Hello everyone.
As many of you know, I discovered that my mind’s eye is blind in 2015, after three years of daily visualization sessions—a practice that nearly gave me a brain aneurysm.
By then, I had already spent decades trying to understand why my mind did not make sense to me, why it did not operate the way the literature described. I searched across psychiatry, philosophy of mind, and even metaphysics because nothing I found could account for how my cognition actually functioned.
After cross-referencing more than twenty-five sources against fifty years of lived experience and observation, I have identified serious omissions in the literature concerning what mental representation is and why it is critical. These are not peripheral gaps. They are foundational.
I know many of you have found peace with what cognitive science says about aphantasia. I am glad for you, truly.
But aphantasia is not simply the inability to voluntarily picture images in the mind. The voluntary/involuntary distinction itself has obscured what mental imagery actually is: the medium of consciousness. It is continuous. It does not switch on and off. It can be harnessed on demand, but voluntary imagery captures only a tiny fraction of what a mind does with the power of inner representation.
Emerging research now indicates that many aphantasics are also anauralic. Aphantasia can be multimodal—total and global. From my research, I have found that many of us also have no inner dialogue.
These absences reach far beyond the ability to visualize. They affect cognition, language formulation, retrieval, access, sequencing, offline processing, self-regulation, social functioning, asociality, trauma processing, and survival itself.
That is what my book, Not Born to Write: Aphantasia and the Unsustainable Cost of Survival, is about. It is one of several books in which I examine the lived reality of aphantasia within the context of chronic hardship, abuse, and complex trauma.
I am not saying that aphantasia is a disease, a disorder, or a pathogen. I am saying that an aphantasic mind is a cognitive architecture in which something vital for well-being is absent.
Developmental conditions matter. Deeply. And I am asking cognitive science to take that into consideration.
Because when the literature calls aphantasia “an intriguing variation in human consciousness,” the formulation is inadequate. It is the equivalent of saying a billionaire and a beggar are equal because they both breathe. The statement is technically true and substantively meaningless.
There is another problem here: congenital aphantasics would never be able to falsify descriptions of mental phenomena they have never had access to.
If you have never seen an image in your mind, never heard a sound, never had an internal voice for self-talk, or never encountered a particular form of mental representation, the literature can describe it in thousands of different ways while you remain unable to identify what is missing.
I did not set out to become a researcher. I wanted to live my life. But I could not ignore the discrepancy between my lived reality and the models available to explain it. So I kept investigating.
I have coined a term for what I and many others experience: panmodal aphantasia. It includes anendophasia—the absence of inner speech, self-talk, or internal monologue or dialogue.
My book is free to download today, September 5th, 2026, until Monday.
Follow this link: https://link.amazon/B02R89dFH
If you are comfortable with the mainstream story of visual imagery, Not Born to Write is not for you. Do not download it just to have it sitting there. It is okay to prefer divergent literature.
But if you have always known, deep in your bones, that something is wrong, something is incredibly different—if you have been waiting for someone to put words to what you have lived through—then please download Not Born to Write: Aphantasia and the Unsustainable Cost of Survival today.
And if you know someone who struggles and has no idea why, share it with them.
We have been in the dark long enough.
- Panmodal aphantasia
- Asensoria
- Avalidia
- Atelosia
- Analytheia
- Altrudynia
- OMES (Ontological Metabolic Exhaustion Syndrome)
- Anauralia
- Anendophasia
- Anhedonia
- Asexuality
- C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)
- And others
The conditions described are insufficiently understood in the specialized literature. Current explanations for their causes are often inconsistent with how they manifest in lived reality.
This is why I am developing my own model, based on observation and comparative research, which analyzes the differences and overlaps among these neurodivergent conditions and their connection to early trauma, ontological abuse, and subtle forms of self-instrumentalization.
This article is part of a broader ongoing effort to clearly differentiate between these conditions — not only as clinical definitions but as lived experiences with a profound impact on thought processes, relationships, perception, and identity construction.
Thank you for reading and supporting for my work.
Dive Deeper into the Research
My full research papers and thesis can be found on all scholar platforms, for example:- Aphantasia Is Not an Advantage in Long-Term Abuse: On the Trauma of Fleshbacks and the Myth of Coping and Defense Mechanisms is available to read for free on Zenodo. It presents the complete argument, evidence, and theoretical framework.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692334
- The Zero Point of Narcissism: On the Conditional Nature of Panmodal Aphantasia as an Autopoietic Outcome of Amirroring
Join the Journey
My research is ongoing. I share regular insights, updates, and deeper dives on my Substack. Subscribe to follow the journey as the work evolves.https://cristinagherghel.substack.com/
