Intriguingly, while aphantasics cannot summon mental imagery on demand, Zeman (the cognitive and behavioral neurologist who coined the word aphantasia) believes that: "Most aphantasics know what it's like to visualize, as they experience imagery in their dreams or as they dose off to sleep." This was confirmed by two World of Lucid Dreaming readers with aphantasia. This suggests that hypnagogic imagery and visualization close to the dreamstate draws on a different mechanism to daydreaming and visualizing during full wakefulness. However, some scientists have begun to refute this claim. What are your dreams like? Are there visual pictures in your dreamscape? Are they visual or narrative based? Are they in color or black and white? Do you remember them when you wake up? Can you visualize them? Do you recall the narratives? Are dreams enjoyable? Scary? Lucid? Anyone have hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations like I do? Anybody wish like me to go back to dreaming whenever and however possible because dreams are the only visualizations that you are ever able to experience in your mind? My dreams feel like the only place I have the ability to imagine. I can't visualize my dreams at all when I'm awake; it's like they turn from motion pictures to print books when the dream is over. Closing my eyes, I see nothing, unless I'm dreaming. No amount of imagining brings any sort of visualization to bear in my mind... What about you?
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Marie•recently
I dream in full colour with sounds and sensations. I rarely remember my dreams but I can recall one particular dream that I had years ago. I was standing on the top of a mountain enjoying the view, I could smell the fresh air, I could feel the breeze on my face then I leaned forward and flew. I could smell the ground, sea and trees as I passed over them, I could feel the rushing of the wind about my body, I felt more alive than I had ever done. Then I woke up, back to the here and now, no inner vision, no relived senses just a memory that has stayed with me.
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L B•recently
Hello, I’m probably the youngest here to report about my Aphantasia, I can dream, but they usually only turn into nightmares, I can see images in my head when my eyes aren't closed no matter what I think about, my eyes have to be slightly or completely open in order for me to see anything. I honestly thought it was nothing and I was the only one, till I mentioned it to a friend and did some research. I think this makes us all unique and special in a majestic way.
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RD Valdes-Dapena•recently
My dreams generally are as colorful and detailed as the real world, though usually full of nonsensical and fantastical elements. I remember some details when I wake up. Occasionally, sometime later in the day I will recall some details of a dream from the night before. Someone once suggested that when I wake up I should write down what I remember from my dreams in order to gain some insights into myself and my life. When I started it would take me only a minute or two to write down what I remembered. After a few weeks I was remembering so much that I didn't have the time to write it all down. And since I wasn't finding any real value in the practice I gave it up.
As an aside, when I go to bed I sometimes will get a brief mental image or hear an imagined sound. That tells me I'm falling asleep; I just need to not let my awareness of it break the spell and jolt me back into wakefulness.
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Dozza m•recently
I don't know about me, but I can't remember any time i've dreamt. I can't remember anything visual at all, sleeping or not. And I can't every recall dreaming visually
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judah iam•recently
Interesting. I have a variation, for example, when I wake up in the midst of a dream, I recall for a very short time. If I don't wake up in the middle of dreaming, and sleep until morning, I remember nothing, no thing at all. But I have medical reasons that wake me many times a night, so it feels normal for me to get glimpses of what I'm dreaming, long enough to form short snippets and remember bits and pieces. I wonder, because I think if I actually slept the night through normally, without interupption, if I'd recall anything at all. I doubt it. Thanks for your input, Geoffery. We all value it, here.
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Jay S•recently
I have very visual and sensory oriented dreams where I am able to smell, taste, hear, feel, almost like actually there in that moment. Sometimes I am even able to do things like play guitar even though I have no experience whatsoever with instruments. One time, I had a dream that was in black and white, in Japanese and in an anime style cartoon. I do not speak a lick of Japanese, nor do I know how to draw cartoons. How is this possible if I am phantasic?
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judah iam•recently
Once you wake up, though, can you visualize what you do when you are asleep? None of us seem to be able to do that. But many of us, when sleeping, visualize while dreaming, except the dream is remarkably different from how reality looks and feels, in a 'realer' way than waking reality, if that makes sense to you. Dreams, for me, are a place where anythying is possible, and it's more like watching a 3d movie in brighter color than reality, reality is drab and less vivid, and when I try to imagine, or picture something with my eyes closes, nothing. Darkness. Fuzzy, starry, blackness like an old tv with a bad connection, just fuzz. Thanks for your question! I hope that helps
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Anna Cole•recently
I do have Dreams but not very often and they are usually symbolic in some way but I never see anythin I just feel it almost like I. Avatar and the last Airbender toph foot thing I don't have to stomp and nothing is outline I just feel it and I know that its there and know what color it is but I cant see all there is is black
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judah iam•recently
My dreams seem full color, full visual, but they seem like simply another reality, not a dream, and the moment I wake, they are gone and I cannot imagine them, can’t visualize at all, I can only ‘remember’ them, in a narrative sense, not bring up the image, not whatsoever… ‘all there is is black.’
