Hope Lagaden

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

The absence of a visual memory made my journey through the sign language interpreter program difficult. We were pushed to visualize everything, and then describe our visualizations. I found myself embarrassed and frustrated. We were asked to create visualizations and rotate through different perspectives of the same scene. It blew my mind that others could do this. I soon came to realize that my visual memory is rerouted through my kinaesthetic memory (the way my body feels when I am somewhere. The “feeling”of it). I realized this when I was asked how I find my keys when they are lost. Well... I think about each room in my house and if it “felt” like I had my keys in there. I felt my way through my course and graduated on the Deans Honour Roll. I’m just wired differently, but it works for me.