devoid of any visual snapshot.”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“Difficulty in following instructions that require visual imagination, like the classic that is usually given during a relaxation exercise or yoga class to "picture yourself on a beach". Instead of blue sky and white sand, the mind's screen stays stubbornly blank, causing aphants to question why they bother doing this exercise when there’s nothing to see.”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“The ability to rewatch TV programs almost as if you had never seen them before.”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“It’s thought that people with aphantasia tend to be really good at thinking abstractly (another unproven claim, but one that does make sense).”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“can still cry when reading a particularly moving book, yet at the same time, there are a lot of authors I cannot get on with simply because they either include too many characters that I cannot keep track of, or they spend too long describing the visual details of every scene to the point where I lose interest.”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose

“The most upsetting for me was realizing that other people could visualize faces in their minds as well. If I want to remember someone, I must go through my photo gallery.”
― Joanne Hedger, Aphantasia: Journeying Through Mind Blindness and Embracing Our Unique Neurodiversity with Passion and Purpose