Why I Stopped Asking People to Imagine

A light hearted exploration of cognitive diversity and why we all experience the world differently

The Apple That Changed Everything

Picture this: you're asked to imagine an apple. Simple, right? Most people effortlessly conjure up a crisp, red (or green) fruit, maybe with a little stem, perhaps sitting in a wooden bowl with that perfect Instagram lighting. They can practically smell its sweetness, feel its smooth skin, even hear the satisfying crunch of that first bite.

Me? Well, my brain goes something like this: "Right, an apple. Usually round. Generally apple-sized. Could be red or green – let's lock in green. Probably has a stalk. Might have one of those little stickers with the producer's name."

I don't see any of these things. I just know that's what an apple is likely to be.

Welcome to my world of total aphantasia – the complete absence of mental imagery across all senses. No pictures, no sounds, no smells, no tastes, no physical sensations. Just pure, logical construction of what I know to be true.

But here's where it gets interesting: while I can't conjure up internal imagery, I have an uncanny ability to immediately echo the sounds around me – what researchers call immediate ambient echolalia. TV adverts from the 1980s, random conversations, that annoying jingle from the coffee shop – they all bounce straight out of my mouth before I've even processed them consciously.

Two seemingly opposite ways of processing the world, living together in one wonderfully chaotic brain.

The Great Realization

For most of my life, I assumed everyone's mind worked like mine. When people talked about "visualising" things, I thought they were being metaphorical. Surely nobody actually saw things that weren't there?

The penny dropped during a conversation with my wife about redecorating. After yet another exchange where I said, "I can't see that," she finally challenged me:

"What do you mean you can't see that?" "Well, I can't." "Of course you can, you're just being difficult." "No, I genuinely can't see that wall being blue instead of purple."

The pause that followed was deafening. Then: "Hold on, so you can't look at that wall and imagine it blue in your mind?"

"No... what, you can?"

That conversation led to my son coming home and us challenging him to imagine an apple. Not only could he see it clearly, he could rotate it, change its colour, even make it sparkle if he wanted to. As we talked through how I perceive the world, he said with beautiful innocence: "Ah, that explains why you can never remember my friends' names – when I mention them, you don't see them."

He was absolutely right. I always need prompts: "the one whose dad owns the business," "the one who likes rock music."

When Memory Becomes Emotional Archaeology

But there's another layer to this cognitive puzzle that took me years to understand: how total aphantasia affects long-term memory and emotional processing.

I have very few memories of my childhood. The ones that do stick tend to be anchored to intensely emotional moments – and unfortunately, those are predominantly linked to anger, distress, or other powerful negative emotions. It's as if my brain, unable to create visual or sensory snapshots, can only file away experiences that come with enough emotional charge to burn through the usual filing system.

This creates a peculiar form of emotional archaeology. When I do access these memories, I don't see the scenes or hear the sounds – but I re-experience those emotions with startling vividness. It's like having a library where most of the books have been lost, but the few remaining volumes are written in pure feeling, and opening them floods you with the exact emotional state you were in decades ago.

I often wonder if this links to why I've lived most of my life with anxiety and depression. When facing challenges, most people can presumably reach for positive visual memories – sunny days, loving faces, moments of triumph. My emotional memory bank is heavily weighted toward the negative simply because those were the experiences powerful enough to stick. Is it any wonder I tend to gravitate toward expecting the worst?

This realisation led to an interesting discovery about how I learned to cope. Because emotions became the primary anchor for memories, I developed a strategy early in life of trying to wall myself off from feelings altogether. Being emotionally distant, fearful of loss, keeping people at arm's length – it all made perfect sense if you understood that emotions weren't just feelings for me, they were the filing system for my entire lived experience.

The Soundtrack of Emotion

As I've reopened myself to noticing how I process the world, I've discovered something fascinating about music and emotional memory. I'm naturally drawn to 90s indie and melancholy music – all those wonderfully moody bands that soundtracked my formative years. But I've noticed that if I listen to too much of it, I genuinely start to feel miserable and overwhelmed.

It's as if the music acts as a direct emotional anchor, bypassing any visual or narrative memory and plugging me straight into the feeling states associated with those songs. Without the buffer of visual imagery or detailed episodic memories, the emotional impact hits with full force.