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judah iam•recently
My dreams seem full color, full visual, but they seem like simply another reality, not a dream, and the moment I wake, they are gone and I cannot imagine them, can't visualize at all, I can only 'remember' them, in a narrative sense, not bring up the image, not whatsoever... 'all there is is black.'
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judah iam•recently
Hi thanks for your comment: I will quote you, "I can find some dreams confusing with real life, after Ive woken, that my memories and dreams can be hard to tell apart." This is so true! I have had dreams that I woke up from where I ran to look out my window and was confused that the dream was no longer 'real', the scariest ones are nightmares where I'm being chased or pursued by a group of individuals, or I'm with a few people who did something bad, like kill someone, and I wake up and I panick because I still think it is happening. How I know I'm aphantasic? Once I'm awake, I cannot picture what seemed real three seconds ago. It fades in less than one second. When they aren't bad dreams, but good ones, I often feel let down to wake up, and I try to go back to sleep to get 'back' the good dream. Sometimes it works, othertimes not. Regardless, the 'good' dreams seem MORE real than reality does, and more beautiful, more vivid, more colorful, sharper, and real life feels blurry, less colorful, dreary, and darker...
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David Ralphs•recently
Im similar, no visual or other sensory input, Im just "aware" of whats happening.
If there is a specific person in my dream, I just know its them, I dont see or recognise them. Sometimes there is a person and its only later i will know its a perticular person. And that can change, they just become someone else.
Its mostly like im reading a narrative, there is a plot, very few details and just general feeling of whats happening. Often they are anxiety based, the "one last exam and i havent studied" and thats after finishning university more than 30 years ago (and i rocked exams)
I can find some dreams confusing with real life, after Ive woken, that my memories and dreams can be hard to tell apart. Classic example is I dream Ive misplaced my car keys, cant find them, panic etc. I will wake and maybe as im having breakfast a panic will hit - oh no, where are my keys, ive lost them. Then I look and they are exactly where they should be.
BTW im aphantasic on all senses
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Liberty Benedict•recently
I score 1 on all the test questions there is nothing, however I have the most horrific nightmares and I know when I am having them I am seeing everything. When I wake I know what I saw but it would be impossible for me to visualize them. I just have the upsetting memory of them.
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judah iam•recently
Correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like when I have nightmares the reason they are so disturbing is that they seem real while they are occurring but they also seem real once I wake up, like in some other life, it happened, not just a dream. Thank you for your comment! It left me reflecting on how things seem...
Not, or so it seems, just a dream, not just a dream, or so it feels, although, no. It was just a dream. It was a dream, not real. It's okay. Right? It's hard to convince myself sometimes that what I was just dreaming wasn't just happening...
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Madeline Lipke•recently
I have very vivid dreams. I can see my dreams very well while I'm asleep. When I'm awake, I can't see my dreams, I can only remember the details. It is very hard to explain to someone who is non-aphantasic, but I think that you and other people who have this can understand.
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Richard Stanton•recently
As someone who more recently discovered that I have aphantasia, I find that I have trouble answering this question. For me, while I do not normally remember my dreams, I do from time to time dream. I know this because I will sometimes remember the contents of the dream.. but now that I try to describe it, pictures of any sort do not enter the mix. The best way that I can describe how I dream is if I were to be reading a book wherein I myself am one of the characters, or as if I were somehow telling myself a story that I consciously did not write. Interestingly enough, though, these "dreams" can illicit emotional responses, but just like a good book that is artfully crafted can make me feel deeply as well. That is to say the words move me, but not a memory associated to those words. I notice that as I have gotten older I remember more and more of my dreams.. and I think that is partly due to the fact that I do not sleep as deeply as I once did, and as such those self narrated stories that do play out in my head are a few layers more shallow than they once were, and that much closer to the surface for my conscious mind to percieve.
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Roberto Rojas•recently
I'm pretty sure I dream with pictures, less sure about sound, I'm also don't think I see faces, I just kinda know who was involved but I don't remember seing faces. When I doze off I can see like remanents but I quicky lose them when I wake up. I rarely have nightmares, and many times I enjoy dreams that should be scary somehow; I still can remember an awesome dream I had years ago in which I was traped in a hounted house and other in which I was alone in an infested place with zombies; I remember clearly that they felt so interesting and fun and I even woke up smiling from both. I don't think is related to aphantasia but is weird and just came to me right now.
