Aphantasia Academy

Aphantasia Academy The UK's leading training provider for invisible cognitive differences.

We help therapists, coaches & counsellors work effectively with clients who have aphantasia, SDAM, anendophasia & alexithymia.

For a long time, I thought I was broken.I went to therapy repeatedly over the years and each time I tried to do what was...
14/04/2026

For a long time, I thought I was broken.
I went to therapy repeatedly over the years and each time I tried to do what was asked of me. I visualised as hard as I could. I tried to access the memory. I tried to hear the inner voice that everyone seemed to have access to.

Nothing came, and I assumed that was my fault.

I was in my forties before I discovered I have aphantasia and other invisible cognitive differences (no mental imagery, no inner sounds, no internal sensations). I always have had them, I just didn't know. But in the moment I understood why so much of my therapeutic experience had felt like trying to read a map in a language I'd never been taught.

That discovery changed everything.

I spent the years that followed learning everything I could about aphantasia, SDAM, anendophasia, anauralia, alexithymia, and what each one means for the way a person experiences therapy.

I trained. I researched. I wrote a book. I built a training programme, and I started talking about it publicly, because silence about this costs people years.

I do this work because I know there are people sitting in therapy rooms right now having the exact experience I had, and I know there are therapists who genuinely want to help them and simply haven't been given the tools.

That gap is what I'm here to close.

If you'd like to explore this on your podcast, at your event, or in your publication, I'd love to talk. DM me or comment SPEAKER below.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Validates my experience."This is everything. For anyone who has ever felt different, misunderstood, or unable to ...
13/04/2026

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Validates my experience."

This is everything. For anyone who has ever felt different, misunderstood, or unable to explain their inner world, this book is for you. For every person who has thought, "but that doesn't work for me," your experience is real and valid.

Thank you to every reader who has shared that they feel seen in these pages. It means the world.

Available now on Amazon.

A therapist with 12 years of experience wrote to me last week. This is what she said:"I thought I understood neurodivers...
12/04/2026

A therapist with 12 years of experience wrote to me last week. This is what she said:

"I thought I understood neurodiversity. Reading Unseen Minds made me realise I had a significant blind spot I didn't even know was there. I've already changed how I work with three of my current clients."

That's exactly why I wrote it.

If you've ever sat in a therapy room feeling like the techniques weren't working and quietly wondered if the problem was you, it wasn't. It never was. Your mind may simply work in a way your therapist was never trained to understand.

Unseen Minds is for anyone who has ever felt unseen in a therapy room. It's for therapists who want to close the gap their training left open. And it's for people with aphantasia, SDAM, anendophasia, or anauralia who want to finally understand why their mind works the way it does.

It's Autism Awareness Month and this book is for every mind that has ever been misread.

Buy Unseen Minds - A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences today, on Amazon.

A study published in the journal Cortex confirmed what many therapists have quietly suspected — that when a client "just...
11/04/2026

A study published in the journal Cortex confirmed what many therapists have quietly suspected — that when a client "just can't get into" a visualisation exercise, the reason isn't effort. It's neurology.
People with aphantasia show significantly reduced activity in the visual cortex during imagery tasks. They are not failing to try. Their brain simply does not generate mental images.
That matters for every therapist who has ever marked a client down as resistant, avoidant, or not ready.
And it goes further than visual imagery. For many people with aphantasia, the absence extends to all forms of mental simulation — the ability to mentally hear, smell, taste, or feel something that isn't physically present. This affects emotional processing, future thinking, and autobiographical memory. The techniques most therapists reach for every single session rely on all of these.
Approximately 2.6 million adults in the UK have aphantasia. The majority have never been told. They sit in therapy rooms attempting exercises their brain cannot perform — and they leave concluding that therapy doesn't work for them.
They were never the problem.
The Aphantasia Foundations training translates this research into practical, session-ready adaptations you can use immediately — regardless of your modality. CPD-accredited. Built on lived experience and current research.
Comment FOUNDATIONS and I'll send you the link. Currently available at the launch price of £199.

Imagine sitting in a therapist's office every week, being asked to tune into how you feel in your body, and genuinely no...
10/04/2026

Imagine sitting in a therapist's office every week, being asked to tune into how you feel in your body, and genuinely not being able to.

