Discovering Your Mind - Aphantasia and Beyond

Send us Fan Mail In part two with Paul Bogush, a visualizing middle school teacher, we continue our discussion about his experiences trying to understand and help his students that have aphantasia. He explains how aphantasia is not a diagnosis or a disorder and we get into the ever complicated question of "what is imagination?". We also talk about sympathy vs empathy, advantages, labels,...

Send us Fan Mail In part one with Paul Bogush, a visualizing middle school teacher, he tells how he discovered that aphantasia was a thing and how it immediately explained so much about his life experiences with his daughter and his students. He goes on to explain how learning about aphantasia has helped him better reach the small percentage of students that he was missing before, because his prev...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk with Sadie Dingfelder who is face blind, stereo blind, aphantastic, and SDAMic in nature. She is the author of Do I Know You? A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination . In part two, we focus on aphantasia and SDAM with some face blindness and stereo blindness sprinkled in. We talk about how aphantasia and SDAM interp...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk with Sadie Dingfelder who is face blind, stereo blind, aphantastic, and SDAMic in nature. She is the author of Do I Know You? A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination . In part one, we focus on face blindness and stereo blindness with some aphantasia and SDAM sprinkled in. We talk about what each of these conditions...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discover how Pamela Topjian's mind works using the Discovering Your Mind Protocol. Pamela is a visualizer and we discuss things like thinking vs visualizing, memory vs imagination, and internal hearing vs internal seeing. Although she is highly visual, when I asked her to not think of a pink elephant she was able to accomplish it just fine because she has a...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discover how Rebecca James' mind works. Rebecca found out that she has aphantasia just a few months ago and she thinks that it will be considered a disability in the future. I disagree, but we do take some time to discuss our opinions on the matter. It seems to me that Rebecca tends to approach aphantasia with more absolutes than I do, perhaps because it&ap...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk with Aaron, who has synesthesia. Synethsesia is where stimulating one sense automatically triggers another sense. Synethesia can present itself in many different ways but in Aaron's case, it mostly occurs with numbers, letters, and shapes being automatically linked to specific colors. Also, different types of music are often linked to specific colors,...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we bring back Kali and Alex (this time together) to talk about how finding out about aphantasia and hyperphantasia has affected their relationship. They discovered that Alex has aphantasia and Kali has hyperphantasia through experiences with hypnosis. Alex explains how he felt "broken" before he found out that aphantasia was a thing. We explore many topi...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode I talk with Andrea. Her struggles with depression and anxiety led her to meditation. Her struggles with meditation led here to discovering that she has aphantasia. Her initial struggles with aphantasia blossomed into an understanding that she's not broken, which led her to finding alternate meditation techniques, which led her to writing her new mediation book...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discover how Edward Jones' mind's eye works using the Discovering Your Mind Protocol. Edward has aphantasia and compares his inner experience to echolocation. He goes on to explain that thoughts are not something he consciously experiences in this head but something he feels in his body. He talks about how he can trust his internal wisdom to come out i...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I talk with Brenda Winkle, a psychic medium, reiki master, and somatic coach who, in my opinion, also has hyperphantasia.  We start out by finding a little bit about how her mind and internal senses work, as I think it is important information as we move forward into her spiritual gifts. She talks about how she discovered her spiritual gifts, and I ask her about k...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, I have an interesting conversation with Kristin Warry about her insights and experiences with aphantasia and more. Kristin has aphantasia, face blindness, autism, SDAM, vertigo, and ADHD. She explains that she has little to no conscious thought or forethought and that she thinks by speaking. She has an astonishing awareness of data in what she calls her mind matri...

Send us Fan Mail In part 2, Louis Silverstein continues to say some very interesting things, like how listening to music he is very familiar with helps his brain turn off audible thoughts and focus on visual thoughts, but if he needs to focus on the audible thoughts, he can't listen to music with lyrics because then he will start visualizing and it will be distracting to the audible thoughts....

Send us Fan Mail In part 1, I have very interesting conversation with Louis Silverstein about what is happening in his mind, and he in turn, also asks me a lot of questions about how my brain works. He explains how what he visualizes is a photorealistic 3D hologram. Louis is very much on the hyperphantasia side of things. We discuss reality vs imagination, knowing something vs seeing something, an...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discover how Bruce Silverstein's mind's eye works using the Discovering Your Mind Protocol. Bruce has aphantasia and describes what the words "imagine" and "imagination" mean to him and how it has evolved. He also talks about how most of his dreams are not visual, how he thought that portrayals of memories in movies was just artisti...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode I welcome several guests with aphantasia or hypophantasia to share their outside the norm experiences with visuals. Lindsey shares her experience with a spiritual vision, Edward shares his experiences with psychedelics, Kristin shares her experiences with hypnagogia, and Donna shares her experiences with possibly all three. We discuss spiritual and scientific expla...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discover how Kali Walsh's mind's eye works using the Discovering Your Mind Protocol. Kali has hyperphantasia and visualizes multiple videos in her mind at the same time from many different angles. Her mind's eye tends to overpower her actual eyes but usually in a very optimistic way. For example, she sees vividly the potential of something more th...

Send us Fan Mail This is a mini episode derived from a discussion that a few of us from the Aphantasia, Visualization, and Grief panel discussion had about the possibilities of using AI as a tool for grieving the loss of a loved one. We talk about the potential upsides, downsides, ethical concerns, and more.   Support the show Here is a link to the apple graph, the nature picture, and the carnival...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode I bring back several guests to discuss how visualizing or not being able to visualize interplays with how we grieve or experience the loss of a loved one. I appreciate my guests willingness to be vulnerable and talk about this sensitive topic. We discuss how our differences manifest in each of our individual experiences with grief and loss, including aphantasia, hy...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we bring back Dr Paulina Trevena to further discuss her work and experiences within the worlds of aphantasia, hypnosis, and mental health. Paulina has aphantasia, SDAM, and ADHD. She tells us about how she discovered aphantasia and how she got into hypnotherapy. We talk about how other internal senses can play a role in hypnosis, how she tried to develop the perfe...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we bring back several guests to participate in some hypnosis processes and protocols to explore how aphantasia and visualization interplay with different hypnosis techniques. 3 people with aphantasia and 3 visualizers are guided through two different hypnosis protocols by hypnotherapist, Dr Paulina Trevena, and we discuss our experiences. Dr Paulina Trevena is a h...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discover how Lindsay Rice's mind's eye works using the Discovering Your Mind Protocol. Lindsay is a 3rd grade teacher / presenter with ADHD, autism, and aphantasia. We agree that this is kind of a weird subject to try and talk about and it's difficult to get anywhere concrete with trying to understand someone else's internal mind experience....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we discover how Isaac Mathew's mind's eye works using the Discovering Your Mind Protocol. Isaac is a musician who can visualize and hear in his mind. It's interesting to hear how much of his song writing is coming from his mind and how much is coming from his physical hands on a physical guitar. Effort plays a big role in how well he can visualize an...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode I talk with Dawn Rossbach who is a very talented artist who has aphantasia and SDAM. We note that some folks assume that people with aphantasia cannot be artists. We discuss why this is not the case, and what Dawn's personal experiences with art are like. We talk about Dawn's recent grant project that revolves around art and aphantasia and how she is hopi...

Send us Fan Mail In part 2 with Kristen Erickson she continues to boggle my mind because the way she describes her experiences really does sound like she can visualize to me. For example, her "imagination" or whatever it is, is in 3D. How can something that isn't there have dimension? And when we get into the other senses, it's just as confusing. However, when she talks about h...