Hypnosis with Aphantasia

I wonder if author is one of the lucky aphantasics who doesn’t have SDAM [1].

I tried the exercise they described… and nothing happened.

I can’t even remember major life events that everybody is supposed to. Best I can do is recall there’s a photograph of the event, and using my recollection of the existence of the photograph, I can pull up a few facts I’ve intentionally made note of.

And now cue the other commenters telling me my experience isn’t real, or I’m misunderstanding how other people can recall stuff like getting married and or the birth of their kids when I can’t.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00109...

>the (sometimes subliminal) states of confusion, frustration, shame, and inadequacy aphantasics feel when asked to visualize

Wow, take it easy.. This whole pathologization of "aphantasia" really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Curious, do people with aphantasia "feel" the pain when they see other people hurting themselves (e.g. accidentally hitting their thumb with a hammer)?

Not related to article ncessarily, but more so to processing differences. One more thing that I think might be similar in fashion. In therapy I will say what I am feeling, e.g. anxiety, frustration or whatever. But then I am asked "where" in my body am I feeling it. And I have no clue what to answer. I don't think my feelings are felt in random body parts. Although supposedly this is not pseudoscience and people feel things in their bodyparts? I wonder if this is just another processing difference I have compared to other people. And my therapist kept asking even though I could not answer. I started to doubt if I have emotions in the first place.

I wonder if people process and feel what they think are same emotions in very different ways? I usually am externally quite unreactive though, but I didn't think I don't feel emotions actually?

Or maybe I do feel something in my bodyparts, but I am just unable to identify or recognize it? If I am frustrated or anxious and I focus on my brain, maybe I can kind of tell there is tightness? But then I could focus on other bodyparts, and I can also think that maybe there is chest heaviness? But then I can focus on my feet and think ok even my feet can feel weird, but is it because I am focusing on them and thinking there should be something?

Tangentially, I've always been fascinated by this reddit post "Craniosacral therapy temporarily activated my mind's eye"

https://www.reddit.com/r/Aphantasia/comments/payx1i/craniosa...

I'd be curious to know how people with aphantasia come up with ideas, or what they call that process if not imagination. The author has written books. Books have stories. Somehow she comes up with them. If that's not imagination, then what is it. I have a hard time visualizing things myself, and I'm a lousy painter, but is _that_ what aphantasia is?

Author's short personal account, basically solving the mindblind imagery/hypnosis fail with another level of indirection. Her subtitle:

> Can aphantasics be hypnotized? My experience learning to be hypnotized with imagery-free inductions.

Isn't this 'pretend-and-perceive approach' what all aphantasics do by default when asked to imagine something? That is, until they know they're aphantasics AND choose to feel 'confusion, frustration, shame, and inadequacy' instead.

Without being able to experience the world as another the existence of aphantasia can’t even be confirmed.

The myth that everyone, or even anyone, can imagine anything, and is doing so regularly, has no basis, yet is the only cited basis of the diagnosis.

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