Unseen Minds
A Therapist's Guide to Multisensory Aphantasia and Invisible Cognitive Differences
Second edition · out now
The practical guide that helps therapists recognise and adapt for clients with multisensory aphantasia, SDAM, anauralia, anendophasia and alexithymia, so no client is left behind.
What if the way your client experiences the world isn't how you assumed?
The disconnect
Your client seems engaged, articulate and willing, and the therapeutic work just doesn't land. Visualisation exercises fall flat. Memory-based techniques go nowhere. You begin to wonder whether you're doing something wrong.
The self-doubt
You've done the CPD, read the textbooks, attended the workshops. Nothing has prepared you for a client whose mind simply doesn't work the way therapy expects it to.
The invisible gap
These clients don't arrive with a label. They may not know they're different. They only know that therapy hasn't worked, and they're starting to believe the problem is them. It isn't, and this book shows you why.
A practical guide, not another textbook
Unseen Minds was written for therapists who want deeper insight into clients with invisible cognitive differences, and who want to know what to do differently rather than only what to call it.
Written from both lived experience and professional practice, it bridges the gap between what therapists are taught and what some clients actually need. It offers a new lens for understanding why certain therapeutic approaches don't land, and what to use instead.
This book was born out of personal frustration, confusion, and the deeply disorienting experience of not being understood in therapy. Sassy Smith, author
- Multisensory aphantasiaNo voluntary mental imagery, in any sense
- SDAMSeverely deficient autobiographical memory
- AnauraliaNo mental imagery for sound
- AnendophasiaWordless thinking, with no inner monologue
- AlexithymiaDifficulty identifying and describing emotions
Written for the room, not the reading list
Practical adaptations for existing modalities, including CBT and person-centred work
The neuroscience behind all five differences, explained accessibly
How to identify invisible cognitive differences in your existing clients
Reflective prompts for your own professional development
Case studies from the therapy room that bring the theory to life
Ways to reduce client drop-off and strengthen the therapeutic alliance
What readers are saying
Sassy does a terrific job of explaining what aphantasia, SDAM, anauralia, anendophasia and alexithymia are and how they can show up in the therapy room. I highly recommend this book to any therapist looking to better serve all clients.
Absolutely fascinating, I devoured this book in a sitting. It explains so much about my own mind, my coaching style and my experiences of therapy. It validates my experiences and challenges my practice.
It helped to clarify and affirm my own experiences of aphantasia and SDAM as well as provide useful information about other cognitive differences. Also a really useful resource from a professional point of view as a counsellor.
Sassy Smith
Founder, Aphantasia Academy
Sassy lives with all five differences: multisensory aphantasia, SDAM, anauralia, anendophasia and alexithymia. Her own experience of being misunderstood in therapy, of techniques that assumed she could visualise, recall vivid memories or access an inner voice, became the catalyst for this work.
She recognised that if she, as a trained professional, struggled to articulate her experience, clients with similar differences would face even greater barriers.
Through Aphantasia Academy she has trained therapists, coaches and mental health professionals across the UK, the US and Canada, and created the CPD-accredited Unseen Minds Practitioner® credential. Unseen Minds distils years of insight, research and lived experience into a single accessible resource.
More about Sassy