Hello from the other side!

I was about 45 before I realised that when people said “in my mind’s eye” it was substantially more than a metaphor.

And it wasn’t until about a year later that I realised that I also didn’t have what ordinary people refer to as an inner monologue.

Realising that I had both aphantasia and anendophasia was quite a shock, but has never felt to me like I was missing anything.

For images I literally have nothing “pictorial” or “graphical” at all, but concepts and relationships are “vivid”. And for the inner monologue, there’s no autonomic voice at all, but if I concentrate in the same way that someone might “consciously breathe” I can kinda sorta trigger something.

Interestingly, in periods where I have meditated for >20min per day for consecutive weeks, I can trigger what I refer to as “flyover mode” which is like a literal landscape flyover that feels like a 4K screensaver. But this is _rare_ and requires a huge amount of effort.

Weird, eh!?

Oh hi! Do you have vivid dreams??

I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but I generally have extremely vivid dreams. I also have a very active inner-monologue and can do the whole “picture a red apple on a green lawn with 3 yellow dots on it, pick it up and rotate it and track the dots” kind of thing. As it happens I’m a visual learner and a voracious reader.

I’ve never thought about if any of this was connected before. I should do some research.