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phoebe kearns•recently
I rarely dream, if at all, and when I do I can never remember what they were about. The only thing I can recall from my dreams is typically strong feelings/emotions.I also dream in color and with imagery, but I forget everything immediately upon waking.
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A ...•recently
For me dreaming is rare and when it does happen it's like an audiobook just a narration of a story and when I wake up it ends mid sentence. There is no visual components and besides the mere minute or so trying to hang on to story all the memories is gone
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Helen Luis•recently
I do not remember my dreams. There are no images.
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Tamra Speakman•recently
For the most part it seems like I dream the same way I imagine. Via thoughts, words, feelings, emotions, processes, actions, not images. That said I have had some very vivid visual black and white dreams that were scary to me. I overall do not rememeber a lot of dreams.
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judah iam•recently
"is there anyone with same problems?", I understand completely. I like your description. I try to enjoy my scary dreams now that I'm middle aged. They used to terrify me, especially when I was a child. I had night terrors for many years. Nowdays, I have several recurring 'nightmares' that I'm being chased, or that I'm with people who have for instance killed somebody, and are on the run or hiding, and it haunts my when I'm awake. When I was younger, I dreamed that I looked out the window and saw, in one dream, police digging up a body in the yard, and in antother dream, I saw an astroid coming down at my house. Those memories seem very real, as if I lived them. A few times I jumped out of bed and looked out the window, expecting to see an astroid, or police tape and forsenics experts working in my yard. However, I can't picture it when I close my eyes. It's more of a narrative that gets laced into my memory. Sometimes my dreams are so life-like seeming that when I wake up everything seems flat, and boring, and has an unreal quality to it. My vision seems not as clear, vivid, or 'real' as one of those dreams. Sometimes I dream I'm able to flly by mere intention, telepathicly, without doing anything, sort of like Superman. Those dreams are fun to have, and when I wake up from them, I feel disapointed they aren't real, and I want to go back to sleep and fly around some more. Those dreams also are bright and happy and I think they are in color. I just can't be certain, because I don't have any visual image of them after I wake up. It's hard to explain if you can picture things in your head what it's like to have a memory of a dream scene but no image of it... It seems counterintuitive, right? It sort of feels contradictory, too, emotionally. Sometimes I wish my dreams were real life and that my life was a dream because dreams feel more exciting and I actually feel more alive, if that makes any sense. As always, I thank you for your comment. You all are helping me to understand myself better.
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BaÅŸak Genç•recently
I usually have realy crazy dreams, they are weird but incredibly detailed. Sometimes they are scary and weird, but i dont remember having a normal dream or a dream with only images. theyre like a short movie also weird but in the same time very realistic. I know it sounds stupid but they are so realistic that i have big issues with them. sometimes my old dreams flash in my mind and i just cant notice that they were actually dreams or ive lived them in real life, it takes time to me to understand. its actually a big problem for me because it makes me feel like i did something i should do but irl i havent done that. its complicated... is there anyone with same problems?
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Hope Lagaden•recently
I experience hypnogogic dreams, visual and auditory. They can be very terrifying. Sometimes it is people (a portly man riding a toy rocking horse in the corner of the room, a young girl playing with a yo-yo next to me in bed, people floating on the celing, multiple pairs of black boots with trench coats lined up standing next to my head, often also just orbs of colour, sometimes a flash of a scene not where i am, like a car crash, or a child being abducted) sometimes auditory (my children screaming, a voice from under the bed whispering mommy, but it is not my child as my children are in bed with me and fast asleep). Sometimes they include "messages" not voices, but mental communications. Before finding this forum i though i was possibly schitzophrenic (only at night) or channeling spirits as i didnt have any ratiinalisation for why i was awake and experiencing this at night only. My dream world is very vivid and almost interconnected. i can recal dreams within dreams. i have reocuring dream sensations. The feeling of a place, they are often haunted. my dreams are very morbid, first person watching others commit atrocities i cannot even write, often to children. it is very disturbing, but i never feel afraid like a nightmare, only disturbed and sad. post apocoliptic is also a big theme. in my waking state i have no visual memory. i cannot recall my childrens faces when they are not with me. i am a photographer and can recall moments with my chikdren through memories of photographs only. its hard to explain, but almost the stillness of the photograph allows me to imprint the moment to be recalled but not the moment itself. and by recalled i mean described in words. like, i cant see my husbands face in my mind but i know he has glasses, brown hair, brown eyes and a long face and recognize him when i see him. i would also like to highlight that i have alot of shame attached to my dreams. i dont talk about it to many because it is horrible. this forum has allowed me to feel like its not my fault
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Tom Ebeyer•recently
Hope, I also used to worry I was schizophrenic, and it didn't help that my father was, or that my mother would tell me that someday I might be. Apparently I had an invisible friend when I was very young and I think it scared my mother into thinking I was hallucinating like my father did. Eventually, I sought counselling and I have been certified by multiple therapists as not having mental illness, and one common bit of feedback I got echoed back by professionals is that by virtue of worrying that one does have mental illness, it's most likely you don't. Apparently, one measure of psychosis is that you don't know you're psychotic and you tend not to believe that you are even when diagnosed as such. So there's that.