Not because you're avoiding it and not because you don't want to get better, but because your brain doesn't process emotional information that way.

This is alexithymia. It affects around 1 in 10 of your clients and it's just one of five cognitive differences that change how a person experiences therapy from the inside.
The others, aphantasia, SDAM, anendophasia, anauralia, affect visualisation, autobiographical memory, inner speech, and inner sound. Together, these five differences affect roughly 1 in 20 people currently in therapy in the UK. That's approximately 285,000 people who may be receiving support that doesn't fit how their mind works.

Most of them don't know why therapy feels so hard and most of their therapists don't know either.

It's Stress Awareness Month but for these clients, the standard toolkit for stress management hits a wall before it even begins. Naming feelings. Tracing sensations in the body. Visualising calm. These approaches assume a cognitive baseline that a significant number of your clients simply don't share.

The Aphantasia Therapist Training covers all five.

It's CPD-accredited, built on lived experience and clinical research, and it gives you practical adaptations you can use immediately. There are very few therapists in the UK with this knowledge. The ones who have it aren't just better equipped, they're offering something genuinely rare in a crowded market where most practitioners are competing on the same credentials.

If you've ever had a client who seemed switched off, resistant, or "not ready" there's a chance they were simply never seen.

Comment TRAINING below and I'll send you the details.

And if this resonates, share it, there are therapists in your network who need to read this today.

There's a moment that happens in therapy rooms across the UK every single day.A therapist asks a client to picture their...
09/04/2026

There's a moment that happens in therapy rooms across the UK every single day.
A therapist asks a client to picture their safe place. The client goes quiet. They try but nothing comes. No image. No sensation. No response.

They leave the session thinking: therapy isn't for me. I'm not trying hard enough.

What nobody told them, and what most of their therapists don't know either, is that they have aphantasia. They cannot visualise. Not won't. Can't.

This is what a broken beginning looks like and it's happening to approximately 2.6 million adults in the UK. That's roughly the combined population of Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham, the majority of whom have never been told they have it.

On World Health Day, the theme was "Healthy Beginnings, Hopeful Futures."
I keep thinking: what does a healthy beginning in therapy actually look like for a mind that works differently? It starts with a therapist who knows.

So I built one, a free CBT Masterclass, under 30 minutes, that explains exactly what aphantasia is, how it shows up in your sessions, and the first adaptations you can make right now, without overhauling your practice.

It costs nothing and it could change everything for a client who has already given up on being helped.

Comment MASTERCLASS below and I'll send you the link directly. If you know a therapist who should see this, tag them, this information needs to travel.

“There was a client I worked with years ago who came to every session, did everything I asked, and then one day simply s...
08/04/2026

“There was a client I worked with years ago who came to every session, did everything I asked, and then one day simply stopped booking. I told myself she was better, that the work was done, but I knew, quietly, that something hadn't landed. That some of the techniques I'd used hadn't connected with her the way they should have. I just didn't know why.”

This was what one of the Aphantasia Therapist students said to me. I've spoken to hundreds of therapists since then, and that story is one of the most common things I hear. A client who tried hard, who wanted it to work, who disappeared without explanation.

For some of those clients, the reason is invisible. They have a cognitive difference like aphantasia, SDAM, anendophasia, or anauralia, and that means the techniques being used simply don't function the way they're designed to. They're not resistant. They're not unmotivated. Their brain just processes the world differently, and often no one in the room knows it.

Aphantasia alone affects approximately 1 in 20 people. Most of them might not even know it, and most of their therapists have never been trained for it.

If you've ever had a client who seemed to be trying but not progressing, this carousel is for you.

Comment FOUNDATIONS and I'll send you the link to the Aphantasia Foundations training.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Absolutely fascinating."What if the way your client describes their inner world is literal, not metaphorical?The ...
06/04/2026

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Absolutely fascinating."

What if the way your client describes their inner world is literal, not metaphorical?

The feedback for UNSEEN MINDS has been incredible, with so many readers finding the concepts both new and deeply resonant. This book is for the curious, the lifelong learners, and those who love to explore the intricate workings of the human mind.

Ready to be fascinated? Grab your copy from Amazon today.

