My mind's eye can't see

To truly see, one must look beyond the physical and tap into the power of the mind's eye.

~ Oliver Sacks

I lived much of my life feeling like an outlier - not one with everything.

Feeling so different from others and curious about my idiosyncracies, I learned to pay attention to discoveries about constitutional typing.

Constitutional typing is a classification system that categorizes individuals based on their physical characteristics, body constitution, and tendencies toward certain diseases or traits.

Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and other holistic medical practices assess people's constitutional types to customize treatment.

I recognize the potential for discrimination by pigeonholing people. For example, I have witnessed self-exaltation for extroversion over introversion in personality typing, preferences for blood type in certain cultures when choosing potential mates, etcetera.

To treat the person rather than the condition, identifying constitutional types facilitates a more personalized approach. Modern medical science still treats patients based on average values and outcomes from population studies, ignoring individual variability.

I intend to share the following from a place of discernment, not judgment.

Examples of the minority status of my constitutional type include my B Rh negative blood type, which I share with roughly 1.5% of the world's population. I also do not quickly process instructions that include left or right.

More recently, investigating a recurring nightmare of being completely lost, I came across some research about aphantasia - the inability to create pictures in our minds. There is a spectrum of clarity for what we can see with the mind's eye. Like a tiny minority of the world's population, my mind's eye cannot see pictures.

I don't love labels, but learning about aphantasia helped me understand why I have felt inadequate when doing guided imagery meditations. When asked to visualize a serene setting or what have you, I see nothing but emptiness in my mind's eye. While I can conceptualize or create an idea, I can't depict it.

It may sound like I'm making mountains out of molehills, but the ability to visualize yesterday's breakfast may help save the memory.

The following is speculative. I don't know if there has been enough research on aphantasia to confirm or dismiss my questions.

• Does my inability to create pictures impair my ability to find my way back to where I parked the car?

• Or my hotel room in a foreign country?

• Or my locker in school?

These questions come from nightmares that have plagued me for decades and occasionally become my experience. I find ways to compensate for my visual limitations.

I share this because many well-intentioned coaches, including me, encourage people to visualize achieving a desired outcome, forgetting that not everyone can create mental pictures. A hard copy of a vision board might work better for some.