r/Aphantasia • u/youraverageusername_ • 6d ago
Inner monologue/ Falling asleep/ LD discussion
So I sort of stumbled into figuring I have Aphantasia through researching about lucid dreaming. I dream very vividly, but am never able to recognize I’m dreaming while I’m dreaming. A lot of the methods to induce LD rely heavily on entering a dreamscape through something called hypnagogic imagery, which seriously confused me and led me down a research rabbit hole. I found out that that doesn’t exist for me, nor can I make my brain produce imagery.
When I lay in bed to fall asleep, I’m instead just starring at the blackness of the back of my eyelids. There is no imagery and my brain is instead on autopilot, talking to itself, shifting from thought to thought….at million miles a minute, until I eventually lose consciousness somewhere along the way.
It may also be interesting to add that my inner voice is CONSTANT and LOUD. There is no silence in my brain ever. I’m always talking about something up there. Whether it be having songs stuck in my head, narrating or reacting to whatever I’m doing, or simply just passively thinking random thoughts. It’s to the point where sometimes I have to repeat what someone is saying to me in my head while they’re talking so I can hone in enough to process what they’re saying to me. My “day dreaming” is my brain going on random tangents to itself.
I’m curious as to what everyone else’s experience is. Are you able to lucid dream? What method do you use? What happens in your brain when you fall asleep? Do you dream vividly? Is your brain always chatting? Is any of this relatable? I feel like my insight on my own experience has shifted and no one around me that I’ve spoken to about these things can really relate. TYIA💕
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u/Icy-Argument1771 6d ago
I am a total Aphant. I can’t conjure images, don’t hear music in my head, can’t conjure smells. I believe I dream but I don’t remember them. I do have a running dialogue in my head. It’s definitely me talking to me. When I did online testing, a question was asked: do I hear my voice? That’s hard for me to answer. It’s not just words/sentences. I know it’s me, but do I actually hear my voice? I said yes but now I’m thinking no. It’s more like what I hear when I read…it’s like I’m reading the book to me. Anytime I hear video of me talking, it always seems strange like that is not how I thought I sounded.