It's the start of Q2, and I'm opening up my availability for speaking, podcast appearances, and media features.Here's wh...
04/04/2026

It's the start of Q2, and I'm opening up my availability for speaking, podcast appearances, and media features.

Here's what I do and who I do it for.

I talk about the invisible cognitive differences that affect how people think, feel, remember, and heal — aphantasia, SDAM, anendophasia, and alexithymia. Collectively, these differences affect approximately 1 in 5 people. Almost none of them have been trained to understand their own minds. And almost no therapists, coaches, or educators have been trained to work with them.

I bring to this topic something rare: I have lived experience of all four differences, and I spent years learning the therapeutic and neuroscientific research from the inside, not to become a practising therapist, but to understand exactly why the standard approaches didn't work for me, and how to adapt them so they could.

I've built the UK's only CPD-accredited training for therapists working with these differences. I've written the book on it — literally. And I speak about it in a way that is accessible, evidence-based, and genuinely surprising to most audiences, because most audiences have never heard of any of this.

I'm available for:

• Keynote speaking at conferences, professional events, and universities
• Podcast interviews (mental health, neurodiversity, therapy, personal development)
• Radio, TV, and press features
• Expert commentary for journalists and researchers
• Webinars and online events for professional audiences

If you're a producer, journalist, event organiser, podcast host — or you know one — I'd love to hear from you.

DM me, or comment INTERVIEW below.

Aphantasia was only formally named in 2015.In the decade since, the research has moved fast, and some of what it's revea...
03/04/2026

Aphantasia was only formally named in 2015.

In the decade since, the research has moved fast, and some of what it's revealed challenges assumptions that are still widespread, even among mental health professionals.

Swipe through to find the five things the research actually says and why they matter for anyone who works with people.

If you want to go deeper, not just into aphantasia but into the full spectrum of invisible cognitive differences and what they mean for the way people think, feel, remember, and heal, that's exactly what my book, Unseen Minds, is about.

It was written for therapists who want to understand the clients who seem unreachable. And for anyone who has ever felt like their mind works differently but couldn't explain how.

Available now on Amazon.

She'd been in therapy for 3 years. She’d worked with different therapists each taking a different approach. CBT, person-...
02/04/2026

She'd been in therapy for 3 years.
She’d worked with different therapists each taking a different approach. CBT, person-centred, psychodynamic. Each one had tried to help her connect her present struggles to her past. Each one had asked her to recall memories, to re-experience moments from her childhood, to find the emotional thread that linked then to now.

Each time, she'd tried and each time, she'd come away feeling like she was broken. Like therapy just wasn't for her. Like there was something wrong with her that even therapy couldn't fix.

What none of those therapists knew and what she didn't know herself was that she has SDAM. Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory.

She can remember that things happened. She has the facts. But she can’t mentally travel back and re-experience them. The past is information, not a felt sense. There is no emotional memory to access, because her brain doesn't store memories that way.

Three years of therapy built on an assumption that didn't apply to her.

I'm not a practising therapist. I undertook therapeutic training specifically to understand the methods and modalities that wouldn't work for someone like me, and how to adapt them so they could. SDAM is one of four cognitive differences I cover in my training because it's one of the most commonly missed, and one of the most consequential when it goes unrecognised.

The Aphantasia Foundations training is designed for therapists who want to understand these differences and start adapting their practice — without waiting for the profession to catch up.

It's available now at the launch price of £199.

Comment FOUNDATIONS and I'll send you the link.

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About me

Hi, I’m Sassy and I’m a qualified coach, personal cheerleader and all round life fixer-upper.

I am passionate about supporting, encouraging and inspiring you to create long-lasting positive changes to your life and to taking you on a transformational journey.

Does this sound like you? To the outside world, your life seems to be ideal. You’ve got a good job; a happy family and home life; and most people would say that you’re pretty successful. What they don’t know is that, on the inside, you’re feeling stressed, anxious and overwhelmed. Emotionally you range from feeling completely flat to totally out of control and you’ve been asking yourself “Is this it? Is this all there is for me?”

You feel stuck and you’re wondering if there’s something more but you’re being held back by the fear of failure, or of losing what you have, and by limiting beliefs which have been clouding your thoughts for as long as you can remember.