I sometimes remember dreams from easily 15y - 20y ago absolutly vividly, although I have had forgotten them in the mean time. Suddenly, during the day, like in a split second (maybe triggered from a scene or scent) I feel that "feeling" (or more like a superposition of all impression of that dream i had) of a dream long lost and the dream is fully present in that moment and I kind of "remember" it completely. Then it is fading away fast.
Every so often I have these vivid dreams with what feels like long story archs. In my youth / pre 30s more often then now. At the end of my 20s I started to keep a dream diary, not very consistently, but still.
So now, when I have these dream flashbacks, I immeadiately grab this journal or a piece of paper. I write everything down and draw sketches of the scene and really try hard to remember specifics of that dream. And then something really weird happens... i start to remember scences form other forgotten dreams and it feels like I opened a door or pathway in my memory and can look/explore fragments of these dreams. And the harder I try the better results I get. It is really an odd experience.
It is quite popular form of déjà vu called déjà rêvé. Happens to me all the time, more often when I'm stressed or sleep deprived but almost never when I'm physically exhausted.
> Nearly 80% claimed to have had such experiences and the associated frequencies are presented. Age was negatively correlated with the incidence and there was little gender dependence.
I can relate. I have a handful of recurring dream worlds that I visit. Sometimes I'll have a series of dreams over a few days that all take place in the same dream world. Months or years can go by and then I'll find myself dropped back into a dream world that I had forgotten about. Sometimes the world has progressed since my last visit, and sometimes I'm put back nearly where I left off last time.
The weirdest thing for me is that I swear I have a separate set of memories in these different dream worlds; a personal history exclusive to that dream world, where once I'm in that dream world, I suddenly remember previous visits to that world, places I've visited, events that took place. It's an incredibly strange feeling that can momentarily make me question my sense of self.
I should note that I nearly always dream lucidly. Not sure if that plays a role in this phenomena.
I have very long story arch dreams, an ex-girlfriend called them epic dreams. They're strange, some times I have recurring dreams with long story arcs in which I am in them as myself, sometimes I am in them as another person, sometimes they are narrated, sometimes they span generations, sometimes I'm not in them at all, sometimes they are episodes of a tv show that never had those episodes.
Examples - one dream was set in a post apocalyptic wasteland, sort of like A Canticle for Leibowitz, with narration, there was a kingdom being misruled by a duke and the only one who would be able to stop him was the exiled bishop, his brother, I turned out to be the bishop - an old man returning after many years of exile to the kingdom etc. etc. there were sword fights, radiation monsters, extra sensory perception..
Another dream was a very long special episode of Laverne and Shirley were the girls came out and had their first kiss, I think it was a Christmas episode also.
Actually funny enough I had three dream flashbacks just a couple days ago, first I remembered a comic book store and then I remembered no that store was from a dream, then I remembered a couple other locations from dreams that I had not had for lots of years and had forgotten about.
I'm completely the opposite. 50 years old and I have never once in my life remembered a dream. Never. I see things about dreams, such as this like, as interesting, but can relate to them at all, because they are things that happen to other people. I assume I have dreams, but when I wake up, I never have any recall of them.
How do you know it's a "true" memory? Does that even matter to you? I don't think it would to me! But, I'm curious how confident you are about whether you're in the same space or your brain is rapidly manufacturing the sensation.
Just curious, does anyone here have dreams with some recurring themes? I've tried googling for this but sadly most of the content seems to be related to spiritual/mystical "explanations" of it. And I don't bring it up with anyone in real life so as to not appear like a kook.
I don't usually remember my dreams, but when I do there's a great probability that it falls into these 2 categories -
1. I suddenly find myself naked in public, the rest of dream usually involves me trying to remedy the situation. This is the stage where I usually wake up (in a panic with elevated heart rate).
2. Snakes. Not even sure what is up with this one. I am pretty afraid of snakes in real life, more so than normal people. But then there's a bunch of other things I am equally scared of, but I don't dream about them at all.
Only recurring dream I have is I'm back in college and it's the end of a semester, suddenly I realize there's some math class I haven't been attending and I have just a few days to cram everything I've missed in time for the final.
