What's it like to have a dream?
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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?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.
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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?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.
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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.
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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?wrote on last edited by [email protected]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.
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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.
Thanks to this post I just learned I also have aphantasia!
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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!
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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.
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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 live a extremely clean life. Zero drugs. Makes me want to try a induced hallucination...
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I live a extremely clean life. Zero drugs. Makes me want to try a induced hallucination...
Good call.
Hallucinations are fun, if they are purely visual and you know they are coming..
I have olfactory hallucinations as well as occasional auditory (related to migraines and headaches, not drug use) and those are just very mundane. Lol
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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.
Also the dreams that feel like distant memories and can sometimes be difficult discerning if they really happened or not
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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?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.
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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
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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.
That's awesome. This is the kind of thing I feel like I'm missing out on.
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That's awesome. This is the kind of thing I feel like I'm missing out on.
Don’t get too excited, this is an extremely rare occurrence for me as it’s only happened once before. But 12 years ago when I worked in a call center doing tech support in the US. It was near constant nightmares about getting calls in the call center, and the beep in the headset. I didn’t get good sleep or enough sleep between shifts. You win some you lose some.
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Don’t get too excited, this is an extremely rare occurrence for me as it’s only happened once before. But 12 years ago when I worked in a call center doing tech support in the US. It was near constant nightmares about getting calls in the call center, and the beep in the headset. I didn’t get good sleep or enough sleep between shifts. You win some you lose some.
My career is starting to stabilize and stress is going down.
From tech support to server work. Job hopped until I got a good work life balance now.
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My career is starting to stabilize and stress is going down.
From tech support to server work. Job hopped until I got a good work life balance now.
I became a stay at home dad a few years ago, so while I have given up some work stress, I received a different kind of stress.
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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?You dream every night, everyone does. You just don't remember the dreams on waking.
IDK about windows to the subconscious but if I have an interesting or recurring dream, sometimes I try to interpret it, and have gotten some things out of doing that.
Maybe there is some gadget that can detect when you are dreaming. You wouldn't want to have it wake you automatically on a regular basis (disrupting sleep isn't always avoidable, but it isn't good). But you could try it once or twice and see if you remember the dream then.
Dreaming is also called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, because people's eyeballs jerk around during that sleep phase. Usually the jerking is pretty random. Once during a sleep study, a guy's REM suddenly changed to very rhythmic, repeated side to side movements. That was weird enough that the researcher woke him and asked him what he had been dreaming about. The answer: playing ping pong. The eye movements had tracked the ball going back and forth.
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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?Check out the Twin Peaks series. For me that’s the closest I’ve ever seen on screen
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Thanks to this post I just learned I also have aphantasia!
Welcome to the club. In that case you might have SDAM too (hope not!)
https://sdamstudy.weebly.com/what-is-sdam.html
On the plus side we get a boost to abstract thinking, spatial reasoning and speed reading (if you also don’t have an involuntary monologue when reading).
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I live a extremely clean life. Zero drugs. Makes me want to try a induced hallucination...
I’ve taken every exotic research chemical and psychedelic you can think of. I can confirm hallucinations work the same with aphantasia.
Although I didn’t ‘trip’, which is the delusional state people get into when they take pills/mdma and stay up for a few days. Start talking to plastic bags, on the phone with their hand, etc. might just be me though.