I'd have to say that the nature of wondering whether you are schizophrenic probably means you are not. Of course we want an explanation for anomalies like waking dreams! They are so real and can be super scary. It wasn't until taking a psychology course that touched briefly on hypnopompic visions, or reveries, as I like to call them that I encountered this phenomenon. Its common in narcolepsy but not partial to having that condition; but I would wonder if you fall asleep like narcoleptics do? I fall asleep on the bus, while driving, in class, I'm nodding off sometimes when in a conversation, and it happens more under stress, like talking to an authority figure, or training at work by a manager, I'm struggling not to fall asleep on my feet in midsentence. Whether that's from sleep deprivation or slight narcolepsy, who knows. I've never been tested for narcolepsy. But the data on the condition and hypnagogics and hypnopompics does make me wonder. I bet you're a creative photographer. Aphantasiacs and those with dreamscape intrusions would be creative! imo
My dreams infringe on my waking world and tend to most occur when coming out of a dream usually, but I've also had hypnagogic ones as well, experienced on the way in to sleep. I remember reading that normal people don't dream until many hours into sleep when REM occurs; I thought well, then, I'm a freak, because I dream often immediately after drifting off for a few moments. And I tend to jerk awake with a jump, or a shout, because the dreams are so vivid and startle me since they come on so quickly, especially when I'm sleep deprived. I dream right away, as soon as I'm asleep.
It's interesting your experience is auditory. During my dreams, I know I can hear the soundrack, and I know I 'see' the scenes visually, however, when I wake up, if I can still 'see' the dream or its character/s in my room, at that point, I can no longer hear what's happening in the scene. It feels like I'm watching a play that was pulled into my room from the dream, yet there's no sound, as if the sound from my dreams cannot transition into my waking reality the way that what I'm seeing does. I just hear weird zapping and buzzing sounds, and I can see the dream's people or characters trying to talk to me, notice me, or fleeing from my awareness or my attention.
I often get the feeling that the characters from my dreams that appear briefly in my waking time had not actually been able to see me while I was dreaming, until I wake up and then it seems like they all of the sudden can see me and they act alarmed that I am there, sometimes they talk to each other excitedely and point at me, sometimes the yell and motion toward me, sometimes they are mouthing words I cannot hear, and some of them run or try to hide and appear terrified of me... but always, within moments, they quickly disappear as if an old analogue TV was switched off, you know, that the fade of the image from a picture into a fuzzy dark circle and down into the single point of light at the middle of the screen that an old tv would do when you shut the power off. My reveries only last several seconds and they burst and fade into nothing. Once I am fully awake I cannot picture or visualize my dreams, not in the least. It feels quite disappointing, too, because many of my dreams are interesting and I wake up unable to visualize something that I 'know' what it looked like moments before. Sometimes I get an image burned in my memory so that I 'know' what it would look like should I see it, but I cannot close my eyes and visualize it. I close my eyes and just see nothing. Yet the memory of the image is there; it's deeper and I can 'think' what it looks like, and I could describe the color and features with detail, but I cannot bring it to mind by visualizing at all. I thought that was normal, before I heard of aphantasia.
I'm sorry your visions are less than pleasant. Mine seem mostly benign. It is very stressful to have to watch distressful scenes unfold in your most vulnerable space, bed. I don't have it happen as often as you describe, but do know what it feels like because it does happen. It feels like being paralyzed and having to watch terror unfold without being able to react. It's very disturbing. You are describing a healthy reaction to a horrible circumstance, in fact, it is torture to have to watch horror and not be able to have agency to act or help. You sound quite balanced and empathic to me.
