[basscomm]

It's this kind of casual dismissal that makes the aphantasia so frustrating to talk about. The people who are able to visualize find it so fundamental and easy that they literally cannot conceive that someone else might be lacking this ability. They tell aphantasiacs that what they've experienced their whole lives isn't real, they just misunderstand what visualization actually is.

No, I understand what visualization of something in your head is. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I can still see part of my dream in my mind's eye, but it fades quickly. I can't do it consciously. Never have been able to.

If you tell me to visualize a dog and describe it to you, I can't do it. I can describe what a dog looks like in general, but I won't be able to tell you what the specific dog that I've conjured up looks like because it doesn't look like anything. I'm not looking at an image in my mind's eye of a dog.

[Moru]

It's not just aphantasia, it's about all diabilities. Especially but not limited to anything mind-connected. It's much easier to not say "Well if it's so hard to walk, why don't you just get out of that wheelchair?". That is obvious. But understanding something that is so fundamental to your being is not possible for someone else is causing so much misunderstandings and problems. Things like "I can do this so why don't you just try that?" to someone that is totally incapable to do it is so sad. And this even from people whos job it is to help handicapped people live a normal life?