I’m referring to your surreal sleepy-time cinema, of course, not your hopes or your ambitions or your fantasies about Taye Diggs. How often do you remember your dreams? Are there any recurring dreams? Do you ever have “sequels”? When you’re dreaming, are you aware that you’re dreaming? Have you any ability to direct your dreams in progress?
I very frequently remember my dreams – at least one or two a night. This may be the case because I’ve inadvertently trained myself to do so; I’ve kept a diary since I was about 10, writing entries first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and the former entries are often whatever dreams I recall.
I’d say that, in about 50% of the dreams I recall, I am aware while I am dreaming that what I am experiencing is not real. The other category tends to be more stress-induced. For example, after my mother died, I had several dreams in which she was alive. As the dream began I would not be aware that this wasn’t real, but slowly would become aware as the dream progressed. This also happened after my son’s death.
I’ve had dreams that seemed to be sequels to the previous one. For instance, I once had a dream in which I was trying to save my favorite niece from a danger, and the next night’s dream was on the same theme–perhaps the same event.
I’m doing something fun with my wife or my boys or both. Camping, road trip, outing with the Scout pack, etc. Surprisingly, I wake up from these dreams frightened.
or,
I still or once again suffer the abuse – as an adult – from the hands of my father and brother that I did as a kid. Unsurprisingly, I wake up from these dreams terrified.
I frequently remember my dreams, but not always. However, my wife never can. Some of my dreams are recurring themes or locations, or people. When I was on painkillers after surgery I recall the dreams were very disturbing, not the norm. Sometimes I wake up, feel my pillow, and I am glad I am back in reality come morning. Most are just pleasant escapes and I attribute no meaning to them other than my mind trying to sort out something. I thought about writing them down in a journal to analyze later, but never got around to it so they just fade from memory.
Sometimes I see my mother or father in my dreams. They are both gone, and I do not think they are visiting me or anything, they just appear once in a while. I see my family and my dog from time to time as well. Sometimes I can remember trying to yell in my dream but there is no sound.
One dream, or image, I remember from childhood: me inside of a sphere made of dark-colored net. As the viewer pulls away, net after net is added, and the scene gets darker and darker until the view is completely blacked-out. I guess that one came true.
I heard that you can never dream about someone who you have not seen in reality – wonder if that is true.
I only ever remember a dream if I’m woken during it, which coincidentally happened this morning. My dreams usually consist of me trying to do some task, but to finish it I need to do some other task, but to finish *that *I need to do yet another task, and so on. IOW they are boring restatements of my life and my feelings about it. I’m glad I don’t remember most of my dreams.
I dream in color. I only know that because I distinctly remember dreaming about a green button and a yellow lever a long time ago. I don’t know if my bad dreams outnumber my non-bad dreams, but I rarely remember any good ones. So either I usually have bad dreams, or the good/boring ones don’t disturb me enough to wake up in medias res.
Last night I was holding hands with my boyfriend while wearing special moonboots that let us jump 100 feet high in the air and land safely. That was a super-awesome dream, in the same category as flying dreams or dreams where I can breathe underwater like a fish and swim around for a long time. I don’t have those dreams often (or just don’t remember them often).
My bad dreams usually involve being chased (and running through molasses to get away) or being controlled/losing control. I’ve had a recurring dream that one of my mom’s friends shot up everyone, including me, at a crowded wedding hall (he is legit creepy, but I don’t think a murderer). I regularly dream that I (sometimes with my sister) am in a car that’s driving, and I’m stuck in the backseat and can’t get to the pedal or the wheel. The car falls off a cliff eventually, which wakes me up. My most-recurrent dream (at least once a week) is the classic “forgotten college class on final exam day.” I’ve never attended the class, I misplaced my schedule, I can’t find the building, I keep getting distracted while trying to get there, how did this Pizza Hut building get in the way, and damn I’m hungry! Where was I going again?
I used to have sleep paralysis 1-5 times a week along with persistent insomnia. For a long time, I was afraid to go to sleep because I would have nightmares about having sex with my father, who abused me as a child. Thankfully, that has all begun to improve since I 1) met my boyfriend, 2) quit smoking, and 3) severely limited stressful familial interactions.
At the risk of prying, can I ask in what way that came true?
I have dreams all the time about “dream people” – i.e., people I don’t know IRL. But you are saying that, according to what you heard, these are people that I saw at some time, but I just don’t remember them?
