Childhood / school experiences

How aphantasia shaped (or failed to shape) people's classroom years, especially in maths, geometry, and visualisation-dependent assignments.

What people actually say

School demanded visualisation as a default technique

Posters describe classroom methods — mind palaces, "close your eyes and picture" exercises, mental imagery for geometry — that assumed every student could see images, leaving aphants to improvise.

"Alright, during math classes at primary school learning through visualization was basically mandatory when i was there. Using mind palace and such to remember techniques and ofc in other subjects like language we would have to read story books which you were then supposed to describe characters and events in high detail." 2024 · t1_lhi44d3 ↗

"Not OP but we had creative writing exercises where you had to close your eyes and think about an object, then go through the senses and think about what it was like (how did it smell, what would it taste like, etc). I was horrific." 2022 · t1_ime4bbb ↗

"I think school work and studying takes me so much longer than my peers." 2025 · t3_1ibp22k ↗

Maths and geometry are the recurring battleground

Geometry comes up over and over — sometimes as the subject that broke them, sometimes as one they had to brute-force around.

"I was always good with numbers, but geometry will always be my enemy." 2020 · t1_ftq5q88 ↗

"Not OP but in my field, Mathematics, it is immensely important to be able to visualize stuff in geometry. Spoiler alert, I suck at geometry." 2020 · t1_g4xxibw ↗

"Through my entire schooling I struggled with maths. Wanted to study architecture and eventually dropped out because the maths became too difficult." 2025 · t1_mn1dhnd ↗

"I've always struggled with geometry and just found out recently I have Aphantasia, has anyone got some methods to learn geometry without having to visualise the shapes?" 2026 · t3_1qaqqwt ↗

The opposite story: school went fine, sometimes better

A substantial minority report that school — even maths and geometry — was not a problem at all, and a few credit aphantasia for forcing them to develop abstract or spatial workarounds early.

"I have close to zero visual imagination and i am really good at 3D geometry. in fact, it is one of the things i am best at." 2024 · t1_l111vjc ↗

"I cannot visualise at all but I had always the best grades in maths at school and even at University in the first years (studying Computer Sciences)." 2026 · t1_nyo9wx4 ↗

"Disagree. I was forced to learn to think about geometry and all other reasoning stuff in a more abstract way, without visuals - so now I don't have problems imagining 4d arrays or whatever esoteric data structures, because I don't even try to \"imagine\" them" 2024 · t1_lsjxdxy ↗

"The Aphantasic breezed through because he didn’t get hung up on trying to visualize while others really struggled." 2024 · t1_l4xa6yd ↗

Across the years

The pattern is remarkably consistent across the eight populated years (2019–2026). Every year contains both struggle accounts and "I was fine / I excelled" counter-accounts, with geometry as the perennial flashpoint. Volume rises sharply in 2024 (8 chunks) — coinciding with several dedicated threads on math, geometry, and disability framing — but the substance of what people say does not visibly shift over time.

Volume

Cross-references

• Related sub-theme: themes/spatial_vs_visual.md (only if relevant)