About Dreams

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Are you one of those who can remember a dream upon waking?
If so, how long does the memory stay with you? Are you able to commit it to long term/permanent memory?
Do the dreams you remember form any sort of story or are they just a bunch of images or whatever with no real coherence?

I’ve been noticing this in myself more and more lately, primarily on weekends when I don’t have a set schedule. My sleep habits are different during the week when I have to go to work everyday.
Usually my dreams form a narrative of some sort. They might last from just a few minutes to maybe a little less than half a day(on some rare occasions), fading in detail ubtil I can only recall that I was able to remember a dream when I woke and nothing else.

There are three dreams I’ve had that somehow made it into long term memory. One is from when I was 12 or 13 years old, one is a dream that I’ve had many times before at different times in my life, usually several nights in a row and one was from just last year and was so bizarre and yet vividly real when it was happening that it became a lucid dream.

So what about you? Tell me about your dreaming mind.

I feel as though I’ve asked this before, maybe…

2

I think I’m in the minority that hates dreaming. I find it an annoyance and a ridiculous waste of emotion. If I could take a never-dream pill (DreamNoMore!), I would.

Last night I had one of the stoopid-est dreams in recent memory. I spent a few minutes upon awakening revisiting and remembering different pieces of it.

mmm

ETA: Since starting CPAP therapy my dreams have become more frequent, more vivid, and/or more memorable.

3

I think it’s fascinating, the things my mind comes up with that I would not have believed possible. Whenever I can, I spend a few moments after waking with my eyes still closed, recalling the details. The details are the fun part, but I believe the “meaningful” part of dreams are the emotions they evoke. I ask myself what those emotions are really in reference to.

4

Timing is important. If I wake up from a dream and start the day at that point, I’m much more likely to recall details than if I woke up in the middle of the night and went back to sleep.

Some dreams are vivid enough that I can recall them (or at least parts of them) months or years afterwards.* Run-of-the-mill stuff (being semi-naked in public, not having attended class or even knowing where the class is held, or having an enormous pile of pathology specimens to cut in), not so much.

5

My dreams always have a narrative, a story with characters. I can recall a dream upon awakening most of the time, but only for a short while. I often think “Wow, that might make a good short story,” but instead of writing it down then and there, I resolve to do it later and then usually forget the details that made it so interesting.

I sometimes have dreams that trigger my claustrophobia. I will wake up abruptly in a state of anxiety and will be unable to go back to sleep until it subsides. Those I wish I could do without!

I also can sit down on the La-Z-Boy in the daytime, take a five or ten minute snooze, fall into REM sleep and have a vivid dream in that short a period of time. I’m told this is rare and sometimes is a symptom of sleep apnea.

Great. Something else to worry about!

6

I don’t remember most of my dreams. When I do remember one on waking, I’ve learned that if I want to keep remembering it I need to write it down, repeating it to myself consciously until I can do that. Once in a while one will stick without this process, but not often.

Sometimes there’s a story; sometimes there’s just images, or just one image. Or at least that’s all I can remember.

7

mmj could help there.

8

For me, it depends on the type of dream. I have a category of dreams that I refer to as “cinematic” dreams; these dreams follow a relatively cohesive narrative, and I’m present in the dream, but usually not the focus of the dream. (E.g., a dream set in a hotel where several kidnap plots are tripping over each other, while I just watch the shenanigans from the perspective of a desk clerk.)

I am much more likely to remember these cinematic dreams than other kinds, but even those generally slip away if I don’t mentally review them once I’m fully awake.

9

If I remember any dream at all, it’s usually just a feeling or maybe a series of images. I’ll remember a detailed narrative dream maybe once every couple of weeks. They used to be more frequent, but I kind of assume I’m still having the dreams but just not remembering.

10

The vast majority of my dreams are the unremarkable, can-barely-remember-anything-5-seconds-after-waking type. Occasionally, if odd enough though, I’ll write or record some vivid ones down.

I’ve had music dreams that I recorded on a piano. I’ve also had dreams where

  • I was working for the US government, and one day opened a document - the personnel file about Velocity - and I flipped through the pages in alarm, wondering how the government could have collected such detailed stuff about me, such as what I was saying to my brother as we sat in the pews on Sunday at church, etc.

(Stuff like that)

11

My dreams are many and varied. Sometimes they stay with me for a long time (as a child, I had a dream about my grandmother wrestling with a bear in our basement - I can still “see” that one.) Sometimes it’s more that I wake with a lingering feeling - like the dream that a coworker did something to make me angry, and I was furious with her the whole day. Generally, I just remember snippets - like my boss stealing my socks, or the time I was making out with a celebrity?!?

I used to have particularly weird dreams after I’d had an adult beverage in the evening. But I haven’t imbibed in longer than I can remember and I still experience bizarro night dramas. I figure there’s just a lot of stuff rattling around in my head that’s trying to express itself. Or I’m going mad. Either way…

12

I remember many of my dreams, and most of my dreams are nightmares.

