Are you yourself when you dream?

In My Humble Opinion
1

The title isn’t some sort of philosophical meditation - I mean it (somewhat) literally.

Last night I had a very vivid dream, one that lingered with me for some time after I woke up. In it I was a preteen boy who had moved to a small new town that was quite some distance from the nearest school or mall. Several hours later, I can still picture some of the streets of the town.

Most of the time when I dream (maybe 90% of the time), I’m someone else. Different age, different sex, different religion, different looks, different family and friends. It’s only been in the last couple of years that it has occurred to me that I might be unusual that way.

In one dream that I still remember vividly more than a decade later, I was actually two different people simultaneously. It was in kind of a fantasy setting, and the two women didn’t even know each other and were doing separate, unrelated things far apart from each other. I don’t mean that I was switching back and forth - they were thinking separate thoughts AT THE SAME TIME. That really freaked me out for a long time after I woke up. :smiley:

So, are you normally yourself in your dreams?

2

I am always me in my dreams. I find it facinating that you are not always you. I find the dream thing facinating in and of itself. Mine are usually quite vivid and I often think, upon waking, where did *that *come from?

3

Since early '90s, I have the habit of writing down my dreams. By now it’s about 1200 I think, but off the top of my head, I can’t really remember being someone else ever. A bit older, a bit younger, and such discepancies, but never actually being someone else.

Interesting to read about your experience, though.

4

I’m not always me. And even when I am me, I’m not always like the me I am awake.

A dream I remember from my mid-teens involved being younger and a boy to boot. Me and my dog went hunting with some guy we knew in the dream. I couldn’t quite figure out how it happened, but the dog ended up with its throat slit when I wandered off. Horrified, I ran to tell the guy, and he stabbed me in the chest. I remember looking down at the knife, stunned, and not knowing where all the blood was coming from before blacking out.

5

I had a very vivid dream once of being a boy in my dream…I was looking in the mirror at a totally different face (although I was doing it in my great grandmother’s house where I grew up. Just to complicate things.)

But mostly I’m myself. If fact my current self, when I have my recurring dream of being unprepared for an assignment in high school at some point I realize I’m way to old for high school and wonder what I’m doing there.

6

I’m someone else about 50% of the time. Sometimes I start out as me, but end up as someone else in the same dream. Oddly, I was always me in dreams until about four years ago.

7

I’m always me, but often “me” in different stages of life: child, unmarried, with new baby, post-divorce, etc.

Oddly, though, my home is never my real home. Sometimes it’s meant to be my childhood home, but it’s a completely different place. It’s never the current home I’ve been living in for 19 years.

8

I’m usually me. Recently, though, I was Liza Minnelli, and I wanted to take a boat ride in Australia, but they wouldn’t let me on unless I sang “Cabaret” for them.

Is that the queeniest dream ever?

9

I’m usually me, but sometimes not. The most interesting was a dream in which I was a male. . . dwarf. . . driving around . . . wearing a spacesuit . . . in a moonbuggy. . . on the moon. . . trying to seduce a female dwarf astronaut. That was an odd one.

10

I’m always me. When people I know appear in my dreams, however, they are not them really, just the face and recognizance. Like my best friend Shannon is Shannon, but her personality is often way different than IRL. And when I have “boyfriend” dreams (I’ve never had a sex dream, just dreams where I meet boys and we may be on a date, kiss) the guy is always a figment of my imagination - he is not someone I’ve met or seen. And I can never remember what he looks like. Only a few times have I actually dreamt of a guy I know - maybe twice.

But my dreams never make sense. I’ll be somewhere familiar, like campus, but it’s not really campus. Or I’ll be at Shannon’s house, but it’s not her IRL house. It’s so weird.

11

I often shift characters in dreams. First I’m me talking to someone, then I’m the person I was talking to, then I’m the person we’re talking about. The shifts always seem to flow logically into each other, and I don’t seem to notice they’re happening.

Basically, I always go to where things are interesting.

12

I’m always me, but people and places are never right. Which is why I can’t explain my dreams to people.

