I made a surprising discovery about myself yesterday. I'm 38 and learned I have something called Aphantasia, which is where I cannot form images in my mind. So where someone might imagine a beach and see it in their mind, or remember someone / an experience and be able to picture that in their mind, I can't. I don't 'see' anything in my mind.

I thought it was so interesting (and I must admit kind of depressing) because I never knew people actually see things in their mind. When people talk about visualising things, I always just assumed they were thinking about the idea. Like if I think of my wife for example, I can think her hair style, her clothes and such, but I don't actually 'see' them.

This suddenly explains why I have no interest in reading fiction books, but absolutely love movies. Even as a kid, comics were my go to, not novels. It might also be part of why I enjoy photography so much, because the idea of capturing a picture of something is so cool, and I had no idea people could do that in their own heads.

I've always had people comment that I'm quite creative, so I don't believe it's affected that, and I have dreams, but it's just ideas of things happening I guess, it's never actual seeing things. I've never day dreamed.

I can understand it's an advantage if people want to forget more unpleasent memories and experiences, as reliving those by seeing them in your head must be pretty hard to deal with sometimes. This might contribute to why I have a dark sense of humor, I can joke about things and give other people mental images because I don't have them myself. I've never had trouble with horror movies or such.

It's just interesting to suddenly realise something so drastic about your own mind. Apparently about 2% of the population have it, so who knows, we may find another geekzone member with the same.