Yes. Some common ones:
1) Being back in school, missing an exam or test.
2) My car is out of control: won't stop going backwards, accelerates uncontrollably, etc.
3) Finding secret / "extra" rooms in my house.
4) Most recently with covid: being in a store, and realized I've forgotten my mask.
There are definitely other themes but these are the most common.
I don't know if I'd call it recurring, since it's pretty rare, but: Sometimes I lose my mind in my dreams. I can feel myself losing my grip on my faculties, as if something were ripping my mind apart. It's hard to describe, visuals become distorted, things split apart into colours, my grip on reality feels slippery. I imagine having a stroke might feel that way, although I hope it's less dramatic. This is just sheer terror.
Also rare, but in a similar vein, sometimes I wake up into a dream, over and over again. I'll be in bed, relieved I'm finally awake, until I soon realize I'm still asleep and wake up again. When this repeats enough times, it becomes pretty desperate.
Don’t so quickly discount mystical descriptions of dreams, even if you aren’t a religious person yourself. The thing that is special about dreams is that unlike our conscious waking experience you have no control over how they manifest themselves. They aren’t scientific or rational at all; they are human. Dogs have dreams, and we wouldn’t expect them to have a rational, non-mystical explanation for them. In a sense your dreams are the only way your body can communicate unconscious (and therefore irrational) fears or desires, short of a panic attack or mental breakdown.
Your fear of snakes is likely older than humanity itself, so even if you can have rational control of yourself around a snake in real life they could terrorize your dreams. Snakes used to be a real and present danger in our environment for millions of years of our evolution. They are the unknown environment, the cunning adversary, the unforeseen consequence of carelessness.
In a similar way, you might find that you can manage to present yourself in social situations, there is a very human fear of being found out, cast out, laughed at, and/or rejected socially, since we are social creatures. Even nudists have dreams of finding themselves naked in front of their peers. If you spend your day putting on a facade of some sort, which you probably do if you have a job, then somewhere there is a part of you that you don’t want others to see, and in your dream they all see it big time and you have to deal with it.
I wonder how these kinds of dreams are affected by dealing with the underlying anxieties.
I remember having the "naked in public" dream in the past. I've also had a fair amount of body shame for most of my life.
But after getting in better shape and spending time on nude beaches and in the occasional (mixed gender) nude sauna in the last few years, my body shame pretty much disappeared. I now feel almost no self-consciousness from being naked.
I can't recall having a single "naked in public" dream since getting more comfortable with my body.
Oh yes, and specifically about anxieties like you describe. It makes intuitive sense to me that your brain would simulate anxiety-inducing situations in order to exercise those high-stakes decision-making pathways (or similar). Escape sequences are very common for me.
Example: “waking” up on the last day of a semester, only to discover that I am enrolled in a required class that I never actually attended...woops.
A theme that comes a lot for me is getting bitten by a spider in the dream. The catalyst I've noticed is heart burn/acid reflux. I think recurring themes in dreams are linked to recurring/similar events during the day. The same neuronal pathways are followed so you get similar dreams that link up with those events. Or maybe not! Who really knows?
One I sometimes have is needing to go the bathroom but all the bathrooms I can find have disgusting problems that send me looking for another bathroom instead of relieving myself there.
These always involve either bathrooms from my past (such as at schools I once attended or at places I once worked) or bathrooms in places that as far as I can tell are dream places.
I don't recall these dreams ever involving a real bathroom that I currently had or recently had access to.
When I wake up and remember one of these broken bathroom dreams, I inevitably am in fact in need of an urgent trip to the bathroom, so I suspect that the dream is my sleeping mind's way of telling me I need to wake up and go.
When the dream bathrooms are real bathrooms from my past, such as at a school, they are usually exaggerated. If the real bathroom had 3 stalls the dream version might be much bigger with several dozen stalls with the real 3 merely the 3 closest the door.
I've had the naked dream a LOT, usually taking place at work. It's the place where I'm most anxious and insecure.
