Aphantasia 💭

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Aphantasia is the inability to create mental imagery.

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Aphantasia and sleep (self.aphantasia)

submitted 1 year ago by Transcendant to c/aphantasia

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Hi all. I'm interested to know how many of us have a serious sleep issue. So far I haven't found much of a unifying thread between aphantasics, other than that we're very familiar with what the back of our eyelids look like! But one common thing I have heard over the years is a sleep issue.

I have chronic insomnia. Interested to hear back from others.

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[–] aceshigh 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i don't have sleep issues, but i'm very sensitive to sound and am a very light sleeper. i'm considering building a sound proof room to sleep in.

[–] Transcendant 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same. For most of my life I needed absolute silence and darkness (got an excellent velcto blackout curtain now). But what I've found helpful the last few years is to have some sort of 'droning' sound in the room, it really helps my brain to have something continuous and boring to focus on instead of whatever intrusive sounds are going on outside.

I work with audio, and made my own custom rain track... no thunder / lightning, no other noises, just a continuous rain-on-roof loop for 1.5 hrs. Can upload to dropbox if you want to give it a go.

[–] aceshigh 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

that's great that you were able to find workarounds. i always have my sound machine on too, but it's not enough. at one point i used anc headphones, but they gave me tinnitus and now i can't wear earplugs. i wish i could turn off the sound of the world lol

[–] Transcendant 1 points 1 year ago

Just coming back to share something new I've discovered... brown noise!

White noise makes my tinnitus go nuts. Brown noise is so much calmer, relaxing, I almost start hearing other sounds in it. I generated 1.5 hrs, saved it as an mp3, and I play it from my phone speaker at night. I used a free program called Audacity to do it.

[–] Transcendant 1 points 1 year ago

i wish i could turn off the sound of the world lol

When I found out about how noise cancellation works (a soundwave with an exact-inverse copy played against itself cancels to nothing), it made me think... COULD we turn off the sound of the world? Would it ever be possible to have devices on the outside of a room, sending info at lightspeed, with a device inside the room beaming inverse sound waves to what it expects will reach your ears?