Ptsd In People Unable To Visualize (aphantasia)

[GwenDR]

So last year I learned I have a neurological condition now called Aphantasia. It's been noticed before a few times, but never heavily studied or named until the past year or two. People with aphantasia do not have mental images. That is, we don't picture anything in our minds. There's a lot of variation among people with aphantasia in terms of ability to represent visual information in other ways. Some people acquire it later in life, and this was how it was discovered. A patient, following routine heart surgery, reported a complete loss of visualization. Others, like me, are born with it, and often have no idea that how we think isn't normal. I certainly did not.

The reason I bring it up is because I wonder how aphantasia could change how PTSD manifests, and how it might be recognized. Could there be difference in how aphantasics experience and cope with trauma, and what happens when we break from it? How similar is it? Research is currently focused on comparing the neurological processes of people with aphantasia with people who are normal visualizers as well as hypervisualizers. So other areas of focus are likely to need to wait.

 

[lux.]

This is really interesting. I've never heard of aphantasia, but it's something I've thought about before. The trauma treatment I've received involves a lot of visualization skills--containment, healing pool/light, split screen, dialing up/down--and I've never really had much luck with mental imagery. I don't think I completely have aphantasia, but if it's possible that there are levels of it, I think I can form mental images, but only with a lot of difficulty and little clarity. I can sort of imagine putting something in a big container in my head, but it's too fuzzy and fleeting to really work in the way it's supposed to.

Do you have flashbacks? I wonder if they are at all related to aphantasia. Do you have visual dreams that you can remember?

 

[GwenDR]

I do have visual dreams, and whether or not I have any flashbacks depends on how strictly you want to define "flashback".
And yes, visualization ability is a spectrum. Some people can barely do it at all, others are phenomenally hyperphantasic and can easily create complicated and detailed scenes. And some people simply do not have that function.

I can approximate it: think of it as being blind, but being able to feel something. So I can imagine, and know what's going on in my head because I feel it, but don't see anything.

And yeah, a lot of stuff assumes decent visualization ability, and some people just can't, or can't well. "You're not trying hard enough" is very frustrating for people that are hard wired this way.

I once had a major panic attack after seeing and hearing someone with a breathing mask on. While it was happening, and I was hearing the rhythmic hissing, I kept going over my memories, which are experienced as brief nonvisual flashes that represent things I might have seen, but aren't seeing them (hard to explain). Couldn't stop going over all the ships drills, wearing those masks, being unable to breath, feeling like I couldn't breath, waking up to a loud alarm every week and having to run to put on that heavy equipment. I kept going over that, again and again, until I left the area and had time to calm down, to the extent that I could. I didnt' see it. I didn't feel like it was happening again, really. But I couldn't stop thinking about it and it was extremely distressing. That's the closest I've really had to a flashback, afaik.

I never even fought real fires, just drills, though, every week underway.

 

[lux.]

I think I understand. My flashbacks are more like just vivid memories that play out like a movie in my head, but I don't feel like they're happening again.

This reminds me of Temple Grandin, the famous autistic author and scientist, who wrote a book called "Thinking in Pictures." She says that whereas most of us think in words, words are like a second language to her and she thinks entirely in pictures.

 

[GwenDR]

I think I understand. My flashbacks are more like just vivid memories that play out like a movie in my hea...

I'd like to read that book, actually. I'd say I'm a normal hybrid, words and imagery, with the small detail that neither has any internal sensory experience. There actually seems to be a significant connection between aphantasia and autism, as it happens. I'm autistic (aspergers), and this seems to be at least somewhat more common among us. I'd consider thinking entirely in pictures, without any words, to be related, actually. We're both missing forms if internal expression.