like the physical structure or how it works e.g. mind or what?
I have synaesthesia.
It can be frustrating not having pictorial memories when I’m missing loved ones, and I wonder if it has contributed to my out of sight out of mind attachment, but it’s mostly just rough when I miss my childhood dog.
I have some memories that are hazily pictorial from very young, which makes me suspect a head injury from a young age may have caused it for me. No way to know for sure though, and I don’t have any lasting effects otherwise.
The only way it’s ever affected me otherwise is in my sense of creativity, where I’m drawn more to music and language than drawing. I would like to, but it’s just difficult to do anything that isn’t in front of me, so I tend to do zentablges which get created as they go. I also like to take photographs to remember important places and moments, but I’m not particularly set on capturing every one. I’m back and forth on taking lots of photos cause I’m very in the moment, and other times I regret not taking more since it’s basically lost visually unless I go back again.
Thankfully, I’m not without visuals entirely. Aphantasia is separate from the hypnogogic state of sleep, so things like lucid dreaming and that pre-imagery stage are one way I can experience it. However it’s rare, and dreams themselves for me are primarily black and white with a red haze from time to time. Hypnogogia is pretty vibrant though.
When it’s awake, it has aphantasia and no internal monologue.
When it’s asleep, it has hyperphantasia and lucid dreaming.
Waking up every day, feels like getting a lobotomy.
The funny part, is that sometimes it feels like I “just know” some things, or “just do” some things… out of the blue, with no conscious effort, but they match the conscious process (…or is this the subconscious talking? hm).
I call consciousness, the part of mental processes that is self-aware, makes decisions about what to do before it does it, and can remember having made them.
For example: I’ve just put on a t-shirt.
- I consciously decided that I would put on a t-shirt and which one.
- I noticed that my body got close to the t-shirt, extended an arm to grab it, went through the motions of putting on a t-shirt, used one hand to scratch an itch on the other elbow, spun around, and sat down.
At no moment did I decide to do any of those actions in particular, just witnessed them a moment after they happened. It was some other process(es) that executed them, and I only remember deciding to “put on a t-shirt and which one”.
As I write this, I sound in my head what I could write next, consciously feel which of those sound better and feel more like what I want to transmit, then my finger moves across the phone keyboard to type or swipe the word, with flashes of conscious decisions about autocorrect, while mostly sitting idle and watching things happen. Then I read it back, sounding each word and feeling whether they sound right, while other words and sentences “get proposed to me” and I feel whether they’d feel better or worse.
So there is a lot of things going on “in the background”, that I kind of have control about, but I consciously only watch and coast on, feeling whether I should step in. If I do step in, it’s like a flash of conscious decision, and back to coasting.
I wonder if there’s people out there that make a decision and their body just does something entirely different? Like there’s a lower reliability.
But back to the topic: you mentioned it’s the mental process that’s self aware. So my question shifts to what is self awareness and what is awareness to you?
It’s not smooth, but it sure acts like it sometimes.
I have a whole forest in mine.
And I can access many different worlds and scenarios any time I want.
Does the forest vary in how engaging it is to you? What is the most amazing place?
No, not particularly. It is all equally as interesting. I am still exploring it though.