Another I've had is being at the top of a very tall skyscraper that starts shaking from an earthquake, and I have to get down somehow. Like everything around me is about to crumble and it's totally out of my control.
I did a fair amount of reading about dreams in my youth and kept a dream journal for years.
In most cases, dreams are the subconscious speaking to itself in an idiolect (a dialect of a single person). While certain themes are somewhat common, exact meaning of a dream is rooted in your own personal experiences and what those images mean to you.
Dreams of being naked in public are fairly common. Being naked is generally seen as a symbol of feeling vulnerable and, also, potentially intensely embarrassed about something (because most people would definitely not be comfortable being naked in public).
Snakes are a common symbol of sin in the Western world, which may or may not be pertinent to what it means to you/your subconscious.
Edit: I will add that sometimes dreams are just gibberish, like if you are feverish. "You're drunk, go home" type nonsense.
Oh yeah, I just assumed everyone saw the green lady. You know, green skin, bald, tusks, too many eyes.
She's been visiting for a couple decades, but she just stares, so you get used to her. I figured it was one of those common ones like you have a surprise exam and you forgot your pencils or you have a candy bar for a head.
There are some themes that are way more common than others. Falling into a void is a very notable one.
The only recurring dream theme I have is this: You try to walk somewhere and it's slow, like moving in tar. It's exhausting and takes ages to e.g. walk down the street to your neighbor. Sometimes I'm even crawling trying to pull myself forward. I've heard similar variations from others too, so seems to be common.
Oh and my late grandmother had the same dream ever night for most of her adult life. Trauma in childhood due to war. I don't want to know how this feels.
There's a city I have been visiting in my dreams for years now. It's a very different experience each time, but the streetcars are always the same[0], as well as the general impression of the place.
At this point I can identify a few areas like "old town" or "business district" or "very large square with an enormous roundabout".
Fear of being somewhere specifically without clothes is something deeply ingrained within us but not really typical among animals. I wonder if these "man-made" fears are more likely to appear in dream scenarios.
As a kid, age 6-8 probably I had many dreams about owls. I never figured out why or what would have triggered it.
Between my 20s and 30s I did a lot of selfdefense training. I would dream a lot about conflict situations where I would have to fight (or run). In real life I might have had 3 conflics in those 10 years. Anyhow, fighting in a dream was like being submerged in molasse: every movement had resistence and was painfully slow, while opponents moved normally. This was freaking me out.
In my twenties I had recurring dreams about being in a field of golden wheat during the summer, with a guilty feeling I hurt someone.
They really were weird. Maybe testosterone? Maybe Freudian? Maybe it was due to a stint job I had at the Coroner’s Office in high school? Maybe nothing?
Those dreams ended in my thirties, after a breakdown in grad school.
I pop a gasket (just really bad anxiety), and all those dreams subsided? Crazy?
Life became the nightmare after the breakdown though.
My dreams are always of the sense that I'll get physically lost and die for it -- as in, I'm driving up a winding road, and I take a wrong turn, and that turn causes me to skid off past a guardrail and plummet to the ground, infinitely below. Or walking back from buying groceries, and all the signs are blank, then turning out into the woods and falling down in a pit in the sidewalk.
For years, I’ve had a recurring dream where I’ve returned to a location of many fond childhood memories, my grandparents’ home. More recently, the dreams focus on the impossibility of my being there again after all these years, the paradox resolved by some handwaving of my subconscious.
Hey. Same - I have recurring dreams (across years) on the themes you mention + a few more (inventing "flying", cosmic apocalpypse). Shall we connect to see if we can solve this mystery? - see its connected to personality or life experiences?
Since I was younger, whenever I am ill - like a fever or something - I have a recurring dream about boulders at the top of a mountain with changing numbers on them. It just kinda loops ... very strange
I would like to know what small children (1-2 years) dream, but we can of course never really know for sure. My daughter (2 years) definitely seems to have nightmares. She also seems to have conversations in her dreams, as she often speaks answers to questions while sleeping. Personally I very strongly remember some wild dreams when I was very young, probably around the age I started remembering things at all, so around 2,5 years. These dreams were often synesthesic, I could see sounds in extremely saturated, moving, three-dimensional colors, and could "taste" geometric forms like pyramids and cuboids. I have never taken LSD, but I imagine the experience to be quite similar. The closest (but not very close) thing I have seen to these dreams is the stargate sequence in 2001.
