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.
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
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.’
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.'
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...
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...
"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.
Narrative. I overresearch everything and build up a story around everything. I need to sift through tons of extra information before I find the golden nugget of the detail that speaks to me, and then I am better able to catagorize anything I need to learn according to the detail I am passionate about. So yeah, passion. That's my strategy. I take a subject that seems dispassionate at first and I read everything I can about it; usually some obscure detail screams at me, jumps out from the boring rote details at me, and hooks into my memory; then I hang all the other requisite mundanities off the hook of the one passionate detail. It takes a lot of work and time but this strategy replaces regular studying and reviewing. Reviewing lecture notes just seems to fly out the back of my head. I can't look at a page of notes and picture it even one second later, everything must get turned into a connecting narrative with a passionate center detail, even if that detail means nothing to the structure of what I'm supposed to learn. I usually find some unusual point to center the web of mundanity. Make sense? Works for me.