Experimenting with more upbeat 80s music has been revelatory – I actually feel happier, lighter, more optimistic. It's like discovering I can curate my emotional state through careful soundtrack selection, something I never realised was happening unconsciously for decades.

When Imagination Meets Reality (Or Doesn't)

The world is designed for people who can imagine. Job interviews ask where you see yourself in five years (honestly, I've always given token answers because I literally cannot see myself anywhere). Meditation apps cheerfully instruct you to "visualise your happy place" (which happy place would that be, exactly?). Art teachers expect you to "imagine a scene" (my poor secondary school art teachers – I was spectacularly awful, managing only 2D stick figures while my sister got all the artistic genes).

But perhaps the most amusing disconnect comes from guided meditations. Picture this scenario: "Imagine yourself walking through a peaceful forest. Feel the soft moss beneath your feet. Hear the gentle babbling of a stream. Smell the fresh pine air."

My brain: "Right, forest. Trees. Probably green. Moss is squishy. Streams make water noises. Pine trees smell... piney."

It's like being given a recipe but only having the ingredient list, no pictures of the finished dish.

The Soundtrack of My Mind

Here's where things get wonderfully weird. While I can't create internal imagery, I'm constantly echoing the external world around me. It's not voluntary – sounds, phrases, and snippets of conversation bounce straight from my ears to my mouth like some sort of cognitive pinball machine.

I've always been fascinated by regional accents and find myself badly mimicking them, particularly Northern English ones. In training courses, I now have to pre-warn delegates when there are people with strong accents because I will inevitably start echoing them.

But the real culprits are TV adverts, especially from my childhood in the 80s and 90s. I can't think about or see a Flake chocolate bar without bursting into song. Certain phrases have to be said in specific accents. Every time I hear a Newcastle accent, I'm compelled to echo my beautiful four-year-old niece (who is now well into her 20’s) saying "nah" in her distinctive Geordie lilt.

The most memorable incident happened recently with a new colleague. During our conversation, they mentioned "pies," which triggered an instant, uncontrollable imitation of Mrs. Tweedy from the movie Chicken Run. The look of surprise on their face led to an explanation about the reference (they hadn't seen the film) and my tendency to burst out with apparently random words and phrases.

But here's the fascinating part: that moment anchored itself in my memory. Now every time I think "pie," Ash (the colleague) comes to mind. I don't see the situation, but I can cognitively reconstruct it and link it to everything else I know about them – their role, where they live, how long they've worked there. It's like a search function cascading out from that initial anchor point.

The Superpowers of Different Processing

Living without mental imagery isn't a deficit – it's just different. And different often comes with unexpected advantages.

My mind works like a logical mind map. A leads to B and C. C might lead to D and E, while B might lead to F and G. This cascade of options helps me process cause and effect incredibly quickly. If I can know that D or E will cause problems, I can reroute to F before anyone else has even spotted the potential issue.

This makes me excellent at risk assessment and problem-solving, though it also means I'm often the first person to spot the negatives in any situation. For years, this got me labelled as "difficult" or "negative," when really I was just processing possibilities faster than others and trying to prevent problems before they occurred.

I'm absolutely a facts and information person. Vague concepts and imprecise meanings frustrate me because I need concrete details to build my logical constructs. This has made me better at asking the right questions: "When you say that, what does it mean for you? How does that affect you? When you're doing that, how do you go about it?"

The World Through Different Lenses

The biggest revelation has been understanding that we all experience reality differently – and that's not just okay, it's wonderful.

When my wife describes how she can smell a lasagne coming out of the oven in her imagination, hearing the oven running, seeing it bubbling in its dish, I'm genuinely amazed. When my son can rotate that imaginary apple, change its colour, or make it dance, I'm in awe of capabilities I'll never have.

But I've also learned to appreciate my own unique way of processing. When faced with a guided meditation about lakes and mountains, I anchor to a framed picture I have in my bedroom of a snowy mountain lake scene. I can't see it, but I know it, and that knowledge becomes my meditation focus.

