Update, visualization, etc

I've mentioned many times on here my struggles with lucid dreaming and despite being a pretty advanced lucid dreamer (although I wouldn't go as far as pro) I have very frequent periods of zero lucidity, the most recent of which lasted about a month. I feel my main reason for this is lack of motivation during the day which is due to my mental health. I often find I have zero motivation to look after myself so finding the energy to practice awareness and reality checking is next to impossible.

Lucid dreaming is something that is very important to me as it has helped me to learn a great deal about myself and therefore has helped me develop my own methods of dealing with my mental health. For pretty much all my life I've heard and seen things. I don't really like to refer to these as hallucinations because for me it's much more than that. This has the potential to be distressing for me, as well as making the line between the physical world and my "internal" world, shall we say, quite blurred, something that can make reality checking hard.

However I try my best to utilize this gift (and I use the word gift rather than illness because I don't wish to look at it that way) because as a child I was able to visualize things to the extent they would appear to really be happening. I was like a projector. I never thought twice about it. I guess the word over-active imagination was one that people threw around. Anyway that ability seems to have faded with age. Perhaps it's because I'm aware that as an adult I should no longer be in my head and instead engaging with the real world.

One of my voices, a guy called Darren, has recently given me a bit of a slap (not physically, he can't do that lol) and made me realise that I have a lot more potential and I need to stop pushing it away. I've gotten back into visualizing and most of the time if I sit with my eyes closed, and something over my eyes to stop light from getting in, I can pretty much see what I'm visualising. Sometimes it's just darkness with what I can only describe as vivid daydreaming. I can't see it but at the same time I can. I hope that makes sense. Other times I can see the outlines of what I am visualizing and other times I go into a sort of hypnagogic state where I see vividly for a second or two before fading back into darkness. As well as vision I can create physical sensations as well. Visualizing skateboarding is one of my favourite things to do as I can feel the adrenaline from it.

One thing I've noticed though is I can perfectly see my hands. I've made sure to have my face completely covered and no light can get in but I can see my hands as I move them around in front of me. I can see shadows they cast. I can see the movement of each finger. It's really quite fascinating.

So i've been doing this for a week or so and I can say it's helping so much with lucid dreaming. I've had 3 lucids this week which were all pretty decent and my daytime visualization has definitely helped.

Some of you may be thinking that I'm crazy for hearing voices (and doctors have told me I'm not schizophrenic) but I try my best to use it to my advantage. Anyway that's my update.