I’m 66, but most of my dreams take place when I was young. The most common is not being able to find the classroom where I must take an important test. I just keep walking and walking through desolate train stations, haunted malls, and other oddball places in a vain attempt to find the classroom, and time is running out. I ask various zombie-like pedestrians where my classroom is and they point me in some other wrong direction. Time is always ticking, while I’m getting increasingly tired and desperate.

Another very common dream is that my family members (deceased grandparents, deceased parents, siblings and kids) hate me. This is odd because I’ve always had a great relationship with all my family members. But, in my dreams they say and do the most vile, hateful things to me.

Other common dreams involve predatory dinosaurs (usually flying, sometimes fire-breathing) stalking me through town. They always get close to the kill, often taking large chunks out of me.

One time I dreamed about hamsters, and that was the most terrifying dream of all. My two friendly hamsters multiplied (as hamsters do in amorous flagrante delicto), and multiplied, until they filled my house and began eating me alive. Damned rodents! :hamster::hamster::hamster: I never should have read Ratman’s Notebooks (the book Willard was based on).

Oddly, I don’t mind having these nightmares. It’s a great relief waking and realizing they aren’t real (at least I hope they’re not…could they be a foreshadow of my dystopian afterlife?!?).

13

I remember a lot of my dreams and many will stay with me forever. There are times that as I wake up from a dream I can “see” it slipping away as I try to grasp at it and then I have no idea what it was about.

14

Yep, I still have versions of these pretty often. It’s odd how some dreams are very common among many people. Or the one where you’re speaking in public, like in front of a classroom, and suddenly realize you’re naked. I sometimes get the ‘hypnogogic hallucination’ dream that happens when just falling asleep, where I dream that I’m falling, or I’m driving and a semi veers into my lane. Just before I hit the ground or crash I wake up with a startle reflex.

I don’t know if this is common or just my own weird brain, but I often have dreams where I’m urinating in strange or public areas. Like, I go to use a toilet or urinal at, say, a restaurant, and it’s out in the open where everybody can see me. In one dream I was at a bathroom urinal doin’ my thing, when it suddenly transformed into the middle of a library, and I found myself urinating on a cloth chair. Maybe a variation of the ‘naked in public’ dream?

Often my dreams are intensely visual and very cinematic, like watching a huge battle in the night sky between alien spaceships and military jets.

I also get lucid dreams occasionally. Usually I just suddenly know I’m dreaming but can’t change the outcome at all, but a couple times I was able to. I was walking down the hall of a hotel when the floor under me suddenly disappeared, and I was gingerly walking on pipes and ductwork that ran under the floor. This made me realize “I’m dreaming”. I walked a little ways further down the hall to where a maid was standing next to one of those carts with new towels and cleaning supplies. I decided to try changing her appearance, and I was able to cycle her appearance through a number of different people, like choosing an avatar in a video game. It was pretty cool, but I woke up soon after.

Another time I was in a cabin on a lake. The cabin had a huge picture window that looked out onto the lake. I suddenly realized I was dreaming, and marveled at the level of detail of the lake and the trees and foliage around it. I decided to see if I could make a boat appear, and sure enough, a bass boat came in view from the left side at trolling speed. I decided to not consciously choose who was in the boat and just see who my subconscious came up with, but again I woke up before I wanted to, before any boat passenger came into view. I’ve heard that lucid dreams often happen when the dreamer is close to waking.

This happens to me a lot as well. The opposite also happens: I’ve completely forgotten a dream I had the night before, then in the course of a day I’ll see something or hear a word that reminds me of it, and the whole dream comes rushing back.

15

Years ago, we had a thread on self-reported bad dreams among Dopers, and I did a rough tally to see which were the most common. “Unprepared for exam”, “back to school”, and “Late/can’t get somewhere” were all in the top 10. “Unprepared for exam” was in the #1 slot, beating out “teeth falling out” (#2) and “naked/inappropriately dressed” (#3) by a fairly large margin.

16

I had a dream over 60 years ago that I still remember. I was seven or eight, and in the summertime, my brother and I used to sleep in the backyard in sleeping bags. One such night, i dreamed about a gypsy fortune teller who got drunk and cut off her own arms. The arms then began flying around the sky, attacking random people and choking them to death. In my dream, I looked up into the night sky, and saw the disembodied arms flying over our yard, looking for their next victim. I pulled the sleeping bag over my head, and didn’t come out until the sun came up.

17

I won’t bore you with my dream stories. They are many.
Some I call visions they are so lucid and real.

My opinion is if you live a more internal, having self conversation alot your dreams are more, varied and vivid.
It doesn’t make you smarter or better but just locked inside. Kinda sad really.

18

I can only remember details from a handful of dreams throughout my entire life which is closing in on 70 years. I’ve had plenty of dreams, maybe every night for all I know, but they dissolve before I’m fully awake leaving no detail behind. I remember that I’ve woken recalling a repeated phrase which had some meaning in the dream but seemed like random sounds upon awakening. I know I’ve dreamed of other people, some real and some I apparently dreamed up, but any thoughts of who they were, looked like, what they did all fade in short order.

19

It’s weird in here.

20

I dreamt once that thunder only happens when it’s raining.