Instead of visual meditations, I gravitate toward body scan practices where I can focus on real, physical sensations. Instead of trying to "picture" solutions, I build logical frameworks. Instead of remembering faces, I remember facts and connections.

And now, instead of unconsciously absorbing melancholy music that drags me into negative emotional states, I can consciously choose soundtracks that lift my mood. It's a small but profound form of cognitive self-care that I never knew was possible.

Why I Stopped Asking People to Imagine

The title of this piece isn't just about my inability to visualise – it's about the moment I stopped assuming everyone's brain works the same way.

I used to think people were being dramatic when they said they could "see" memories clearly or "hear" music in their heads. I assumed meditation teachers were speaking metaphorically. I thought everyone was just better at pretending than I was.

Now I realize that cognitive diversity is as real and important as any other form of human variation. Some brains create vivid internal worlds populated with detailed visual memories. Others, like mine, process everything through logical construction and external anchoring, with emotions serving as the primary filing system for long-term memory.

Some people think in pictures, others in words, still others in patterns or movements. Some can access a rich library of positive visual memories to sustain them through difficult times, while others need to be more intentional about curating their emotional environment through external inputs like music, surroundings, and social connections.

Designing for Cognitive Diversity

If I could redesign one aspect of how society approaches learning and communication, it would be to move away from the assumption that everyone processes information the same way.

Educational systems that rely heavily on visualisation disadvantage students like me. I love reading, but I struggle with questions like "What was Romeo feeling when X happened?" because I don't see the narrative unfolding. I know loss affects people in certain ways, so I can give broad, conceptual answers, but I can't access the emotional imagery that others use.

The periodic table is another perfect example. Most people probably visualise it in their mind's eye – seeing the colour coding, the individual elements arranged in their groups. For me, I know there was a periodic table on the wall in my science classroom, but that's it. Without fully developed self-adaptation strategies in school, embedding knowledge for later recall was genuinely challenging.

Mental health support could also benefit from understanding these differences. Traditional therapy approaches that rely on visualisation techniques or accessing detailed emotional memories might not work for everyone. Understanding that some people's emotional memories are sparse but intensely vivid, while others have rich visual recall, could inform more personalised therapeutic approaches.

Workplaces could benefit from understanding that some people need concrete information while others work better with abstract concepts. Some need visual aids, others need logical frameworks. Some process best through discussion, others through written information.

Technology could offer multiple ways to access the same information – visual, auditory, textual, logical. Instead of one-size-fits-all solutions, we could have cognitive accessibility options as standard as font size adjustments.

The Beautiful Chaos of Human Minds

Living with total aphantasia and immediate ambient echolalia has taught me that the human brain is endlessly creative in how it processes the world. My inability to create internal imagery, paired with my compulsion to echo external sounds and my reliance on emotional anchoring for long-term memory, creates a unique cognitive system that works beautifully – just differently.

When I echo that TV advert or mimic an accent, I'm not being disruptive. I'm anchoring memories, making connections, processing the world in my own wonderfully chaotic way. When I can't visualize your five-year plan, I'm not being difficult. I'm just working with a different cognitive toolkit.

When I gravitate toward expecting problems, it's not because I'm pessimistic by nature – it's because my emotional memory bank is weighted toward the experiences that were powerful enough to stick, and I've learned to protect myself by anticipating difficulties rather than being blindsided by them.

The next time someone struggles to "picture" what you're describing, seems to process information differently than you expect, or appears to focus on potential problems rather than possibilities, remember that their brain might be running entirely different software while achieving the same goals.

We're all walking around with these incredibly sophisticated, utterly unique processing systems in our heads. Some create internal movies with rich emotional soundtracks, others build logical frameworks anchored by powerful feeling states. Some store memories as detailed visual scenes, others as facts and connections linked by emotional significance. Some think in words, others in sounds, patterns, or movements.

And that's not a problem to be solved – it's a feature to be celebrated.

So I've stopped asking people to imagine, and started asking them to share how they experience the world. The conversations that follow are always far more interesting than any visualization exercise could ever be.

After all, reality is diverse enough without everyone having to see it the same way. And sometimes, understanding how differently we process the world can help us be more intentional about creating the emotional and cognitive environments we need to thrive.