Ask Lemmy

There are many kinds of dreams, each with a different sensation.

• There's vivid nightmares which leave you in a state of panic, often unable to go back to sleep due to a hyper focus on every little sound and touch.
• There's action dreams which give you an adrenaline rush and a state of random anger.
• There's emotional dreams which leave you as an empty shell, crying or full of longing for something out of reach.
• There's horny dreams which leave a puddle in your bed.
• And there's also happy dreams which fill you up with joy and leave you refreshed and full of love for life.

Of course there's also the forgotten dreams which can be anything, but don't really matter to you because you can't remember having them. But they often leave behind the feeling you're supposed to be doing something, which can drive you crazy during the day.

The type of dream I enjoy the absolute most are called "lucid dreams." It's when you actually recognize you're dreaming and can take control of it. I could be dreaming of walking down the sidewalk and see a cool car, realize I'm dreaming, and then just say ok I'm going to get in that car and drive it lol

Unfortunately they're super super rare so I think I've only had like 4 that I remember.

It's like getting absorbed into a memory, but the memory gets all jumbled and weird (but you don't notice the weirdness, it's "normal").

Just last night I had a dream where I was fighting a Russian invasion from my childhood home. Ran out of ammo for my assault rifle and ran to my old room to get the machine gun. Somehow got stuck talking about it with other people and never got back to shooting the invaders. Just weird shit like that.

Everyone dreams, FYI. It's an integral part of sleeping. You just don't remember it.

It's like being awake except more entertaining things are happening. It's a window to the subconscious in the sense I can tell problems from the day appear in them, but not in a Freudian way where they mean things.

Check out the Twin Peaks series. For me that’s the closest I’ve ever seen on screen

Very often I’ll have a repeat dream, or a dream about a previous dream. Then I lose track of which was the original dream

What’s it like for you?

There's a lot of different degrees of dreaming, and it's still kind of a mystery to science why exactly we dream like we do.

At the most basic, it's usually just something your memory gets rid of immediately, just leaving you with a vague memory of a memory of a sensation, I think you experience those as well.

And on the other end of the spectrum are dreams, which basically are like being in actual situations, acting and experiencing something as if you are actually there, feeling "real" for the lack of a better word. Those then can range from realistic and mundane to surreal and extraordinary. Most interesting here is, that the surrealness is usually not perceived as such. A remarkable feature of most dreams is, that their internal logic, even where it would make no sense in real life at all, is in-the-moment perceived as just what is natural. (e.g. people appearing and vanishing, places morphing into different places, etc.)

Then there are lucid dreams, where you "wake up" to the fact, that you are in a dream, and sometimes even get a certain amount of control over the world and situation you are in. I have had those at times in the past with some medication. Including really interesting ones, like with ones where I ended up confronting my grandfather and parents, my brain clearly working through some memories in some way.

Then there are dreams that feel like movies or video games, with different degrees of being "in" what is happening, feeling more like an observer.

In general - dreams feel like actual situations, with varying degrees of vividity and control and varying degrees of sensuality (with some, you can hear, see, touch and smell, others just have sight or sound). And they can range from mundane things to fantastical stories. And can range from insightful, to joyful, to genuine horror that doesn't leave you after waking up for a while.

Do you enjoy, dislike or analyze your dreams?

Personally, I enjoy dreams, even when they are full of negative emotions, there is usually something interesting to reflect on. I remember reading a German study recently, that came to the conclusion, that how vivid dreams are and how much you remember is at least partially also influenced by preconceptions about dreaming and "training". The most obvious, for example, is a dream journal helping with more clearly remembering dreams, as memory usually fades quickly after waking up, so catching the memory and putting it to paper as quickly as possible can help.

For others, dreams can become more of a nuisance where they keep reliving traumata, without any closure beyond re-traumatisation and exhaustion. For those, too, there is at least some hope in that things under our control seem to be at least a part of the equation of how vivid and well-remembered dreams can be.

Is it really a window to the subconscious for you?

I'd say so, but I'd caution to not pay too much heed to "objective" theories of dream interpretation. What is pretty well proven, as far as I know, is that dreaming plays some part in memory, and that it is fed by memories. But how exactly that can be a reflection of the unconscious mind is, in my opinion, so heavily subjective, that answers like "seeing this in a dream means that" at least feel like nonsense to me.

E.g., when I dream of seeing myself in the mirror with scars and pustules all over my body, that has a meaning that will be related to me, that could completely differ in meaning from the same dream for another person. And not every dream has to be profound there, too. E.g. simple dreams of good food or of sex can be as surface level as they seem. Another example here is a common phenomenon of having dreams of needing to go the the bathroom (which I occasionally have before waking up) - where that is as simple as it seems - very simply reflecting what is happening in the not-yet-awake psyche.

I don't dream much either, according to sleep studies. Do you have a sleep disorder and/or smoke weed?

I used to dream better when I was younger and even took control of a few them. Now I'm pretty much like you, it's rare if I even remember one.

A couple were probably windows to my subconscious like the nightmares that involved me waking up sure that nukes were about to strike or the ones about tornadoes attacking me.

