Feeling in Place of Seeing: Living with Aphantasia

For most of my life, I felt like I was living in the dark,

responding to life without knowing who I truly was or why I reacted the way I did.

I could sense things before they happened, feel other people’s emotions in my body, and walk into a room and know something was wrong, even before anyone spoke.

I was told I was “too sensitive,” “overreactive,” or “paranoid.”

But what no one could see was that my body was doing exactly what it was designed to do keeping me safe.

Aphantasia, or mind blindness, means the inability to create mental images. Some people can recall vivid scenes, faces, or places in their mind, but for others like me, there’s only darkness.

For years, I assumed everyone’s mind was like mine. I couldn’t picture my loved ones’ faces, replay memories like movies, or visualise goals in meditation. I didn’t realise that what was missing visually, my body had been compensating for all along.

Where others could “see” safety, I had to feel it.

In early life trauma, when attachment is unpredictable or unsafe the child learns to “read the room” before words are spoken.
Visual recall may be suppressed as protection from overwhelming memories, while the somatic intuition heightens.

The nervous system learns:

“If I can feel them first, I can keep myself safe.”

That’s how body-based empathy forms a deep, pre-verbal awareness of others’ emotional states that can feel like hearing their inner dialogue through the body.

The visual system shuts down to prevent overwhelm.
The somatic system lights up to ensure survival.

It’s a neuroadaptive form of empathy one that once served safety, and now, when consciously integrated, becomes a sacred gift of compassion and discernment.

The brain is a prediction machine. It constantly compares now to then to decide whether we’re safe.

But if imagery isn’t available, the brain relies on bottom-up sensory data — what the body feels in real time.

It uses the interoceptive network — areas like the insula and anterior cingulate to detect subtle shifts in heart rate, muscle tone, and breath in both self and others.

Over time, this builds a subconscious library of felt experiences.

The body remembers.

Safety and danger aren’t seen, they’re sensed.

That’s why, for people like me, the body can feel like it’s “hearing” someone’s unspoken words, it’s not magic or madness.

It’s a lifetime of the nervous system learning to read micro-signals and emotional frequencies as a form of protection.

Two years ago, I found my way to somatic therapy, almost by chance, though now I see it as divine timing.

I began learning Embodided Processing, nearing certification, yet something in me paused. I couldn’t understand why visualisation practices felt agitating instead of soothing, why lying in stillness at the end of yoga made me restless instead of relaxed.

Then I discovered the truth: my body was my mind’s eye.

Somatic therapy became the place where I could finally “see”, not through pictures, but through sensation, breath, and presence.

The moment I began to feel within, it was as if my eyes switched on.

When I look back, I can see how my nervous system built its own survival language.

Being blunt, overconfident, or controlling were not character flaws, they were protective shields. My body, still in fight or flight, doing its best to protect me in a chaotic world.

Even now, there are moments I’m caught off guard. Recently, someone close to me showed care in a motherly way and my whole body recoiled. I felt defensive, unsafe. It wasn’t until I sat in stillness that I realised:

nurture feels foreign to me. Care was once followed by criticism, rejection, or shame.

My complex PTSD was trying to protect me from love.

That moment painful as it was, revealed my core wound:

I didn’t know how to receive nurture.

For so long, I tried to control everything and everyone around me, hoping it would make me feel safe, seen, and needed.

Through somatic therapy, I learned to turn toward my sensations instead of running from them. My anger, frustration, and defensiveness were messages, not problems.

By learning to pause to breathe and feel instead of react, I discovered the space between stimulus and response. In that space, I met myself.

And I realised:

My body had been speaking the truth all along.

The same sensitivity that once overwhelmed me became my compass guiding me not just to survive, but to connect.

I used to envy my children all diagnosed on the autism spectrum for their vivid mental images and photographic recall. I thought they were the ones with the superpower.
But I’ve come to see that my way of perceiving through energy, intuition, and sensation is its own kind of brilliance.

For me, scent and dance were never just hobbies; they were sacred languages of self the ways my body communicated what my mind couldn’t put into words.

It’s a bit like discovering you’ve been a superhero all along, but no one ever told you what your powers were, or how to use them. At first, you stumble through life sensing things others can’t, mistaking your gifts for flaws. The noise, the intensity, the overwhel, they all feel like too much.

But slowly, through awareness and somatic work, you begin to train to understand the signals, the energy, the way your body whispers before your mind catches up. The once uncontrollable sensations become guidance. The chaos becomes clarity.

That’s the moment of integration, when you stop fighting your sensitivity and start meeting yourself within.

Today, I see my journey as a divine reclamation.

Where my body once sounded alarms, it now reveals truth.
Where hypervigilance once protected me, it now allows me to attune with compassion.
Where darkness once felt isolating, it now feels like depth a sacred place where I can hear God’s whisper through the language of the body.

To those who feel deeply, who sense before they see, you are not broken.
Your body carries wisdom your mind may not yet understand.

When the body tells you more than words, listen.

It might be God, or grace, or your own soul finally finding voice.

If this spoke to your experience, Rooted without Vision was created for those of us who navigate the world without mental images,to help you find safety, pause, and presence within. You may also enjoy reading “Glimmers: Finding Safety in Small Things.”