Ask Lemmy

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.

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").

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'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.

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.

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

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.

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.