Aphant Log - Conscious Thought & Episodic Memory

• Learned that when my son (10 y/o) visualizes something with his eyes open, it’s like watching “a video on YouTube” (small screen), but when he closes his eyes to visualize the same thing, it takes up his entire vision and becomes fullscreen. I’ll need to ask him more about this. Thankfully, he and his sister are becoming more willing to share their experiences and not playfully shut me down like they did in the past. He also described this crazy visualization he was having one night…where it was a bottle with a reflection, and in the reflection was the bottle, and it kept going like an infinity mirror…wild.
• I’ve got 2 “mini-games” now. Besides the color exercise / game, there’s the alphabet game - which I’ve played with my kids - where I’ll be walking, lying in bed, or wherever, will go through all the letters and think of things that start with the letter. So “A…alligator”, and I’ll try my best to visualize it. “B…bacon” - and like the color game, just spend a second or three trying to recall a version of that. Sometimes (usually?) it’s a specific recall, like the alligators from Disney’s Robin Hood.
• Bought a book “The Mind’s Past” by Michael S. Gazzaniga (cognitive neuroscientist). Deals with autobiograpbical memory. It’s an old book, and I haven’t started reading it, but it looks promising.
• Decided to start fasting every week (besides intermittent) on Tuesdays. So roughly a 40 hr fast each week.
• Damn. I need a massage. Neck and shoulders, upper back. Staring at screens…sedentary life…blegh.
• Oh, I’m doing Morning Pages now. Started with the prescribed 3, but switched down to 1 for now, it takes too much time otherwise.
• Looked through my high & middle school yearbooks this week. Damn. Dora E., Danielle C., “Ry-ry” (?), it’s a different experience to look at those old photos and messages now. Like I’ve never really done it before (and in some cases, I truly haven’y). Getting over this aversion to the past…healing, and poignant. Some deep grief the morning after.

I’ll have to say, it’s sad and depressing sometimes, to have had no mental imagery my entire life…it is, in my opinion (and other aphants) a disability. Now that I’m just barely starting to learn how, building those synapses, and using it more, I can see how much I’ve really been missing. In richness of life, and in ability.

For whatever reason, it feels like much of my life has been disguised as easy mode, but really playing on difficult mode. Not impossible, not brutal, but certainly deceptively difficult.

JW background (cultish, stagnating, emotionally crippling/disabling), moving all the time, mom with severe mental health issues, aphantasia & SDAM…

But, it’s okay. I have many gifts that have helped me along this path. And I’m working through a lot and my learning is exploding now.

Life is good.

And I’m starting to love myself and others, a lot more.

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