Written words in dreams

In My Humble Opinion
1

The last few years my dreams are including signs, labels and things that are printed. No hand drawn cursive…

My wife says I have some dyslexia but I have never been diagnosed as such.

Anyway, when I see words in my dreams they seem to be correct for about half a second then the go to gobbly gook… The starting letter remains correct of a second or longer and then the word goes totally wonky. This happens for all the words on the ‘whatever’ that I can see.

Door
Doro
Dwui
Qken
Mannnnn

etc…

All the words do this almost at the same exact time.

I am crazy?
I am normal?
I am abnormal?
I am sort of strange?
It sometimes happens to you?

Any ideas?

Many free straight lines to play off of which is fine by me but some real helpful opinions please?

2

This is how writing is in my dreams, too, and I have never had any issues with reading in real life.

3

I’ve heard the part of the brain responsible for written language isn’t active during dreams, so it’s very hard to actually make out lengthy prose.

4

That is really interesting, do written words play an important part in your life? I would suspect off the top of my head that you sometimes feel misunderstould when writing?

5

Personally, I wouldn’t read too much into it (heh.)

I’m not at all dyslexic and I have had the experience of not being able to read properly in dreams many times. (Or dial a phone, or pick out clothes to wear, for some reason.)

6

I’ve heard this too, and you wanna know where from? I was watching “Batman: The Animated Series”* a long time ago, and at some point Batman realizes the bad guy was lying because he mentioned a sign he’d read in his dream. This, according to Batman, was impossible because the part of your brain that allows you to read isn’t active while you dream. I thought surely that cannot be true. I’ve read before in my dreams, right? Right? Well I can’t say if I had at the time, but I certainly have since. That bothered me so much (and it had to have been a good 20 years ago, so I should let this go) that I’ve explicitly remembered every time I’ve read in a dream since.
*God, I hated that show and Batman’s batshit insane ability to wriggle out of any situation in the most fantastical ways. I know Batman is basically MacGyver with a cape, but these writers were completely out of control. One episode in particular, Batman just so happened to be carrying a safety pin or something in his mouth that appeared in the first 2 minutes of the episode that just so happened to be what he needed to pick a lock to free himself in the last 30 seconds of the show. I mean, really? It was fucking ridiculous. I am much more willing to buy the idea of some sociopathic billionaire in a bat suit fighting crime than I am that.

7

I have read books and signs in dreams also, and don’t remember this kind of scrambling of words ever happening to me. Once, I dreamed people were talking in word balloons and I had to read what they said instead of hearing it. I also once had a dream that was subtitled. So I think the part of my brain that makes out words is actually pretty active when I’m dreaming. This may be unusual though!

8

I’ll see words in my dreams, and they might seem to make sense as I read them, but when I go back to re-read the same piece of text, it’s a completely different set of words, and they make no sense.

9

I have the opposite problem. I NEVER dream about written words. I can’t ever remember even trying to read something in my dreams. There are no written words anywhere to be found in my dream worlds. I didn’t realize this until recently when I learned about the “scrambling” thing that happens to people when they try to read in dreams. Very odd.

10

I’m a reader. I think I was born able to read, LOL.

I have had dreams where I KNOW I’m dreaming. I’ll pick up a book and think, “Oh, kewl. Here I am sleeping, and I’ll get a chance to READ!”

I open up the dream book and the damned thing is full of blank pages.

I’m sure the dream interpretation folks would really get a charge out of that!
~VOW

11

This - or the sentence will go off-the-rails midway thru. Signs with just a few words are usually OK, tho. I also can’t dial a phone number in my dreams * - I keep pressing the wrong buttons or forgetting the number. Math is also nearly impossible - it’s as if my sleeping mind can’t keep text or numbers constant while the “plot” of the dream is going.

