What If You Can’t Picture a Memory?
Inside a Mind Without Mental Images - Exploring Aphantasia
What if I told you that some people don’t see images in their mind at all?
No mental pictures. No visual memories. No “imagine a beach” experience.
This week on Discovering Your Mind, Andrea Thorfinson joins the podcast to talk about aphantasia — a little-known cognitive difference that changes how memory, imagination, reading, and even meditation are experienced.
The conversation moves into how memory works when you can’t replay scenes in your head, how meaning can exist without imagery, and why so many people assume everyone’s inner world functions the same way as theirs.
It’s one of those episodes that quietly reframes how you think about the mind, not in a clinical way, but in a deeply human one.
🎧 Listen to the episode here:
Discovering Your Mind with Andrea Thorfinson
Toward the end of the conversation, Andrea shares why these questions eventually led her to write Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, a book about meditation designed for people with busy minds, aphantasia, ADHD, or anyone who’s ever felt excluded by traditional approaches.
You don’t need to be a meditator to appreciate this episode. Curiosity is enough.
📘 Learn more about the book here:
Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed
This episode also marks an early step in Genius’s new Self-Discovery imprint, where we’re exploring stories, minds, and experiences that don’t always fit neatly into familiar categories.
