Can I Do IFS If I Have Aphantasia?

Short Answer: Yes, You Can

You can work deeply with Internal Family Systems even if you don’t see images, pictures, or inner scenes. Visual imagery is only one possible communication channel between you and your parts, and it is not essential.

What matters is whether there is some sense of contact, presence, or awareness. Many people with aphantasia already have strong access to other internal channels that support IFS work just as well.

When Visual Imagery Starts to Feel Like a Requirement

IFS is often described using visual language. Parts are talked about as shapes, images, or characters. That language can be helpful for people who naturally visualise, but it can also quietly create the impression that imagery is the main way parts exist or communicate.

If you don’t see internal pictures, you might wonder whether you are missing something important, doing the work incorrectly, or failing to access your system properly. Over time, that belief can become more limiting than aphantasia itself.

Parts are not images. Images are simply one way some people experience them. The system does not rely on pictures in order to be relational or meaningful.

How This Often Shows Up in Therapy

People with aphantasia often describe moments in therapy where questions about images feel confusing or disconnecting. When asked what a part looks like, there may be nothing there. This can create pressure to invent something, translate your experience into visual terms, or retreat into thinking rather than sensing.

What is usually happening instead is that parts are showing up through different channels. The work does not need to be forced into visual language. It needs to follow how your system naturally communicates.

The Many Channels Parts Use When Images Aren’t There

Parts can be understood as representations of inner personalities, characters, or collections of experience. They don’t require pictures to exist or to relate to you. Some of the most common non-visual channels include:

Body sensations

Parts often communicate through physical sensation. You might notice tightness, heaviness, pressure, heat, numbness, or movement. Sensations can also have qualities. Is the energy stuck or flowing? Does it feel contained or spreading? Is there an impulse in the hands, chest, throat, or jaw? These details can carry more information than images.

Emotions and emotional tone

A part may show up as a specific emotional quality rather than a picture. Irritation, fear, urgency, flatness, or sadness can signal a part’s presence. You don’t need to visualise who feels this in order to be with it.

Words, phrases, or meaning

Some parts communicate through language or concepts. You might notice repeated thoughts, a particular phrasing, or a sense of meaning without hearing a clear inner voice.

Memories

Sometimes a memory arises when you’re in connection with your parts. That memory can be a part’s way of communicating something important, even if it is not accompanied by imagery.

Spatial awareness

Another important channel is spatial. Many people sense parts as being located somewhere in or around the body. You might notice a protector that feels close to your shoulders, behind you, or just outside your field of awareness. That spatial sense alone can be a starting point for connection.

Even without an image, you can orient toward that location. You might imagine reaching out a hand, turning toward it, or simply letting it know you are aware of it. The intention and presence matter more than the picture.

A sense or knowing

There is also a quieter channel that shows up as intuition or embodied knowing. You may just sense that something is there, without clear sensory detail. That still counts as contact.

Aphantasia as a Different Way of Knowing

Many people with aphantasia describe having ways of experiencing the world that are hard to translate to people who visualise.

I’ve heard one person described knowing when an idea truly resonates because of a specific feeling in his body, a kind of embodied certainty. When he tried to explain this to others, they didn’t quite understand, and I don’t think I’m even able to accurately describe here what he senses. At the same time, when others talked about seeing ideas or processes in their mind, that language didn’t resonate for him either.

Neither experience is more correct. They are simply different ways of knowing.

If you have aphantasia, there may be subtle strengths in how you track meaning, sensation, resonance, or truth. Those capacities often support IFS work in quiet but powerful ways. Exploring how your system already communicates can be more fruitful than trying to adopt a style that doesn’t fit you.

What Actually Matters in IFS Work

The core of IFS is relationship, not imagery.

The important questions are:

• Can you notice that a part is present?

• How does it feel for you to be with it?

• Can the part sense that you are there?

A Different Way of Relating to IFS With Aphantasia

Nothing about aphantasia needs to be corrected or worked around. Your system is already organised around how it knows and senses the world.

IFS can meet you there. You can work through sensation, emotion, memory, spatial awareness, words, and intuition. You can stay grounded in what is actually happening rather than what is supposed to happen.