# Are anybody's dreams as realistic as depicted in movies and TV? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 14, 2009, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409 "2009-05-14T14:48:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/21 "2009-05-14T23:10:35Z")
> [@VunderBob](#): > > … > The oddest was one time I dreamed I had insomnia. That was a real mindf\*\*k… Oh, I absolutely hate that one. Makes me feel like crap the next day. My brain’s cruel little joke I think. Most of my dreams are quite vivid with a certain consistent internal logic but they bear little resemblance to reality. There can be people I know in them either as their selves or as extras. I can see my surroundings, hear music, even read things. One of my most lifelike, and boring, dreams involves my sitting at work trying to punch in orders into the computer but I keep messing them up, over and over. Some dreams are just a jumble of odd scenes and snippets but some are fairly complete stories. Like the time I was escaping from an alien zoo along with a bunch of other human exhibits. Well, the ones that weren’t eaten by the giant lizards anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Pyper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pyper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyper)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/22 "2009-05-15T00:37:08Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > I sometimes get dreams that are extremely realistic. What typically happens is that I’ll wake up (still dreaming, but I dream I woke up) and I’ll look around and see a totally realistic rendition of my apartment. I’ll get up, do routine things - make breakfast, turn on the tv - everything will work like normal. It’s almost identical to what actually waking up would look like. > > Then, 5-15 minutes into that segment, I’ll suddenly wake up again (but again still dreaming) - I’ll think to myself “woah, that’s weird, that dream was really realistic”… and I’ll make myself breakfast, sit at the computer, shower, whatever. > > And then 5-15 minutes later, I’ll wake up again, within the dream. I’ll start thinking to myself “I’m still dreaming, right? This is disturbing… well, there’s my couch, there’s my fridge… everything looks real.. I must be awake”… I’ll go through 3-8 instances of this, where I’ll keep waking up within the dream to a very realistic enviornment. > > It’s so realistic and disconcerting, in fact, that when I actually wake up for real, I don’t trust that I’m not in a dream. It takes me a good 20-30 minutes to be confident I’m actually awake, and that I won’t suddenly find myself waking up within a dream again. It’s very disturbing. God, I hate that. It used to happen to me all the time, and I finally figured out the root. It was caused by either sleeping next to a heat source such as a heating pad or space heater, or taking an overlong nap in the middle of the day. Now I never sleep next to a heat source and I set an alarm if I want to take a mid-day nap. I also get a lot of dreams, like others have mentioned, where I am in a familiar place, such as my home, my old school, or the office, but it looks nothing like what it should. I had a dream where my office was a cavernous hall paneled in dark wood and filled with tapestries and another where my old dorm was a clear glass sky-scraper with rubber support beams that swayed in the wind. ---
**Author:** ![TheMadHun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@TheMadHun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheMadHun)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/23 "2009-05-15T00:57:16Z")
My dreams are often in odd buildings where the stairs are wrong and I’m having to step over deep gaps or cling to a metal stairway from below like a sloth barely able to make headway. The other theme is an endless search for a bathroom, and I wake up needing to go real bad. Life impinging on my subconscious, no doubt. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/24 "2009-05-15T01:45:04Z")
I had a very realistic dream last night where I was in a large room with a bunch of people and we were recording some sort of video, then one of my friends came in. Although I cannot recall the entire dream, I can recall who some of the people in the room were, and some bizarre instances (like how a DVD somehow continued to play even after it was removed from a DVD player). It depends on the dream- many I forget, but this one was so realistic, I thought it actually happened when I woke up. (Realistic in that it seemed like reality- the dream itself had some very bizarre instances.) ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/25 "2009-05-15T01:59:55Z")
Some of mine are, yes. Not the majority by any means, but I do sometimes have ‘story dreams’ that have a coherent narrative and few, if any, surreal aspects. I’ve sometimes got up and written these dreams down then read what I wrote later and still thought that they sounded like stories rather than dreams. Hell, they sound more realistic than a lot of fiction I’ve read. There have also been a couple of occasions when I’ve dreamy a full day instead of getting up and going out to do the things I would have in that day. That is, get up, get dressed, brush teeth, go to school, do homework in class while pretending to listen to the teacher, nothing out of the ordinary at all. Only to wake up and find that I’ve slept through the entire day and none of that actually happened. But then, I have a lot of sleep problems. I lucid dream pretty often, have sleep paralysis very often indeed, sleeptalk (including full conversations), and do everything but sleepwalk, which is probably because I’m too lazy to get out of bed. 😃 However, TV and movies often depict someone remembering something _exactly as it happened_. They often do this if the memory’s been suppressed, but sometimes it’s just a way of showing a flashback. My dreams are never that realistic, but my memories never are either, because noboby ever remembers anything perfectly. ---
