this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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Aphantasia π
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Aphantasia is the inability to create mental imagery.
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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 Iβve 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 itβs not a problem anymore. π
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!