I'm curious to know if frequency of dreaming correlates to anything. Most people I talk to "rarely have dreams" (probably meaning they just dont remember them).
For some reason in my case I have a vivid dream every night, sometimes multiple per night, and can't remember the last time my sleep was dreamless.
I've heard keeping a dream journal can help you remember/have more vivid dreams, but I only write my dreams down it it affected me very strongly so I can interpret what my psyche is saying, so this only happens maybe once every few months.
So what gives? Why do some people dream a lot more than others?
I sometimes dream about code or debugging, especially when my team is working on a deadline. A few times I dreamt of solutions to problems we had. It felt good on the spot, calming and relaxing. Unfortunately, after waking up, they don’t make any sense.
I’m convinced that dreams, at least in my case, are from past lives. I don’t have any strong religious or other reasons to believe this. It’s just a strong hunch.
I’ve only had 1-2 vivid lucid dreams. One was where I was a doctor tending to a patient and we were located in an old cabin that would have been typical in the old west. It was so vivid that it was as if I was remembering a past life.
I’ve also had many deja vu moments where I’m visiting somewhere in real life and I swear I remember it from a dream.
If I had a good dream and suddenly woke up. I can get back to sleep and continue the dream and somehow manipulate the story while I'm in it. It's very weird, usually i know immediately when I'm dreaming while it's happening and I can wake up if it's not interesting.
I don't have real nightmares, because I can wake up, since I realise it's not real.
There are only 2 times that i remember that i didn't realize it. ( One quite embarrassing one).
One time when I had a fake wake-up ( i thought I woke up for real and the feeling afterwards that something was off was really weird. Since I already thought I woke up). After a while, i woke up for real ofc, not by my doing.
Another time i needed to go to the toilet and i couldn't. So i tried harder... Yeah, quite embarrassing this one, 10 years ago after a night of going out pretty late...
I do think I'm having less dreams lately. Since I never have the need to try to fetch the dream again. But I'm using my alarm clock again and perhaps that's related.
Fyi, i forget about the dream immediately after standing up.
It's possible that I talk in my sleep, i once woke up during that and had a conversation with my girlfriend before I woke up. Somehow my dream was a visual interpretation of what she said ( while my eyes were closed ofc) and I was way more open than i usually am. She could have asked me anything and I sincerely doubt of i would have been able to dodge a question if I would have wanted that.
Ps. I'm a very irregular sleeper. I can only sleep 3-4 hours and it's almost all REM/deep sleep according to an app that i placed on my bed.
Ps2. If you have trouble waking up. Set a hard noise 10 minutes before the desired time ( 1 second duration), you should get up more easily when the real alarm goes off.
I have written code in my dreams. When facing a particular problem if I think about it obsessively all day long I can sometimes end up dreaming about it. If the dream comes towards the morning I can often times remember the code I wrote and go try it out when I wake up. It doesn’t make for good sleep but the code usually works even if it has some really weird convoluted quirk that I end up working out once awake.
I had similar things happen in high school. For example the first time the teacher explained integrals I had a rough time visualizing the geometry. Having a dream a few nights later of an integral being like an apple peeled into a long strip helped me wake up with a better intuitive understanding of integrals.
Anyone else ever fall asleep awake? I've been able to lucid dream for a while now, but I started meditating recently and I've discovered I can meditate myself to sleep while still being "awake". I have to be really tired to do it, like physically exhausted, but mentally awake, so usually during naps, but it's really strange. First time I freaked out because I could feel my body going into sleep paralysis I felt like I was choking / couldn't breathe. Unfortunately I've only managed to stay awake for a few moments and didn't procede to a lucid dream yet.
My dreams are often pretty epic and often have sound tracks. Frequently I wake up and record them - including the music. If I don't take notes and record songs immediately, then both are lost forever.
