aphantasia

August 2025

One year ago, I realized that I have aphantasia, meaning I have no mental imagery, something true of only about 4% of the population. It was pretty world-shaking for me to realize that my whole life I'd assumed that what was true for me was true of everyone, in spite of knowing intellectually that generalizing one's personal experience is highly problematic. Recent years have been incredibly challenging for me both personally and professionally, and this was the final in a series of broken straws that finally forced me to start the deep work of understanding myself better and healing what is broken in me. My privilege as a conventionally attractive, straight-passing, able-bodied, middle class white woman with family support and generational wealth has shielded me from so much and facilitated my ability to deny or ignore some now-obvious truths, including the fact that I am almost definitely autistic and have ADHD.

My PCP agrees with my self-diagnosis and I am working as hard as my heavily impaired cognitive functioning and our broken health care system will allow to find someone who takes my insurance and is taking new patients to give me an evaluation so can get an official diagnosis, but honestly I'm so sure of it at this point that it feels like a formality. Coming to know myself through this lens has been intense work and has felt more like a grieving process than anything else, trying to start to forgive myself for all the harm caused by my lack of self-knowledge and mourn all the lives I might have had if I had known this about myself sooner. It has also allowed me to start to give myself grace for all things I have always thought of as character flaws or shortcomings but that are actually just symptoms of my disability, and to recognize that've been in a state of autistic burnout for the past five years and start the work of healing.

It's very heavy to realize that my whole life I've been working so much harder than a neurotypical person to just exist in the world, that my lifelong feeling of being different or separate or weird is based in something real, and that my perpetual depression and exhaustion aren't laziness or weakness, but my nervous system desperately needing rest to regulate. Things feel very in flux now as I adjust to this new reality and pursue appropriate treatment to help me know myself better and figure out how to live in ways that work with my brain instead of fighting it. I have never felt less tethered to anything or more conscious of my thoughts and feelings and that feels super intense and terrifying but also very liberating. Learning how to listen to my body after decades of only listening to my clamorous brain is hard but incredibly rewarding work.

Expect moving forward that if you run into me I may seem a little different - probably more blunt and fidgety with less eye contact and small talk - as the cognitive load of masking on top of just existing is proving too exhausting to keep up anymore. This fact makes me fearful about returning to the work of teaching this week; both because of the amount of cognitive effort the job requires, and the increased likelihood of decision paralysis or meltdown due to sensory overwhelm. My first opportunity to retire with any pension arrives after three more semesters of teaching so right now my goal is to grind it out for three more semesters and, in the meantime, figure out the next chapter.

It is humbling to realize at the age of fifty how much growth and learning I still need to do and how many amends I still need to make. It is also exciting to imagine the many possible paths lying in front of me now. That this is going down against a backdrop of end-stage capitalism, creeping fascism, and general systemic collapse feels intense, but also kind of appropriate in an anarchical kind of way, like the time has arrived to burn down all the old ways and habits that no longer serve and start building something better, less hierarchical, more organic, more interconnected, more resilient, and more flexible and adaptive. These are heavy times and I feel like in the midst of the madness, compassionate self-care is one of the most revolutionary acts, as it restores us for the work ahead

So anyway that's what's up with me and why I've mostly been staying away and why ghosted your party without saying goodbye and never sent a thank you note for that cool thing you gave me and said that blunt and awkward thing that shut down the conversation and whatever other weird shit I did that you found hard to interpret. Just thought you might like to know.