That said, I do sometimes dream of people chasing other people or dream of witnessing a murder, or of watching police digging up a yard and finding bodies, but those dreams tend not to come into my waking moments. But I get the sense that nobody can see me, like I'm invisible, which is no fun because I also feel like I can't help the victim or scare off the intruder or the pursuers. My personal take on all of this is that people like us have the ability to dream fully while partially awake and aware of our surroundings. It is a reverse type of lucid dreaming and it's a very special gift that can fee like a curse. I have not figured out how to harness it to any purpose, unfortunately.
I actually wish it would happen more often, now that I understand it. I used to be terrified of sleeping. I'm in my forties, and until this decade, I used to try to stay awake all night and would fall asleep when the sun was breaking. The light made sleep feel safer. I tended not to have hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations/visions in the daylight so I would sleep in the morning. I wound up working graveyard shifts because I thought it benefitted me to work through the night and sleep from 9AM to around noon. This decade, I've started training myself to sleep again.
Sometimes I feel terrified by the insects I dream are in my room with my, giant spiders, usually, and human sized caterpillars. But I try to remember that they are dreams that are spilling into my reality and stay calm. Still, I do not enjoy watching a spider the size of a dog sitting on my bed watching me sleep, nor watching it run and hide when I sit up with open eyes. I still jump up and shake out my blankets and check under the bed with a flashlight before I relax. Sometimes a voice says my name when I'm fast asleep and then when I wake up, I hear it again, but I can't tell where it came from or who it is. It is not your fault, and there are many people like us. I thank-you for your candor and for sharing your experience. Aphantasiacs united.
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Hannah Lauren•recently
For me, I don't dream particularly often or atleast don't remember them very frequently. I find dreams to feel quite real, and especially when I experience negative dreams or some kind of emotional dream, when I wake up, it felt very real and I'm left feeling odd or teary.
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Winter Frost•recently
My dreams are a sensory overload. When I wake up I can recall sensations felt during the dream. Things like being burned alive, the wind and tears while falling, what it felt like upon impact of said fall.
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Tom Ebeyer•recently
That's very interesting; the only sensation I can recall clearly is flying or falling. I don't ever remember an impact, or what the more apocalyptic dreams 'feel' like. I wake up from those kinds of dreams(earthquakes, tsunamis) wondering why I didn't feel scared and why I wasn't running from danger like the other people in the dream were. But when I dream of being able to float, fly, or I dream I'm falling, I wake up with butterflies in my stomach like a rollercoaster loop leaves. Never wind, though, I'm jealous. I'd love to feel dream wind. Fire, not so much. Thanks for leaving a comment! I wish you only pleasant sensations.
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Laura Flanigan•recently
I dream very vividly and often. I am a lucid dreamer and dream in first person. I don’t have control over the dream but I always know that I am dreaming so they don’t scare me or bother me at all. When I wake up I can remember what happened but of course, can’t visualize it afterwards. The dreams feel almost as real as life since they are in the first person, much like life. I’ve always found life has a dream-like quality as a result.
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Tom Ebeyer•recently
You make a very good point that resonates with me. You say your dreams feel like real life and that real life seems dream like in some way. I completely relate to that. Apparently Australian Aborigines belief system holds that dreamtime is reality and awake life is the illusion; this way of looking at reality is such a fascinating reversal that I find it incredible to ponder. I also can't visualize dreams afterward. This makes dreaming a very alluring thing to spend time doing.
When I know I've just been dreaming and wake up, I really, really want to go back and spend more time dreaming, regardless of whether it was a happy dream or more of a scary one. I find dreams are like what I would think virtual reality would be if it was perfectly indistinguishable from being awake and having full agency. When they end, it feels like a door slams shut on an incrediblely real world that seems visual, when I'm there at least, but when I wake up it's like it rolls up into a scroll and goes all black, or blank. Then being awake seems surreal and I stumble through daily life feeling half asleep, while in a dream I feel totally exhilarated, vibrant, and completely alert, with no sense of 'dreamyness' the plagues my waking life. That's very backwards seeming!
Thanks for your comment it was very revealing and resonates with my experience. I don't usually have any awareness while I dream that I am dreaming, that's where I differ. I have tried to become aware, to coach myself to realize it but so far when I'm dreaming I don't think of it as a dream, and often I find myself thinking, this is so awesome! Where am I?! Not like I am lost, but rather it feels like I am certain that I want to return and so I'm trying in the dreamscape to figure out how I would get back and I'm aware that I don't have the fainist clue how I got there and I don't know where this world is... I keep thinking, how will I return? Where is this? But as to what is happening, I know exactly what is going on, there is a concrete sense of narrative. But when I wake up it evaporates leaving the sparsest of details. It's so fun!
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