Recently I've dreamt of having a lucid dream, so dream me thought he had control of the dream, but I don't think I did. I remember trying to master flying, but it was difficult, and I was afraid of heights.

I'm similar to you, but probably not as bad. I don't often remember my dreams, or I might wake up with a fragment of a memory in my head: "Oh no! I need to let someone know the cats are playing cards in the oven!" But any of the context is lost. Also, if I don't immediately focus on that fragment and try to remember more about it, it will disappear from my mind completely.

Sometimes, I'll get a big chunk of the story, or multiple fragments that I can chain together to figure out the overall plot of the dream, but that's only a few times a year, if that.

I wish I remembered more of them more frequently. I find them very entertaining.

To answer out of order, I don't analyze them. I don't think there's really any reason to.
Sometimes it can be a window to the subconscious, but it's mostly just random things.

It's really hard to answer what it's like. I dream very frequently and quite often vividly. What it's like varies so much night by night. Lately, for maybe the past three weeks, I've been having one nightmare after the next after the next. For me, I tend to enjoy the scarier dreams that deal with "monster movie" plots. Zombies, clowns, ghosts, etc. Those are fun for me because they're not real irl, so it's easier to enjoy.

The problem I'm having right now is that these nightmares are too real and too targeted. "Nobody likes you" or bleeding out or being alone or getting cancer. Just all the horrible things my brain can do to make me wake up miserable, I guess.

When I'm stressed, I have a set of reoccurring themes that makes it easier to identify as a stress dream and therefore not be as effected by the events or emotions in the dream. Themes are: tsunamis, bears, brakes failing, or physical abuse.

One of the greatest problems I have after dreaming so vividly my whole life, is that I'm terrified that my brain will flip a switch when certain situations arise. For example, I've often dreamed about drowning. As in I'm in a pool or lake or ocean and for some reason am unable to get air. So I start panicking and doing anything I can. As I finally can't take it anymore, I gasp for the air that isn't there and... Huh. I can breathe water? It takes a bit, but inevitably the dream says look at you, you've always been able to breathe water, you just never tried.. So when it comes to the real world, I'm terrified that if there's a situation where I need to hold my breath for a while underwater, my brain is going to just lean into the many lessons learned and tell me to just breathe and it'll be fine, because I've always been able to breathe water, duh.

So. None of that probably answers your question. But it's such an esoteric and personal and varied thing from person to person. Or from week to week within a single person.

If you do want to dream more, try to keep a little notebook on your nightstand and when you wake up with these dreams you rarely have, write them down. It clues your brain in to start remembering them more and then you will start to truly dream.

I'm not sure if I have them and don't remember them or just don't have them. Like you, I may get a little something during short naps but next to nothing during longer sleep.

Related to this, are you able to picture images in your head while awake? There's a phenomenon called aphantasia that I've participated in a couple studies on. I'm somewhere around a 4 or 5 on the picture in the wiki. I recall at least one of the studies exploring the correlation between aphantasia and dreaming.

For those who don't dream much, I'm curious of your surrounding sleep habits and how much you've looked into changing your habits. This could be a big indicator you're not getting into REM sleep, which is not good.

Do any of you drink alcohol, take other prescribed substances (or not prescribed)?

Have you tried eating foods rich in magnesium or taking magnesium supplements?

I used to be like that, unable to dream/remember dreams. Turns out that was because I had nightmares and terrors and stress dreams and my brain simply didn’t want to remember them.

I took a shaman drug (that I won’t mention, because I absolutely do not recommend it for anyone ever, and regret taking it myself) over the course of many months, and it absolutely gave me the permanent ability to dream and recall, and even consistently lucid dream (I don’t recall dreams every day, but at least once a week now). I now have a whole town that acts as a hub to get to all the places I’ve dreamed about more than once. It’s kinda fun.

However, these dreams are massively emotionally taxing. I often encounter my mother (the point of the shaman drug is to interact with dead ancestors), so I’ve relegated her to a middle floor of “my house” so she’s easier to avoid.. those experiences are.. just so overwhelmingly taxing. They do help with some closure stuff even tho I know it’s just my brain making up both sides of things, but it’s draining all the same.

I had a dream not too long ago (week maybe) where I didn’t dream about an event or a past, but I dreamt about a project I was working on and I invented something for myself that I can actually build right now if I wanted, but it is meant for me a decade or two in the future.

I’m a wood carver and I’m currently carving a gift for my brother in law. The dream was me fixing a lot of the things I had issue with in the project, and a future idea about my parents that I’ll be writing down and brainstorming until the times comes that I’ll probably want to build it.

I have aphantasia so don’t really have full fledged scenic dreams with a narrative like some people have.

It’s more like I see my daughter crawling and falling into the plug socket so I need to go in after her, and then I’m suddenly in a field full of wasps.

I don’t ‘see’ much, it’s more like flashes of images and emotions; and I’ll often open my eyes and talk or shout but still be asleep mentally.

You sound a lot like me but maybe you are younger. I can't remember the last dream I could remember but I do recall that I have had neat dreams scary nightmares in my life. Definately had variations on flying and crawling ones and had a reoccuring house break in one as a kid but on average it was like maybe one a year.