Learning Without Pictures · PlainTextPoetry

I can’t picture an apple.
Not a red one, not a green one, not a blue one, not even the one I ate yesterday. Actually I think I ate a banana, but whatever, I can’t picture that either.

I can’t picture my mom. Or my partner, even though I saw her a few hours ago. I can’t picture a beach, or a star, or any single face unless I’m staring directly at it.

For the first 28 years of my life, I didn’t realize that other people could.

The Day I Found Out My Brain Was Different

Summer, 2018. I’m in a Whole Foods parking lot, doing a thing you’re not supposed to do…reading my phone while slowly cruising the sun-bleached asphalt, casually looking for somewhere to park.

I came across an article with a title that metaphorically slapped me in the face (which I probably deserved): “Blind in the Mind: Why Some People Can’t See Pictures in Their Imagination.” This one, I think.

I must’ve read the headline five times. Wait… what? Some people can see pictures in their head? Like, actual pictures? You mean when people say “picture yourself on a beach with your toes in the sand”… they’re actually seeing a beach? They are looking down and visually seeing their toes in the sand?? Y’all aren’t just conceptualizing yourself on a beach?

If you’re reading this and having the same reaction, then you might have the same thing I have.

Note: My mom also has this condition. There’s lots of theories speculating as to the origin of it, but no real concrete evidence of genetic origin, nurture-based, etc.

Welcome to Aphantasia

The term is aphantasia, and it refers to a lack of voluntary visual imagery. It’s a spectrum, and I seem to be on the extreme end. My “mind’s eye” is completely dark. No mental images. Not a single one. It’s just pitch black when I close my eyes. Sometimes I see vague fuzzies if I shut my lids really tightly or if I direct my closed eyes at the sun.

Realizing I have aphantasia was like finding out there’s a sixth sense I’ve been missing. Which, in a way… I suppose there is. Looking back, a lot of weird gaps in my experience suddenly made sense.

I was having epiphanies upon epiphanies for days on end.

I kept going “Oh shit, now I understand why I was unable to do this or why I didn’t understand exactly what this person was saying”.

A couple vivid memories:

I went with some nerd friends to the Harry Potter movie in high school. Someone was like “Wow, Hermione looked different than I thought she would.” — I remember being like wtf does that even mean?
In calculus my teacher kept saying “Imagine a circle rotating around the z-axis and that will help you determine which formula to use”….wut? how?

Why I Struggled (Even When I Was “Smart”)

I’m a strong learner & I was a curious kid. I did well in school, quickly comprehended new concepts, etc. But I always struggled with certain subjects more than I thought I should:

Geometry? Absolutely not. Visualizing shapes and rotating objects mentally? That’s a nightmare for me. It literally pains me.
Physics? Same problem. It was never intuitive…it had to be memorized conceptually.
Calculus? Took me longer to intimately understand what everyone else seemed to “see.”
Maps? Bad. Still so bad. I get turned around a lot unless I have street names and landmarks spelled out.

I always chalked it up to quirks. Weaknesses. Maybe I was “just bad” at spatial stuff. Nope!

Turns out I was just trying to run 3D mental models with no visual processor.

How I Learned to Learn (Without Visuals)

My brain, I’ve realized, is kind of like an LLM (lol).

I don’t process through images…I process through strings, concepts, language. I memorize formulas and principles by connecting the logic, not by “seeing” it in action. It’s like learning to play chess by understanding the rules abstractly, not by picturing a board.

And it works for me. But it takes a lot of intentional structure. Here are a few ways I’ve adapted:

Narrative anchoring: I turn things into stories or logic chains. If I can’t see it, I need to understand how it flows.
Written repetition: I rewrite concepts over and over until they stick as language.
Teaching others: If I can explain something in words to someone else, I’ve mastered it.
Analogy-building: I lean hard on metaphor. A concept becomes a sentence instead of a sketch.
Extra redundancy: I don’t assume I “remember” something. I build external systems…notes, outlines, diagrams.
Visual aids: This one is perhaps the most counterintuitive, but I am HUGE on creating visual aids. Process diagrams, graphs, data tables, infographics, etc. I create them all of the time, and in fact I’ve found that they really help to drive knowledge across groups of people (rather than each person in the group relying on their own visual image).

The Emotional Layer

It’s been easy to fall into comparison since I found out my brain works differently. There were moments where I felt dumb…like some cognitive skill had been stripped away at birth. There are moments I still do feel dumb. There are moments I quite literally am less able to understand something and have to ask for it to be explained differently.

At the end of the day, we’re all working with different mental tools. I’ve got high-level abstract pattern matching and language processing. That’s my lane. Other people “see” stuff. That’s theirs. It’s just… different.

I think it’s a part of the reason why I’m fascinated by LLMs. These tools seem to “think” kind of like I do. Not visually, but in strings and patterns and probability-weighted guesses.

Some Questions I’m Still Asking

Is aphantasia a superpower? A limitation? Both? This question can become toxic quickly so I try not to ask it too much, even of myself.
What else have I missed about how other people experience the world?
How much of “good learning” is about adapting to your own cognitive style instead of trying to mimic someone else’s?

As usual, I don’t have answers. But I’m learning to ask better questions.

If You Suspect You Might Have Aphantasia…

I’d recommend starting with this:

If you do have it, just know that it’s not something that needs fixing. Your brain is built differently, and that can be a beautiful thing. You might just need to find some ways to adapt. And being aware of how your brain works will help you figure out how best to adapt.

Final Musings

We throw around the phrase “visual learner” a lot. But the world wasn’t built for non-visual learners.

Classrooms rely on whiteboards and diagrams. Study apps use charts and graphs. And teachers love to say, “just picture it in your head.” But what if you can’t?

If you’ve ever felt like you “learn wrong,” maybe you just haven’t figured out how your brain actually works yet.

As for me, I’ve stopped pretending I can “picture” anything. Instead, I explain it to myself until it clicks. I use words, I use logic, I use language. Because that’s how my brain learns. And it’s enough to meet most of the learning requirements of this modern world we live in.

Would I have survived/thrived a thousand or even a couple hundred years ago? Who knows, probably not. I probably would have been cooked.