The following is an excerpt from a book I am currently writing, initially to observe the differences between an Aphantasiac (my husband) and a Hyper-Aphantasiac (myself) but it has revealed quite a bit more to me about how the brain works than I had realised. By stumbling across the term Mental Time Travel and understanding and really seeing how it has impacted my life, has given me another perspective.

‘My anxiety and previous attempts to avoid it at all costs have caused me much embarrassment in my life. So as I got older, I chose to acknowledge what it is about the present and future I imagine to be so scary or nerve wracking and try and deal with that.

Society alone can give you anxiety, a stressful home life or working environment can trigger these emotions and feelings too. But if on the way through your life, what if you didn’t get the necessary experience to understand all this and know what was going on. What if you didn’t ever develop coping mechanisms or recognise what might be a weakness in yourself or potential strength? Then how can you hope to make it easier for yourself and work through it? This is the type of question I ask myself, then go to work trying to unravel what it really means.

What I did work out was to spend less time worrying and trying to predict the outcome of things I hadn’t done yet or hadn’t yet happened. This is where I feel mental time travel has held me back a bit, I missed out on a lot of experiences because I couldn’t stop theorising what would happen and how I would feel. I have a good memory for feelings, so unfortunately I still come across an event or idea that would require me to be in the presence of ‘people’ and I just can’t do it – however much I might want to be a part of the subject matter. Not because I am always anxious, but because now I have experience to know I just don’t want to do it and will be awkward and can seem rude. There are some things I just like the idea of, but I ‘walk’ myself through and it does always end the same. I’m bored, out of place and want to go home.

This isn’t negative, this is realistic. I am not a happy go lucky person, and I can deal with crowds if I have to, and I can go to conventions or festivals if I want. I have just worked out I don’t want to, I am not that person. I just tried to be for a really long time. I don’t socialise now at all, have very limited family and keep myself to myself mostly in real life, and I am happier and more stable for it. But it is a shame to think that in order to have a quiet enjoyable life you can’t have people generally in it. But I know that’s because people are the random element I cannot foresee, predict, control or understand fully. I myself am included in that.’

(c) K Wicks – words and photography