If I had a good dream and suddenly woke up. I can get back to sleep and continue the dream and somehow manipulate the story woke I'm in it. It's very weird, usually i know immediately when I'm dreaming while it's happening and I can wake up if it's not interesting.
There are only 2 times that i remember that i didn't realize it. ( One quite embarrassing one).
One time when u had a fake wake-up ( i thought I woke up for real and the feeling during afterwards that something is off was really weird.
Another time i needed to go to the toilet and i couldn't. So i tried harder... Yeah, quite embarrassing this one...
I do think I'll having less dreams lately. Since I never have the need to try to fetch the dream again. But I'm using my alarm clock again and perhaps that's related.
Fyi, i forget about the dream immediately after standing up.
It's possible that I talk in my sleep, i once woke up during that and had a conversation with my girlfriend. Somehow my dream was a visual interpretation of what she said ( while my eyes were closed ofc) and I was way more open than i usually am. She could have asked me anything and I sincerely doubt of i would have been able to dodge a question if I would have wanted that.
I have more than two hundred pages of dreams typed out.
It was a lot easier to do this when I was younger as I had much more time in the mornings. I remember everything vividly but once ten minutes have passed since waking it's pretty much gone unless I make a conscious effort to commit it to memory.
It's great fun to go back and be prompted to remember some of the crazier ones or Ctrl+F to see how often various people and things pop up.
This website is part of another one called Dream Research - https://dreams.ucsc.edu/ full of interesting info with a scientific approach into the world of Dreams, including analysis of the Dream Bank itself.
You can find some studies on what is the current thinking regarding dreams, and their purpose and meaning.
David Lynch's work is often described as "dream-like", and you can definitely see that connection in these transcripts. This could easily be a scene in his movies:
> I'm at a Sunday night church gathering. I'm thinking, "I haven't done this in years." It's crowded. A drunk man next to me whispers, "Reproductive organs." I good naturedly tell him to shut up. I see a big sign that says "Brothers, Jesus..." Later someone, a male, says he has to take part of my reproductive system out. I just play with my nipples and enjoy it, i.e. I have an orgasm. I look at him and say, "I can't do that. I would feel embarrassed that I would have to go to orgasm with people watching." A girl whispers, "You can do it."
I've had some pretty strange dreams over the years. Including some that were 2D animations, others that were like video games with cutscenes and text overlays. And that's without considering the precognitive dreams and those with side effects in the real world.
I've often wondered if dreams are fully constructed stories during REM or REM is more or less random vignettes of cognition that are assembled into a constructed story upon awakening.
Rewriting memories seems to be reasonably well understood, and if the recall mechanism for waking memories reconstructs a plausible story from memories, is it reasonable that the same is happening with dreams?
We always remember dreams, have there been experiments where the paralytic effect of sleep has been blocked? I remember seeing a cat video (ironic) of a cat having that part blocked by drugs or surgery and it jumping like it is catching a bird.
[+] [-] splittingTimes|5 years ago|reply
I sometimes remember dreams from easily 15y - 20y ago absolutly vividly, although I have had forgotten them in the mean time. Suddenly, during the day, like in a split second (maybe triggered from a scene or scent) I feel that "feeling" (or more like a superposition of all impression of that dream i had) of a dream long lost and the dream is fully present in that moment and I kind of "remember" it completely. Then it is fading away fast.
Every so often I have these vivid dreams with what feels like long story archs. In my youth / pre 30s more often then now. At the end of my 20s I started to keep a dream diary, not very consistently, but still.
So now, when I have these dream flashbacks, I immeadiately grab this journal or a piece of paper. I write everything down and draw sketches of the scene and really try hard to remember specifics of that dream. And then something really weird happens... i start to remember scences form other forgotten dreams and it feels like I opened a door or pathway in my memory and can look/explore fragments of these dreams. And the harder I try the better results I get. It is really an odd experience.
[+] [-] terramex|5 years ago|reply
https://www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp/jcs/2017/00000...
> Nearly 80% claimed to have had such experiences and the associated frequencies are presented. Age was negatively correlated with the incidence and there was little gender dependence.
