Talking about Aphantasia is always unpredictable. Some people don’t believe you – its just not conceivable to them that people can exist without the ability to picture things in their mind. Meanwhile others think maybe they have it too, when most of those really just are hyper-visualizers – they think you are talking about degrees of visualizing instead of the entire absence of it. Some don’t care at all, and others want to convince you that you are wrong about yourself or that you just need to try harder.
But there are those that are really intrigued and just can’t stop asking questions! I encountered some of these recently at a gathering. I don’t even recall how it came up, but this was a gathering to congratulate someone else, so I really didn’t want it to be about me that day. We were waiting for that person to arrive when it first came up, but the two people intrigued by it kept talking to me about it the entire time. One is a former educator and the other a pastor, so they definitely try to “relate” to people.
I was glad today to be able to take a copy of the book by Alan Kendle about Aphantasia to one of them. Alan not only describes his own experiences in this book, but also has lots of quotes from about a dozen of us that are in a FaceBook group together. This person asked if it could be shared with the other person from our gather, even noting how they have continued talking about me and Aphantasia since that time! Meanwhile I gave a book to my sister that probably also has Aphantasia, and I doubt it has been touched!
The Spiritual Atheist 