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I had absolutely debilitating insomnia for my entire life. In the last couple of years I discovered something interesting. I’ve got a condition called aphantasia which means that I cannot see any images in my mind. For my whole life I heard the phrase counting sheep and thought it was a metaphor. Just like. Thinking about sheep since visualizing wasn’t something that I thought people could do.
Anyway, in researching about the condition I found an article online for an exercise where you can work on trying to visualize something. Basically you close your eyes and use the flashing remnants of vision to try to force a shape to exist. Sometimes you need to push on your closed eyes and a little pressure will cause some patterns to appear. You’re supposed to do this exercise while talking to someone outloud. Even if it’s just making a recording. The article I read said you must say it out loud or you will fall asleep. Me having never fallen asleep in my life without hours of concerted effort completely ignored this warning and much to my surprise it absolutely made me fall asleep within minutes.
Ever since then I’ve been able to use this technique to fall asleep every night. It’s like my mind finally learned how to do it. Most of the time I don’t even need to do these exercises any more.
That being said I was so pleased with this side effect I never even tried the say it out loud to try to improve mental images and I still can’t see anything in my minds eye. But being able to sleep every night without fail is a freaking miracle. So I highly recommend giving it a shot.
Here is the original instructions I found on it. https://photographyinsider.info/image-streaming-for-photographers/
For my whole life I heard the phrase counting sheep and thought it was a metaphor.
It … isn’t?
Waauw
Welcome to a whole new world where you can’t do some fundamental form of thinking most people can.
Theres also people apparently that don’t have an inner monologue and can’t hear words in their mind either. I truly can’t understand how that works. It’s way more foreign of a concept than not being able to visualize. But maybe that’s just because I’ve never been able to do it so I don’t know what I’m missing.
The people that can’t do either are truly frightening. What’s going on up there?
I’ve been practicing the rubbing thing today. The only things I think I’ve seen so far are faces, glimpses of and silouettes of.
It works better if I keep my palms slightly pressed over both eyes. As soon as there’s a lightsource I just see that, light through my eyelids.
This is amazing and slightly scary.
How long since you’ve discovered this?
It’s been about a year or so. You shouldn’t have to constantly apply pressure. When I first started I just kind of took whatever was there and tried to pretend it was a specific thing then hold that thought then as it morphed and changed just quickly identified a new thing and held that thing as long as possible. I think the article calls it image streaming. Then when all the sparks fade from pressure maybe do it again.
Dude. I had to revisit your comment. This is amazing.
Thank you 1000 times!!!
Awesome I’m glad it’s doing something for you, getting better at visualizing at all?
I had insomnia for decades. I did everything under the sun: workout, hot shower, warm milk, counting, breathing techniques, melatonin (beware of side effects with continous use), no screens, etc etc. Nothing worked and then per my doctor’s orders I take magnesium glycinate and it works like magic