“I was at my grandmother’s place, except the kitchen was my old elementary school classroom, with like a blanket on the wall instead of a chalkboard and the chalk didn’t work, and my Dad was there, except he wasn’t him, he was this weird old bald guy trying to sell me pickles that tasted like eggs if you ate them right.”

13

I’m usually me, but at times it’s like I’m a me who’s a character in a play or a film, and I only get a reminder that I’m really me at the end.

I get those kind of dreams after long projects have drawn to a comclusion, and I’m sleeping off the stress exhaustion. Fun, though.

14

I’m pretty sure I’m always me in my dreams - a few times I’ve even looked at myself in a mirror in a dream

15

Yes!
Yes!!!

(takes off hat with plume, bows until plume sweeps foot)

I am often me but VERY often not-me. I have never been lucky enough to be two people at once but (since I write a novel and frequently plot through several characters’ heads) I can hope and imagine that someday I will be, now the seed has been planted. I have had SEX in dreams as people I am not. I have been male having sex (never to completion though – suppose my imagination can’t reach quite that far).

I am never celebrities, always people I don’t know (unless I am my husband). Except for once, when I was a young teenager, and I was Spider-Man, except living in my own house with my own family. I have to say: Best. Dream. Ever.

16

Interesting OP - thank you! I always start out as myself in dreams but sometimes I turn into someone else. Sometimes I even turn back into myself which makes for an interesting level of awareness during the dream.

For example, I had a dream the other night that a friend was trying to make her husband jealous by giving me a blow job (I’m a woman btw), so in my dream I briefly turned into a guy and then as she was unzipping my pants I turned back into a woman and pushed her away. Strange …

I usually turn into people that I know, or celebrities. Becoming someone unknown to me is rare.

17

I am often not me in my dreams. Sometimes I’m a boy, or a man, or still a woman, just a completely different woman, with all new families, homes, countries, etc.

I once had a dream where I was a man, a large, hairy man, living in some slavic country, and I had a wife… and uh… yeah. We had sex. Truly a strange experience.

In other dreams, I have a baby, thought I’ve never had a baby in my life. Sometimes I’ve dreamt of giving birth, and it seemed very real, and the pain was real… freaky. Again, never having had a baby, it’s a bit odd, but interesting how my brain fills in the gaps with my own hopes and fears.

But sometimes I’m just me, and I’m home, but not home, and my husband is there, but he looks like someone else, and my mother calls, but she sounds like a duck (though I totally understand her), and my brother buys a new car that’s actually an airplane, and my father works in an office that’s a submarine…

Unfortunately for me, the more stressed I am, the worse my sleep, and lately I’ve been putting long hours in at work, going home exhausted, barely caring to eat, closing my eyes to dream… of WORK again! ARGH! It’s like I never, ever leave! I love my job, but I’d like to come home sometimes!

Although last week there was an interesting varient… I dreamt **Cervaise ** came into the store. This concerned the hell out of me, and though I was pleased enough to see him, I wondered why in the world he was in a *baby needs * store… and hoped it wasn’t bad news. :dubious:

18

I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream in which I wasn’t me (This appallingly structured grammatical atrocity bought to you by Martini Enfield’s Third Bourbon Of The Evening After Seven Days Of Work In A Row! :smiley: )… but as I invariably discover when I wake up, I’m not the Supreme Ruler Of The Universe or a Man About Town hosting a Sexy Party… :stuck_out_tongue:

19

I’ve never really considered this question before, but in most of my dreams I’m an observer. In fact, I can’t recall any dream in my adult life when I actually saw any part of my body. While as a consciousness I’ve always felt that I was myself, I suppose it’s possible that my dream body looks entirely different.

20

As in the case of Ice Wolf, often in my dreams when not as myself, it’s like it is myself playing a character(*). Or myself in an alternate-timeline universe, where I have acquired knowledge/experiences substantially different from those in this one.

Then there are the fun ones where I am not in the action but I’m somehow looking at the scene as if I were the director or something…

(*sometimes a radically different character)