Aphantasia and empathy: Beyond the mind’s eye

If you’re someone who doesn’t experience mental imagery, whether you’ve known this for years or are just now discovering the term aphantasia, you might have wondered: Does this mean I feel things less? Am I less empathic? Or maybe others have wrongly assumed you are cold, distant or detached simply because your emotional responses aren’t expressed in ways they expect. Let’s challenge that assumption.

What does empathy look like if your mind’s eye is blank?

Empathy isn’t just a flash of inner feeling; it’s a shared, co-created process that arises between people, shaped by memory, imagination, expression and cultural cues. And if you’re someone who doesn’t visualise things in your head, that doesn’t mean you don’t care or connect. It means your empathy may work differently, and that difference is deeply valid.

What is aphantasia?

Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create visual mental images. Most people can imagine a house and rotate it like in 3D or picture a loved one’s face, or replay a memory like a film. But for those with aphantasia, closing their eyes doesn’t bring images, only darkness. First described in modern literature by Zeman, Dewar & Della Sala (2015), this experience is more common than many realise and is associated with differences in autobiographical memory, dreaming, and emotional responses in imagery-dependent tasks. (Zeman, Dewar, & Della Sala, 2015; Pearson, 2019).  

How imagery and emotion are connected

Research suggests that visual mental imagery amplifies how vividly we recall events and how strongly we feel them during imagination (Pearson, 2019). In experimental work using aphantasia as a “knock-out” model, participants with no visual imagery show dampened autonomic responses when reading or imagining fear-laden scenarios, supporting the idea that imagery boosts emotional arousal (Wicken, Keogh, & Pearson, 2021). Taken together, people with aphantasia tend to experience:

• less vivid autobiographical memories
• reduced emotional intensity during imagined or verbally described emotional scenarios
• weaker physiological responses during imagination than vivid imagers

This doesn’t mean a lack of emotion; rather, the emotional “punch” of imagined scenarios is often muted. But empathy isn’t only about internal feeling; it’s about connection. (Pearson, 2019; Wicken et al., 2021).  

Empathy isn’t just one thing

Empathy has multiple layers:

• affective empathy: feeling with another person
• cognitive empathy: understanding another’s perspective
• compassionate empathy: care in action

People with aphantasia may experience affective empathy differently in imagery-heavy contexts (e.g., imagining another’s pain from description alone), yet their capacity to understand and respond can be intact. Current evidence does not show that cognitive empathy is enhanced by aphantasia; what’s clearer is reduced emotional engagement with stories for low-imagery individuals, especially for verbal narratives (Dawes et al., 2020; Abdelrahman et al., 2025). Keep claims cautious: reduced narrative engagement ≠ reduced global empathy.  

Empathy as a shared social process

Empathy isn’t just something we have inside us; it’s something we do with others. Motivation, context and social norms shape whether we express, withhold or amplify empathy (Zaki, 2014; Weisz & Zaki, 2018). If someone with aphantasia experiences emotion more subtly, their expressions or storytelling may also be more muted, and that can shift how others respond. That’s not a lack of empathy; it’s a different rhythm. In therapy, we honour that rhythm, not pathologise it.  

The power of autobiographical memory

Many of us connect through shared experiences: “I resonate with what you’re going through because I’ve felt something like it too.” What happens when you can’t vividly re-experience past emotions? Converging evidence shows that people with aphantasia provide fewer internal/emotional details and lower vividness and confidence when recalling personal events, with neural work pointing to altered hippocampal–occipital dynamics during autobiographical memory retrieval (Milton et al., 2021; Monzel et al., 2024). You may not see the past, but you still carry it, and you still connect.  

Feeling less = caring less? Not at all

The absence of visual imagery doesn’t equal an absence of emotional depth. Many clients with aphantasia describe rich moral concern and steady, reliable care expressed through action, language and presence. Their bodies may not react as strongly during imagined scenarios, but their commitments can be profound. Empathy isn’t just about tears or goosebumps; often it’s about being present, even when you can’t picture the scene. (Wicken et al., 2021; Abdelrahman et al., 2025; Monzel et al., 2024).  

Rethinking the “norm” in mental health

In a world that often assumes vivid imagery and demonstrative emotion as the norm, aphantasia can feel isolating. But it’s not a disorder; it’s a cognitive variation with identifiable behavioural, physiological and neural signatures across the imagery spectrum (Zeman, 2024). Recognising how you process, remember and relate can be liberating and opens a kinder lane to empathy on your terms. So what does this mean for therapy?

If you live with aphantasia, therapy can help you:

• understand how your mind processes memory and emotion
• work through self-doubt or others’ misunderstandings
• learn tools for connection that match your style (e.g., language-based, values-anchored)
• reframe your empathy as different, not deficient
• honour the ways you show care, even if they don’t look “typical”

In your work together with a neurodivergence-aware therapist, they won’t assume anything about how you think, feel or remember. They will meet you where you are, listen closely and help you explore what empathy and healing mean for you.

Seeing beyond the mind’s eye

You don’t need vivid imagery to be a kind, compassionate, deeply empathic person. Aphantasia may shift the mechanics of empathy, but it doesn’t erase its presence. It invites a wider definition, one that includes conceptual resonance, quiet understanding and relational warmth. Empathy, in the end, is not a solo act; it’s a duet: noticing, responding, connecting. If your mind’s eye is blank, your heart can still be full.

References

Abdelrahman, N., Azzam, D., Alghazal, Z., & Faber, M. (2025). Seeing is feeling: How aphantasia alters emotional engagement with stories. Psychophysiology. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70100  

Dawes, A. J., Keogh, R., Andrillon, T., & Pearson, J. (2020). A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia. Scientific Reports, 10, 10022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65705-7  

Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2018). The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia. Cortex, 105, 53–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.012  

Milton, F., Fulford, J., Dance, C., Gaddum, J., Heuerman-Williamson, B., Jones, K., … Zeman, A. (2021). Behavioral and neural signatures of visual imagery vividness extremes: Aphantasia vs hyperphantasia. Cerebral Cortex, 31(12), 5958–5970. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhab169  

Monzel, M., Leelaarporn, P., Lutz, T., Schultz, J., Brunheim, S., Reuter, M., & McCormick, C. (2024). Hippocampal–occipital connectivity reflects autobiographical memory deficits in aphantasia. eLife.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39325034/  

Monzel, M., Karneboge, J., & Reuter, M. (2024). Affective processing in aphantasia and potential overlaps with alexithymia: Mental imagery facilitates the recognition of emotions in oneself and others. Biomarkers in Neuropsychiatry, 11, 100106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bionps.2024.100106  

Pearson, J. (2019). The human imagination: The cognitive neuroscience of visual mental imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 20(10), 624–634. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-019-0202-9  

Wicken, M., Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2021). The critical role of mental imagery in human emotion. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 288(1946), 20210267. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0267  

Weisz, E., & Zaki, J. (2018). Motivated empathy: A social neuroscience perspective. Current Opinion in Psychology, 24, 67–71. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29966924/  

Zaki, J. (2014). Empathy: A motivated account. Psychological Bulletin, 140(6), 1608–1647. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25347133/  

Zeman, A., Dewar, M., & Della Sala, S. (2015). Lives without imagery—Congenital aphantasia. Cortex, 73, 378–380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2015.05.019  

Zeman, A. (2024). Aphantasia and hyperphantasia: Exploring imagery vividness extremes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 28(6), 467–480. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38548492/