Bix dot Blog

Perhaps my greatest regret about realizing that I am aphantasic is that it scuttles one of my favorite parts from my online biography because my memories simply have no visual component to them at all. It’s one of the best lines I’ve ever written for anything and it falls apart under closer scrutiny. It was meant to convey the lack of an emotional component to my memories, which I’ve come since to realize likely is part of the aphantasia-related autobiographical memory deficiencies. I’m reminded now, though, that now I also wonder about the separate “internal narrative” issue referenced in that earlier post. Do other people who have internal narratives actually hear a voice in a sensory sense, or just sort of experience the conception of talking? Because I’m most definitely in the latter camp. There’s no voice; I can’t even tell if it’s “me” “talking”, per se. It’s the conception of talking but not the conception of a voice, but it progresses temporally just like speech would; to some degree there are moments where I also have the conception of what it would feel like to actually utter the words being thought. So, while I do have an internal narrative consisting of words, there’s no sensory aspect to it. Just like if I think of a song; I don’t “hear” it in my “mind’s ear” or whatever; I simply have the conception of the song.