[+] [-] gavinmckenzie|5 years ago|reply
The weirdest thing for me is that I swear I have a separate set of memories in these different dream worlds; a personal history exclusive to that dream world, where once I'm in that dream world, I suddenly remember previous visits to that world, places I've visited, events that took place. It's an incredibly strange feeling that can momentarily make me question my sense of self.
I should note that I nearly always dream lucidly. Not sure if that plays a role in this phenomena.
[+] [-] bryanrasmussen|5 years ago|reply
Examples - one dream was set in a post apocalyptic wasteland, sort of like A Canticle for Leibowitz, with narration, there was a kingdom being misruled by a duke and the only one who would be able to stop him was the exiled bishop, his brother, I turned out to be the bishop - an old man returning after many years of exile to the kingdom etc. etc. there were sword fights, radiation monsters, extra sensory perception..
Another dream was a very long special episode of Laverne and Shirley were the girls came out and had their first kiss, I think it was a Christmas episode also.
Actually funny enough I had three dream flashbacks just a couple days ago, first I remembered a comic book store and then I remembered no that store was from a dream, then I remembered a couple other locations from dreams that I had not had for lots of years and had forgotten about.
[+] [-] abruzzi|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monadic5|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jobigoud|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SnowflakeOnIce|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] as1mov|5 years ago|reply
I don't usually remember my dreams, but when I do there's a great probability that it falls into these 2 categories -
1. I suddenly find myself naked in public, the rest of dream usually involves me trying to remedy the situation. This is the stage where I usually wake up (in a panic with elevated heart rate).
2. Snakes. Not even sure what is up with this one. I am pretty afraid of snakes in real life, more so than normal people. But then there's a bunch of other things I am equally scared of, but I don't dream about them at all.
[+] [-] nprz|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icedchai|5 years ago|reply
There are definitely other themes but these are the most common.
[+] [-] rebuilder|5 years ago|reply
Also rare, but in a similar vein, sometimes I wake up into a dream, over and over again. I'll be in bed, relieved I'm finally awake, until I soon realize I'm still asleep and wake up again. When this repeats enough times, it becomes pretty desperate.
Otherwise, I rarely have anxiety-inducing dreams.
[+] [-] zwkrt|5 years ago|reply
Your fear of snakes is likely older than humanity itself, so even if you can have rational control of yourself around a snake in real life they could terrorize your dreams. Snakes used to be a real and present danger in our environment for millions of years of our evolution. They are the unknown environment, the cunning adversary, the unforeseen consequence of carelessness.
In a similar way, you might find that you can manage to present yourself in social situations, there is a very human fear of being found out, cast out, laughed at, and/or rejected socially, since we are social creatures. Even nudists have dreams of finding themselves naked in front of their peers. If you spend your day putting on a facade of some sort, which you probably do if you have a job, then somewhere there is a part of you that you don’t want others to see, and in your dream they all see it big time and you have to deal with it.
[+] [-] NovaJehovah|5 years ago|reply
I remember having the "naked in public" dream in the past. I've also had a fair amount of body shame for most of my life.
But after getting in better shape and spending time on nude beaches and in the occasional (mixed gender) nude sauna in the last few years, my body shame pretty much disappeared. I now feel almost no self-consciousness from being naked.
I can't recall having a single "naked in public" dream since getting more comfortable with my body.
[+] [-] jointpdf|5 years ago|reply
Example: “waking” up on the last day of a semester, only to discover that I am enrolled in a required class that I never actually attended...woops.
[+] [-] dqv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|5 years ago|reply
These always involve either bathrooms from my past (such as at schools I once attended or at places I once worked) or bathrooms in places that as far as I can tell are dream places.
I don't recall these dreams ever involving a real bathroom that I currently had or recently had access to.
When I wake up and remember one of these broken bathroom dreams, I inevitably am in fact in need of an urgent trip to the bathroom, so I suspect that the dream is my sleeping mind's way of telling me I need to wake up and go.