I have a lot of dreams that take place in my childhood home – many in my childhood bedroom. One “therapeutically rich” theme is having sex with someone in my bedroom and not wanting to get caught by my parents. (I’m 54 and my parents are both long gone.) I also often dream about the closet in my bedroom being full of all these really cool clothes I forgot I had.
The other night I dreamed that I was at my childhood home and my husband was leaving on a car trip for Missoula, Montana. He was carrying a guitar (which he does not play IRL.) When he went out the the car, there was a red fox in the yard, and somehow the fox ended up wearing my husband’s hat and dancing around on its hind legs. I ran inside to get my phone so I could take a picture. At that point, another common dream theme occurred – trying to use my phone and it’s all weird and unfamiliar or behaving strangely.
I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed sequels. I have had dreams in which I’m dreaming, though.
The dream where I’m in college again, and failing a course (or soon to take the final exam, and haven’t been attending courses, so plan to do a lot of cramming.) I believe that others here have had a similar dream, and there may have even been a thread about it.
The dream where I’m at a campfire and I’ve forgotten to bring the marshmallows. (Haven’t had this one in a while though. It does pop up every now and then, though.)
The really good dream where I’m in a nice place somewhere below street level, with friends. The place is a little different each time, but always below street level.
I did once dream a piece of music. On awakening, I made sure to write it down. It came out fairly nicely actually. It involved Don Quixote tilting at windmills, with a nice trumpet motif to indicate his heroism. The repeated bass line was the grumbling of the windmill itself as it grated round and round. This last was, in fact, my own snoring.
This is how I know I snore in 5:4 time…
I dream in color, in three dimensions, and in fairly detailed plot- and story-lines. I’ve turned a good many of my dreams into stories (or chapters in stories.) I have a measure of volitional control. I don’t have nightmares.
However, back when I did recall them I did have a few recurrent dreams. One where Earth had been invaded and conquered by aliens that looked like skinless centaurs with a rod coming our of their side, and I was the only free person huddled around a failing electronic device (which just happened to look like my Computer Perfection game) that protected me from their mind control. Another where I confronted the Egyptian god Set in my parent’s bedroom. I’m told I had recurrent nightmares about seals as a small child, but can longer recall that myself. I also had a recurrent nightmare where “the blood” was taking over everything, ending with me and my family fleeing a neighborhood that’s being slowly coated in red liquid.
I’ve had several times a variation on the “trapped back in school” dream; in this one I do remember how long it’s been, but I “suddenly remember” that I was supposed to be in school the whole time, and now I’ll be expected to make up for all the undone work.
I don’t have nice dreams. They’re always disturbing, but sometimes they’re entertaining.
They tend to fall into a few patterns:
(1) I blew off a class all term and the final is today, and I don’t even know where it is.
(2) It’s the day I leave college for home, and I have to do all my packing in a few short hours. This happened in real life, more or less - I keep reliving it at night.
(3) My mother found out my cell phone number, either because I was careless or because someone told her. In real life, my mother doesn’t know I have a cell phone, and I see no reason for her to know.
(4) I’m in danger and the cops don’t give a shit.
(5) Someone is in my home and won’t leave - and they mock my attempts to make them leave. In one of these, I stopped myself from calling the police because I believed that the “peaceable assembly” clause of the first amendment invalidated trespassing laws as long as the intruders were behaving “peaceably”.
(6) I’m travelling to somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. Sounds nice, right? Except I always somehow know in the dream that it’s just a dream.
The ones that don’t fit these tropes usually involve pursuit or impending catastrophe. And people mocking my concerns.
I do too. Only I don’t remember *what *I’ve dreamt in color. I only remember being lucid of the dream, realizing it was in color, and remembering that I’m never sure if I dream in color, and now I know I do. And I know I’ve had this “revelation” more than once.
I very rarely remember my dreams, or even whether I’ve had a dream. Especially when I’m depressed, my sleep is just like hitting an off switch until I wake up.
I don’t usually remember my dreams but what seems to be odd about them from what I’ve read, is that they’re not visual. My memories are the same way. I don’t know if this is true for everyone and it’s just a communications issue, but if I were to tell you that I saw place or person or thing in a dream, it wouldn’t mean I’d have an image of it.
So if you asked me to describe it, I wouldn’t be able to. It would just be a generic representation of a tree or a house. If some detail later became important, then that detail would be generic - window, door.
