I don’t really dream. It’s extremely rare to the point where I’ll have a handful in a year and I don’t remember them. Waking up with an emotional reaction to an odd dream inspired by life events or entertainment… Then the details slip away from me and I can’t even talk to anyone about the experience.
What’s it like for you?
Do you enjoy, dislike or analyze your dreams?
Is it really a window to the subconscious for you?
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.
I got an emotional dream a few months ago. Woke up feeling a wreck and distraught while having no idea why. Very frustrating.
Yeah, I lose a day being on low energy every time it happens. But the subconscious dreams what it wants, regardless of an attempt to influence. We can give a scenario through our activities before going to sleep, but they tend to stretch out on their own even so.
Also the dreams that feel like distant memories and can sometimes be difficult discerning if they really happened or not
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.
Play a lot of shooting games?
My rare odd dreams are often related to book or anime I’ve read. When I wake from those I wanna go back in.
Actually not at all!
However, I recently listened an audio book about the Continuation War between Finland and Russia (part of WW2), which might have had an impact.
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.
The weirdest part is that you only realize the nonsense after waking up
Funny enough, I’ve been weirdly lucid in my dreams recently.
Congratulations! I’d love being able to lucid dream, I imagine it’s like being on some kind of drugs but without the risk.
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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.
I have lucid dreams and I get excited when it happens and make some fun decisions. “Oh, this is a dream. Sweet, I’m gonna go do [X] now.” I always remember don’t try flying, because it was scary when I tried and jolted me out of the dream.
But here’s the thing. Once I’m awake, as I think about it, it seems like I did exactly what I wanted to do, but I realize that there’s absolutely no way of knowing whether I genuinely had control or just dreamed that I had control and made those choices. But in the end I did have control and made those choices because it’s my brain, right? And I feel like I did; it’s more like a memory than a dream. But following the same line, I could question reality.
Anyway, I’m currently cynical and think nobody actually controls their dreams, they only wake up thinking they did.
Check out the Twin Peaks series. For me that’s the closest I’ve ever seen on screen
What do you mean?
Closest depiction AND sound design to what I dream when I’m dreaming.
Somewhat weird and cringe but entertaining. I usually keep my phone next to bed, if I have some dream I’d like to remember I turn on audio recording and speak whatever comes to mind. Hopefully I get to remember that in the future.
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 don’t really dream much but my watch says my REM is fine.
Cutting out weed after a stint gives me more dreams than usual, but then cuts back to my baseline once in a blue moon after a while.
Take lots of magnesium, have always been like this. Also have aphantasia though so not much to my dreams to remember.
I’m similar expect I don’t take magnesium. I also have aphantasia. I get 8 hours nightly and wake up refreshed. I do drink 1 cup of coffee every morning. Acetaminophen and/or Ibuprofen as needed which isn’t often and usually only for a tension headache. No other drugs. I drink on occasion but no more than 1-3 beers/week and the rare night bourbon. My wife cans all of our veggies that are cannable so we know they’re fresh. We have pigs raised (working on a cow) and we eat pretty clean food (know how it was raised/grown) as much as possible.
I can’t remember the last time I can remember a dream, it’s been that long. I also have a terrible memory and it takes a a lot of effort to retain events, even something that happened last week, they’re mostly fading memories.
Good news is that means I’m generally very upbeat most of the time. I do not have bipolar disorder or any other mental issue that I know of. I’m very even keeled, so much so that I find Lemmy’s reactions to things happening in the world to be super amplified and irrational. Sometimes it’s warranted, many it’s simply bad for their mental health.
Be careful, radical centrism is the worst kind of extremism and dulls your surroundings.
I have woken up aware that I dreamt perhaps a half dozen times in my adult life.
Alcohol: no
Medicine: no
Drugs: no
Never tried loading magnesium.
Terrible sleep hygiene.
Comfy bed, dark room.
Does that include no coffee/caffeine in afternoon?
What temperature is your room?
Do you have a watch or device that passively monitors Heart-rate variability?
On average what do you eat before bed and how long before sleep?
Caffeine addicted. It is a problem.
Room is low 70s (23C?).
No device.
Big dinner at 8, bed at 11 or 12. Sleep quickly if no phone.
I am definitely caffeine addicted, too. Best I can manage usually is to taper off the caffeine coffee by noon and transition to green tea, then ginger tea later. Seems to help!
Temp seems good; that’s about what mine is.
If possible, consider a big lunch and reduce size of dinner and/or dial it back by an hour. Be extra cautious of deep-fried, high sodium, or high acidic foods (tomato-based sauces like spaghetti or pizza, mayo, etc.).
Interesting - I’ll give it a try.
I don’t dream much either, according to sleep studies. Do you have a sleep disorder and/or smoke weed?
I don’t do drugs. Even skipping pain meds for a bad back. No real reason I just dislike pills. Drug free for work reasons.
I tend to sleep 4-5 due to overwork. Even if I have 8-9 hours free my internal clock wakes me up at night.
The times I dream are often when I take a 30min-2hr nap.
Sounds like you probably aren’t getting enough sleep to get into REM very often. 4-5 an hour isn’t the healthiest.
Valid. I’m trying to fix it.
You and me both
This is my experience exactly! I have never heard of someone else having a similar experience. If you end up going to a sleep specialist or finding any sort of explanation, please DM me about it.
Maybe you can write your dreams down as soon as you wake up and remember them. Perhaps it will help
Yeah I’ve seen notes about sleep journals
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
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.
Sometimes I’m glad I don’t dream considering nightmares and overthinking the meaning of things.
What I’ll say about not dreaming is life feels more mundane.
Wake, self care (brush teeth, shower, eat), work, chores, brainrot, sleep.
I feel like even bad dreams would shake things up more.
Brakes failing is the worst! Also, half the time I can’t reach the pedals, and/or see clearly over the steering wheel.
Or I’m just outside of the car and have to kinda hop hobble stretch to get in and grab the E brake
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.
Holy shit yeah. I’m at a 5. Zero ability to picture things in my mind.
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.
I think this is me now. Only dream I can remember from childhood is jessica rabbit haha
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.
Yeah I get fragments too.
Usually wake up to some pieces of life in a zombie apocalypse… And I was a blacksmith? Making bullets? Farming tools? WTH
That’s a good skill to have in that scenario. Dream you must have planned well!
I’ve always been fond of working with my hands but growing up and living in apartments doesn’t support wood or metal working.
I’m a keyboard jocky my whole life.