When the dream bathrooms are real bathrooms from my past, such as at a school, they are usually exaggerated. If the real bathroom had 3 stalls the dream version might be much bigger with several dozen stalls with the real 3 merely the 3 closest the door.
[+] [-] carabiner|5 years ago|reply
Another I've had is being at the top of a very tall skyscraper that starts shaking from an earthquake, and I have to get down somehow. Like everything around me is about to crumble and it's totally out of my control.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|5 years ago|reply
In most cases, dreams are the subconscious speaking to itself in an idiolect (a dialect of a single person). While certain themes are somewhat common, exact meaning of a dream is rooted in your own personal experiences and what those images mean to you.
Dreams of being naked in public are fairly common. Being naked is generally seen as a symbol of feeling vulnerable and, also, potentially intensely embarrassed about something (because most people would definitely not be comfortable being naked in public).
Snakes are a common symbol of sin in the Western world, which may or may not be pertinent to what it means to you/your subconscious.
Edit: I will add that sometimes dreams are just gibberish, like if you are feverish. "You're drunk, go home" type nonsense.
[+] [-] pdbwimsey|5 years ago|reply
She's been visiting for a couple decades, but she just stares, so you get used to her. I figured it was one of those common ones like you have a surprise exam and you forgot your pencils or you have a candy bar for a head.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nom|5 years ago|reply
The only recurring dream theme I have is this: You try to walk somewhere and it's slow, like moving in tar. It's exhausting and takes ages to e.g. walk down the street to your neighbor. Sometimes I'm even crawling trying to pull myself forward. I've heard similar variations from others too, so seems to be common.
Oh and my late grandmother had the same dream ever night for most of her adult life. Trauma in childhood due to war. I don't want to know how this feels.
[+] [-] Tade0|5 years ago|reply
At this point I can identify a few areas like "old town" or "business district" or "very large square with an enormous roundabout".
[0] Mostly various types of Ganz UVs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganz_UV which is interesting, because I've only been to Budapest once in my life.
[+] [-] skulk|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splittingTimes|5 years ago|reply
Between my 20s and 30s I did a lot of selfdefense training. I would dream a lot about conflict situations where I would have to fight (or run). In real life I might have had 3 conflics in those 10 years. Anyhow, fighting in a dream was like being submerged in molasse: every movement had resistence and was painfully slow, while opponents moved normally. This was freaking me out.
[+] [-] hellbannedguy|5 years ago|reply
They really were weird. Maybe testosterone? Maybe Freudian? Maybe it was due to a stint job I had at the Coroner’s Office in high school? Maybe nothing?
Those dreams ended in my thirties, after a breakdown in grad school.
I pop a gasket (just really bad anxiety), and all those dreams subsided? Crazy?
Life became the nightmare after the breakdown though.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] xwdv|5 years ago|reply
One time though, I had a dream where I was successfully running so fast and so smoothly, it felt amazing, better than flying.
[+] [-] bennyp101|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
This and Sci-hub are two of many examples that bounce me over and over again because I have no inspiration on what to search or how
This site even has an entire primer on how to make a useful search query, because apparently its not even a familiar search bar?
And all the users are like “ah thats not a problem, just be so into this field like me that you already know all the papers you want to read!”
[+] [-] warent|5 years ago|reply
For some reason in my case I have a vivid dream every night, sometimes multiple per night, and can't remember the last time my sleep was dreamless.
I've heard keeping a dream journal can help you remember/have more vivid dreams, but I only write my dreams down it it affected me very strongly so I can interpret what my psyche is saying, so this only happens maybe once every few months.
So what gives? Why do some people dream a lot more than others?
[+] [-] lrossi|5 years ago|reply
I sometimes dream about code or debugging, especially when my team is working on a deadline. A few times I dreamt of solutions to problems we had. It felt good on the spot, calming and relaxing. Unfortunately, after waking up, they don’t make any sense.
[+] [-] xkeysc0re|5 years ago|reply
http://www.dreambank.net/grid.cgi
[+] [-] iJohnDoe|5 years ago|reply
I’ve only had 1-2 vivid lucid dreams. One was where I was a doctor tending to a patient and we were located in an old cabin that would have been typical in the old west. It was so vivid that it was as if I was remembering a past life.
