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I have kinda always known that I don't really work the same way as some others do, but the more recent discussions on just how well some people can visualize things led to me reevaluating myself.
I think a pretty big tipper for me was in how different my dreams are in comparison to my waking ability to visualize. Total night and day difference. When asleep (or just after waking) I have vivid and lucid dreams. While awake I can't conjure a stick figure or a simple apple.
I think I stumbled upon the term somewhere online at some point, and realized it described me. It just made a bunch of stuff click into place. I look back on times now where I was able to visualize colours and patterns in my head while high listening to music and thought I was hallucinating a lot differently now lol. Turns out that's just what most people can normally do
+1
Wanted to add that once I had some drug- and sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations at a hospital, and I was shocked that I could 'visualize', in a similar way to how I dream, I guess. I had never had a comparable experience before.
So, do you have visual dreams? I saw the other thing you posted that stated that dreaming experiences (among other visual phenomena) tended to be muted amongst aphants. Do you find that to be the case for yourself?
Dreams (or, at least, recall) tend to be rare for me. Although melatonin (but not very reliably) tend to make it more likely for me to have vivid dreams (melatonin gave me the most vivid dreams ever too). But when I do [remember?] dream, they can be pretty vivid, I guess.
Which is a mind fuck for me, because I cannot prove it, as that would result in a paradox (I can't visualize anymore while conscious).
Anecdotally, I've seen quite a lot of aphants saying they allegedly have vivid dream; the community seems split on this though.
What's your experience? edit: I saw you said you have vivid dreams, but are they frequent?
I suffered from sleep paralysis for a period of about five years (as an adult) that had accompanying vivid dreams of a horrible sort. So, after trying a few things to help, I kinda decided that the cure was going to have to be learning as much as I could about the dreaming process so it no longer could result in the negative experiences I was having.
To that end, I began to get really serious about learning to lucid dream. Started with dream diaries, and reality checks and went on a two-year journey of really mastering the art of falling asleep. It got to the point that with about a week of lead up time to get in the right mind frame, I could trigger a lucid dream pretty reliably about 3 or 4 times a week.
Now, I am out of practice, but I still get them around once or twice a month. Best thing of course is that the sleep paralysis no longer bothers me. So, I got that going for me, which is nice.
Ooh, yikes. I experienced sleep paralysis exactly once in my life and it was the most terrified I’ve ever been, especially not knowing at the time that any such thing exists. Sympathies that you had to deal with it to a much greater degree, and so glad for you that it’s not a problem anymore. 💜
Yeah it definitely sucked quite badly while it was happening, though I am oddly glad that I was forced to experience it.
Now I can kinda claim that I survived a demon sitting on my chest and torturing me for hours at a time. And I did it through science!
You have a great and commendable mindset! I'm glad you're doing better and you can freely talk about AND used it to improve yourself!
That's cool! Do you have any tips for reality checks? Or just the usual like counting fingers, checking clocks, etc?
Edit: I realize now that my comment "that's cool" may sound a bit tone-deaf, like I'm sorry about your horrible experience; I got a bit excited about the rest 🫠
Whatever it is, it has to be something that you do consistently. So, for me, it was holding my nose so I couldn't breath. If I was actually asleep, my hand wouldn't actually be pinching my nose and I would be able to breath. That and for some reason clocks reset themselves the moment I look away from them in a dream. That don't happen in real life.
The big thing though is to keep dream journals. This one is pretty big early on, as forgetting your dreams is the worst if you are trying to go lucid.
Second question: how did you learn to lucid dream? Or is that something that occurs naturally to you?
I've never experienced it :(
different parts of the brain are responsible for them, that's why you can still have vivid dreams but not be able to use your third eye when you're awake.