[bleakenthusiasm]

This makes so many moments of my life make so much more sense.

I don't have full blown aphantasia I think but mental images are always very hazy and dark to me and calling them up takes immense effort. Seems like I'm a 4 on the VVIQ scale.

On the other hand, imaginations in psychotherapy, be it for exposure it for revisiting childhood places and moments, still work for me. They are just not very visual. They contain emotions and haptic aspects, sometimes sounds and smells, but the visual is kind of like really old polaroid pictures. They frizzle out at the edges really quickly, they never move, the colors are muted and sometimes off.

At least now I know that people who claim that books evoke vibrant mental images in them are not bullshitting me. And I can stop sitting there with Lord of the Rings in hand, staring at a wall for 10 minutes and wondering why I still don't manage to "see" what Moria looks like.