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0 pointsben_w1y ago0 comments

I've had the audio equivalent of that at least once, and I think (can't prove it) a few other times. But it was scary so I never tried again.

I suspect I had the visual once, thanks to one time as a teenager I tried a magic spell and the explanation of "I'm capable of self-hypnosis" is much more plausible than the spell having had even the slightest effect.

I can easily create intense overrides for sensory experience whenever I like for my sense of which way down is, and mild overrides for the various kinds of touch.

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JoeyJoJoJr1y ago

This might seem like a weird question, but have you ever had distortions in your sense of the size of features of your face? I remember a very strange feeling as a child about my sense of scale when I was dreaming or asleep. Feeling like I was minuscule while in the presence of something very big. Later in adult life I found I distort my sensory perception of my facial features, ie make my lips or cheeks feel gigantic, by pressing a very particular part of my face into the pillow at the correct angle. This sensation seemed to feel similar to one I experienced as a child.

I also have or have had the ability to do other sensory overrides like distorting my sense of physical space, ie warp the bounds of my room while I stare at ceiling in bed. It’s not really a visual thing, but it makes me think of the spoon bending scene in the matrix.

ben_wOP1y ago

Not my face specifically, but as a teenager my whole body sometimes suddenly had a different sense of size.

For my body as a whole, I also don't have an inner sense of a permanent body morphology that is "mine", so with one exception[0] I can't even imagine what it's like to be body-dysmorphic — even if we lived in a world of magic gender/species transformations that might happen with no ill effect, if I woke up and found that had happened, the only concern is if society can cope with it, not one of my own inner psyche.

The one exception is forked tongue. That is a sticky morphology to imagine, and one I don't like at all. It's also something a friend got done surgically. Good for them, they seem to be enjoying it, it makes me go "aaaa".

[0] I assume there are limits beyond my imagination, but my imagination does at least include tails, wings, gender flipping, and I've listened to the We Are Legion (We Are Bob) series.

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