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/26 "2009-05-15T02:39:57Z")
I’ve had dreams that fooled me, which is to say I’ve had dreams that I got up, got dressed, and went to work/school so vivid that I actually overslept for the real deal. ---
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/27 "2009-05-15T03:22:26Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Here’s what I hate about the way dream sequences are portrayed - it’s that you the viewer (presumably emulating the point of view of the dreamer) always see the dreamer in the 3rd person. That never happens to me, no matter how realistic or weird my dream might be, I never see myself. I am myself, seeing other people. I don’t even remember ever dreaming about looking in a mirror and seeing myself. I have dreams that are in the third person sometimes. In some of the dreams, I’m both participating in the events, and simultaneously watching them play out, and in others, I simply watch without interacting. About 20% of my dreams have a coherent plot. They don’t completely fit with real life- in my dream world, people who I knew at different points, but who’ve never met one another end up in the same place, along with a few random people created for the dream itself- but we’ll all be doing mundane, realistic things. ---
**Author:** ![percypercy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@percypercy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/percypercy)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/28 "2009-05-15T03:31:09Z")
I have the typical dream about being back in high school, but for some reason most of them take place in the stairwell from my old school. (Totally innocent, I swear) ---
**Author:** ![Sonnenstrahl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@Sonnenstrahl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonnenstrahl)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/29 "2009-05-15T06:35:43Z")
I’ve always wondered about this. I assume that very realistic, complex, and believable dreams are usually just a plot devise, but they’re so different from what I experience that I see TV and film dreams as an entirely different thing than my own. It probably doesn’t help that I have a terrible visual memory, but I wake up knowing what happened in my dreams, and by the end of the day all I remember is the basic premise or a certain feeling I have - no mental pictures at all. For example, all I remember right now of last night’s dream (which was unusually vivid) is that I dreamt I was late for the job I was actually going to this morning and couldn’t find my boss’s phone number. That’s it. ---
**Author:** ![Mustynutz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9dc877/32.png) [@Mustynutz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mustynutz)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/30 "2009-05-15T06:40:01Z")
Mastering the art of lucid dreaming and you have amazing dreams you can slightly control…takes a long time to see results…but WOW ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/31 "2009-05-15T14:00:36Z")
> [@Wheelz](#): > > Some famous examples: An entire season of _Dallas_ turned out to be a character’s dream. Bob Newhart’s [entire second show](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083455/), all 8 years, was a dream. I occasionally have dreams set in familiar places, but they never stay there. I’ll have a dream set in my Taekwondo school, for example, and then I’ll walk out the door and be in a forest or something. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/32 "2009-05-15T16:43:49Z")
My dreams are realistic, but are characterized by a lack of control and jumps that make no sense. TV and movies aren’t really good at showing what dreams are like. The most accurate representation of a dream is by Dylan, [Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream](http://lyricwiki.org/Bob_Dylan:Bob_Dylan%27s_115th_Dream) which has the jumps, has a bit of surrealism, and has the narrator losing bits of his clothing without paying much attention to the consequences as the dream goes on. ---
**Author:** ![JayRx1981](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/71e660/32.png) [@JayRx1981](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JayRx1981)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/33 "2009-05-15T17:14:09Z")
Usually my dreams are fairly disjointed and not at all realistic. On occasion though, I’ve had some dreams where in them, nothing out of the ordinary seemed to occur and I could both smell AND feel as if the person in the dream I was interacting with was really there. That made for a fun dream (and I was sad when I woke up and it ended). ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2009, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409/34 "2009-05-15T17:21:45Z")
> [@Rhythmdvl](#): > > I agree with the OP’s description of the typical dream abstractions, where reality and situations are fluid combinations of thoughts, ideas, places, people, etc. > > However, some dreams can be _very_ [realistic](http://xkcd.com/557/), to the point of waking up and not being sure if it really happened or not. Mine are like that, too. Most of the time, I can’t really put them into words or make a story out of them. Or they’re more about feelings or an image. The dreams on Sopranos seemed pretty good because they were just so bizarre, but even they felt like…too nuanced? Although some of them I liked because one person would turn into another, and I feel like that happens in my dreams. Like, you’re hanging out with one person and suddenly they are another person but it doesn’t feel weird, it just flows. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-anybodys-dreams-as-realistic-as-depicted-in-movies-and-tv/496409.md?page=1)