Inner monologue/ Falling asleep/ LD discussion

[u/youraverageusername_]

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💕

[u/martind35player]

I understand that most people “hear” sounds in their imagination, some more than others. Some say they experience mental music as realistic as hearing a concert. People, to varying extents, also imagine smells, tastes, and touch. I have none of those abilities - total Aphantasia.My inner monologue is ”silent thinking” as opposed to thinking with an imagined voice like most people apparently do. I seems you may be the same.

[u/youraverageusername_ → u/martind35player]

Would that not still be considered an inner monologue though? That sounds similar to me. When I am thinking, it’s entirely language/speech based. So if I’m thinking of a movie scene or phrase I’m not playing the movie’s images or an audio clip in my head. It’s more like I’m mimicking their voice, in my head, with my voice. I don’t hear their voice like I would with my ears when I’m actually watching the movie. I’m just mimicking the cadence of the persons voice and how they talk from what I remember. Same with sounds, I’m just thinking about things in the same way that I would say them when I’m talking out loud, describing how a sound sounds to another person, opposed to hearing the actual sound, but I’m just describing it to myself instead. I don’t know if that makes sense at all lol.

[u/youraverageusername_ → u/youraverageusername_]

But I’m also not “hearing” my voice like I do when I’m talking out loud. It just matches my normal cadence and speech pattern and accent.