I also find it quite amusing when I have my “back to school” dreams - nine times out of 10 the class that I realize I’ve forgotten to go to all semester is Psychology… :smiley:

  • Which is a pretty reliable indicator that I am, in fact, dreaming… if I’m lucky enough to be lucid dreaming -I usually go flying - whee!
12

The movie “Waking Life” mentioned that if you’re dreaming and you glance several times at a clock or a word, then often the clock or the word will change between glances and your mind will make up a ridiculous explanation for the phenomenon. Then once you realise you’re dreaming, you can turn it into a lucid dream.

So some time after watching the movie, I dreamt I was playing Scrabble with my family and the words on the board were switching back and forth. At that point I laughed at my dream family and I flew off to have sex with a hot babe.

Try it, you might like it!

13

This happens to me all the time. I can read something (such as a sign) once and it makes sense, but if I look again at the same sign, it won’t say the same thing, or even be a word. If I look away and back again, it’s changed again.

I’m a voracious reader and (very) amateur writer. I do occasionally type something dyslexic (in fact I started out typing syd- for dyslexic just now) but I always catch it, usually while I’m typing it.

14

I don’t recall ever seeing a letter or number, let alone a word, in my dreams.

15

I sometimes dream that I’m reading. But the text is just a stream of words that doesn’t make sense, even though it seems to hint at something important. I get so annoyed that I wake up.

16

I can see words, but they don’t stay consistent. For example, in my dreams, if I walk by a store and the sign says “SALE!” when I look back at the sign it might say “10% Off Everything!” and the next time I look it might say “Clearance, Today Only!” So I can get the meaning out of something I’m reading in my dreams, but I can’t get the exact words.

I once had what should have been a standard dream turn into a nightmare because I needed to look up a phone number to call someone to stop something horrible from happening, and every time I looked back down at the phone book, the number changed and I couldn’t make the call. I’ve also tried to cook in dreams and had the recipe keep changing on me. Or recently, I was trying to do something with a poem, but the words were different every time I looked back at the previous line. Because I don’t know I’m dreaming, it’s horrible and frustrating because I’m trying to do something simple and I can’t do it - I just get hopelessly stuck.

17

I’m a voracious reader in real life, but I can’t read in dreams, either. I don’t think it has anything to do with dyslexia - I’m pretty sure I’m not dyslexic. I try to read in dreams, and I just can’t make the letters make sense.

I have that dream about trying to make a phone call occasionally, too - it is extremely frustrating. For some reason, I have to make that call, and I just can’t dial properly.

18

I read in dreams all the time… I’ve found that if I slow way down, and take extra time, the words make more sense.

I’ve found the same to be true in reading a color sunday newspaper comics page in a dream. If I try to read it fast, it just goes blurry, but if I take a bit of extra time with it, it gets a bit more clear.

My theory is that the part of the brain that is making up the images works at a much slower speed than the part of the brain that perceives the images. Just as it takes a lot more time to write a sentence than it does to read it, so in dreaming: it takes more time to generate the text, and, during that time, you can’t actually read it. It’s like watching a web site slowly send a .gif file. Blocky at first, but it develops clarity with time.

(By the way, with me, at least, even when the text is fully developed, it usually doesn’t make very much sense. My dreaming “writer” can manage basic grammar, but falls way short on semantic content.)

19

I have had dreams that were 100% text.

Comes from spending too much time playing on MUDs back in the day.

20

I am another ‘prolific reader’ that has never read a word in a dream. I learned to read at about four.

Sometimes written words appear in a dream; they are usually large blurry black lines, no distinguishable letters. I had no idea that anyone ever read in a dream.

I used to dream about calculus concepts I was having trouble with, and would understand them when I woke up. I think I saw the equations in my dreams, but I’m not sure.

Other observations:

If my dream has a narrative and the need to read comes up, struggling to do so will wake me up.

I also very seldom speak in my dreams; other characters do, but I do not. Sometimes the struggle to speak will wake me up. I frequently become aware of normal sleep paralysis when I dream; that wakes me up, too.

You might want to see a neurologist. It does sound like your brain is trying out new stuff, which I believe is a bit uncommon in someone old enough to be married …