I’ve also had many deja vu moments where I’m visiting somewhere in real life and I swear I remember it from a dream.
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|5 years ago|reply
I don't have real nightmares, because I can wake up, since I realise it's not real.
There are only 2 times that i remember that i didn't realize it. ( One quite embarrassing one).
One time when I had a fake wake-up ( i thought I woke up for real and the feeling afterwards that something was off was really weird. Since I already thought I woke up). After a while, i woke up for real ofc, not by my doing.
Another time i needed to go to the toilet and i couldn't. So i tried harder... Yeah, quite embarrassing this one, 10 years ago after a night of going out pretty late...
I do think I'm having less dreams lately. Since I never have the need to try to fetch the dream again. But I'm using my alarm clock again and perhaps that's related.
Fyi, i forget about the dream immediately after standing up.
It's possible that I talk in my sleep, i once woke up during that and had a conversation with my girlfriend before I woke up. Somehow my dream was a visual interpretation of what she said ( while my eyes were closed ofc) and I was way more open than i usually am. She could have asked me anything and I sincerely doubt of i would have been able to dodge a question if I would have wanted that.
Ps. I'm a very irregular sleeper. I can only sleep 3-4 hours and it's almost all REM/deep sleep according to an app that i placed on my bed.
Ps2. If you have trouble waking up. Set a hard noise 10 minutes before the desired time ( 1 second duration), you should get up more easily when the real alarm goes off.
[+] [-] IgorPartola|5 years ago|reply
I had similar things happen in high school. For example the first time the teacher explained integrals I had a rough time visualizing the geometry. Having a dream a few nights later of an integral being like an apple peeled into a long strip helped me wake up with a better intuitive understanding of integrals.
[+] [-] throw0932439|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intrasight|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|5 years ago|reply
There are only 2 times that i remember that i didn't realize it. ( One quite embarrassing one).
One time when u had a fake wake-up ( i thought I woke up for real and the feeling during afterwards that something is off was really weird.
Another time i needed to go to the toilet and i couldn't. So i tried harder... Yeah, quite embarrassing this one...
I do think I'll having less dreams lately. Since I never have the need to try to fetch the dream again. But I'm using my alarm clock again and perhaps that's related.
Fyi, i forget about the dream immediately after standing up.
It's possible that I talk in my sleep, i once woke up during that and had a conversation with my girlfriend. Somehow my dream was a visual interpretation of what she said ( while my eyes were closed ofc) and I was way more open than i usually am. She could have asked me anything and I sincerely doubt of i would have been able to dodge a question if I would have wanted that.
Ps. I'm a very irregular sleeper.
[+] [-] alexjplant|5 years ago|reply
It's great fun to go back and be prompted to remember some of the crazier ones or Ctrl+F to see how often various people and things pop up.
[+] [-] Pentamerous|5 years ago|reply
You can find some studies on what is the current thinking regarding dreams, and their purpose and meaning.
[+] [-] hntrader|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yboris|5 years ago|reply
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/02/scientists-entered-p...
[+] [-] khazhoux|5 years ago|reply
> I'm at a Sunday night church gathering. I'm thinking, "I haven't done this in years." It's crowded. A drunk man next to me whispers, "Reproductive organs." I good naturedly tell him to shut up. I see a big sign that says "Brothers, Jesus..." Later someone, a male, says he has to take part of my reproductive system out. I just play with my nipples and enjoy it, i.e. I have an orgasm. I look at him and say, "I can't do that. I would feel embarrassed that I would have to go to orgasm with people watching." A girl whispers, "You can do it."
[+] [-] llovan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtippett|5 years ago|reply
Rewriting memories seems to be reasonably well understood, and if the recall mechanism for waking memories reconstructs a plausible story from memories, is it reasonable that the same is happening with dreams?
We always remember dreams, have there been experiments where the paralytic effect of sleep has been blocked? I remember seeing a cat video (ironic) of a cat having that part blocked by drugs or surgery and it jumping like it is catching a bird.