My impression is that most people actually see things in their dreams and if you ask about things they saw, they can usually recall specific details.
I have very vivid dreams that I can remember in great detail after I wake up about once a week or so. They usually fall into one of three categories:
I’m getting up and dressed and ready to start my day. Then I see something that’s “wrong”, like I’ll see my mom and she’s blonde (she’s not) or I’ll get into my car and it’s blue (never owned a blue car) and I realize in my dream that I’m dreaming and that I have to wake up and start all over again. That’s how I know I dream in color.
I’m somewhere that’s about to get hit by a tornado and there’s no adequate shelter. Classic anxiety dream I’m sure. I’ll be in a building that’s all glass, or just a screened-in porch type place. Most recently I was back at the house I grew up in trying to take shelter in the pantry under the stairs, but the door wouldn’t close. I could see the tornado bearing down on the house through the kitchen window.
Sex dreams… usually involving my ex-husband and trying not to get caught. Eeugh. I’d rather run over my ex with my car than sleep with him again. I wake up from those feeling very creeped out.
It’s uncommon for me to have dreams that I recall coherently later. Usually it’s just fragmented bits of something I can never explain so that it will make any sense.
Of course there’s the occasional dream that knocks me off my feet and into a hospital bed that I’m sharing with Seth McFarlane and he TOTALLY has had a crush on me for like 15 years since we were both at a party forever ago and omg he kisses nice and totally isn’t the anal-retentive perfectionist that I thought he was.
Those dreams are rare, though. Damnit.
I shall report back tomorrow if that one turns serial
I have a few dreams I’ve remembered over the years, but mostly I’ll just remember them for a few minutes after waking, if they caused an unusually strong emotional response or something. I dream vividly, in color and sometimes hyper-real detail. They’re usually good or neutral as far as how I feel about them. Sometimes I’ll have a horror dream but it’s not a nightmare, if that makes any sense. (I’m also a fan of horror movies and books which likely has a factor in that!) I’ve had a couple real nightmares and those were no fun.
Sex dreams for sure. I’ve sometimes woken up in the middle of a bout of laughter or an orgasm, both of which are a bit disorienting until I figure out I was dreaming.
Also, what I call “pee pee dreams” in which in reality I really need to pee, and in the dream I’m endlessly searching for an acceptable place to pee but there’s always an obstacle or circumstance that prevents it until I finally wake up to a screaming bladder. I’m a bit nervous as I get older that one day I’m going to find that acceptable place to pee in my dream and just go in the bed. :eek:
I think the vision with the nets somehow represents the coming of responsibilities of adulthood, that at the time, were unknown to me. I don’t usually put much stock in dream analysis, but this one has stuck with me and looking at my life today, I would say it has come true.
As for the seeing people in your dream that you have seen in real life, yes, I think that is the interpretation. For example, I have never met President Obama, but since I have seen his image in the media, he could appear in my dream. Otherwise, how could your mind conjure the image of someone you have never seen? I dunno.
I am interested in the comments about dreaming in color. I will have to pay closer attention to that one. Report in the morning.
I’m a very frequent dreamer. I also don’t sleep very well sometimes and will wake during the night. Often I make going back to sleep easier by recalling as best I can what I was dreaming just before waking up. Sometimes that leads to me having a dream that is extremely similar.
I have lucid dreams on occasion and have tried with some success to cultivate those. Those usually end up being flying or sexual dreams. Some of my dreams are cinematic in that my viewing perspective changes. That is to say I’ll be experiencing the dream from the vantage of my own eyes, then next I’ll be watching me experiencing the events in the dream.
I’ll share one dream I had that I don’t often speak of. In this dream, I was somewhere tropical and near the beach. I was in, out and amongst various houses and buildings. I wasn’t certain where it was, all I could figure out is that it was somewhere tropic and had a definite Asian influence to it. I actually woke and thought it must have been Hawaii. The key feature of this dream however was that in most of it I was watching a tsunami playing havoc with the beaches and buildings.
Please believe I don’t expect anyone to believe me and I’m not making any claims, but I was rather stunned when a day and a half later I was reading the news of the '04 tsunami that hit Thailand. I know dream coincidences like that must happen with some frequency, (what with over 6 billion people in the world) but it’s weird when it’s something that large and happens to you.
A question I have for any who cares to answer is do you ever dream that you are an entire different person?
