dreams, do you remember them?
 

is there a reason I can't remember my dreams? I use to be able to do that when I was a kid, but have not been able to so that in a very long time, bit and pieces here and there but very rare. It is because I am beat tired and my brain is trying to get rest? My latest sleep paralysis got me thinking.

Ever thought of being checked out at a sleep clinic? It might be worthwhile...I often remember dreams, but forget them soon after because they're nonsensical.

Reason I ask is because a person with sleep apnea once told me one symptom was a lack of dreams.

I remmember the ones I don't really want to remmember. But the ones I'd like to remmeber more of go :(


I had a Maria Sharapova dream once (not sexual) that was so real. We were just hanging out together drinking coffee, laughing. I've tried to go back there but I can't.

Nope. Maybe one (pieces of) every two years or so and the snippets I do remember are seriously effed up. Like Hunter S. Thompson effed up.

I have many dreams per night and remember all of them (or at least I remember many dreams per night). I actually think dreaming is fun because you get to do things (good and bad) for which there are no real consequences in the end.

One thing that I think is interesting in dreams is recurring themes. I have different versions of the same dream very often and wonder what that really means.

Edit - I had a dream a couple of months ago that was so real and so profound that I actually thought about turning it into a story. It was about life after death and how the whole process works (which is odd for me as I don't believe any of that...)

My wife remembers her dreams in great detail. My noggin purges them when I wake up.

Doug and trekkor are finally getting to you, Mike! :eek:

I don't usually remember my dreams. Maybe remember one a year. When I was a kid, I remembered them more often. Don't have sleep apnea.

I remember having them once upon a time.

Then I started living them instead of dreaming them. Life is short and you only get one shot.

Can't remember squat. Maybe one dream every 2 weeks. Otherwise it all gets flushed/filed away.

If you haven't watched the flick "Inception" check it out...

Dreams are very interesting - while there are many interpretations of what dreams are, my $0.42 is that they are simply the mind sorting random jumbles of memory - sometimes they weave a sensible story, sometimes they don't.

Sometimes your 'awake' circumstances prompt you to have a specific themed dream. For example, I have a recurring dream that I'm back in college, and half way through the semester, I realize I haven't attended a class I enrolled in. My interpretation of that dream is that I am preoccupied with a project or task that isn't complete yet, and I am concerned about missing an important component. (Ex: filling out tax forms, and you miss a deduction...)

There are things you can do to remember your dreams. First, before you fall asleep, convince yourself that you will dream, AND when you awake, you will remember the dream. (Repeat to yourself "I am going to dream, and I will remember those dreams.") It can help you remember your dreams. Another thing to do is to place a notepad & pen on your nightstand. When you awake, jot down any recollection of your dream. In the morning, you may have forgotten what you dreamt about, but you have the story on paper, and that will 'jog' your memory.

Your mind does not differentiate emotions from dreaming vs. emotions from real life experiences. Thus, if you had a dream that makes you happy, and you awake, you will likely have feelings of happiness. Weird.

There is an interesting concept called lucid dreams -- that's when you are actually able to control your dreams. Not sure how to get in the state of mind to be able to do this, but is an interesting concept.

-Z-man.

I have had one specific dream since early childhood. I still wake up in a cold sweat after having it. Same dream each time. Did not understand it as a child but I understood the fear I was feeling when I woke up. Dark metal hallway with grates under my feet and flashing flickering lights. Suddenly there is a shudder and hallway starts to fill rapidly with water. I usually wake up right before it covers my head. Get cold chills just thinking about it.

Don't know why I have this dream but wish I didn't.:(

When you experience this dream, are you having times where you feel overwhelmed? Maybe lots of pressure at work, or bills that need to be paid? That could explain your dreams.

But I'm no dreamweaver...

-Z-man.

Apologies for you folks who have this song in your head:
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Personally, I love a good nightmare. Nothing better than realizing it was just a dream.

i have great dreams. very vivid and storylike. i used to wake up and write whole pages about my dreams. i think i could probably submit some to scriptwriter and make some short films.

dream memory usually fades within 10seconds of getting up out of bed. but u can train yourself to wake up but not "get up". then put a pencil and pad of paper on nightstand and just jot down whatever you remember. i usually go for outline form and just add keywords of what i remember. doesn't have to read and make sense. just jot whatever comes to mind. makes for great reading afterwards :)

i have a bunch of recurring dreams. i have names for them now. "cave boy" "emperor's assistant" "hitler on giant robot" "shanghai virus"

but my most frequent one is this:
*fade in* (actual FADE IN in my dreams)
i'm in middle of bombed out war zone. WWII european theater. poland, france or germany. sounds of artillery or bombs exploding in the background.
i'm on a walkway going from my left to my right, possiblity hallway of a bombed out building. ahead of me, i see debris of what was a building.
one wall of the building still stands to my left. there are some germans soldiers moving thru the debris in front of me heading away.
i hear a noise to my right. i turn, it's a nazi soldier pointing a Kar98 at me. he fires. KABOOM. the bullet is 3 ft from me

i wake up.

nope..i rarely remember my dreams.

and i am happy about it. if i remembered them, i would either wake up scared, or sorely disappointed.

no thanks.

I have all kinds of dreams, usually wandering around or driving. I like getting behind the wheel of my Miata or the old E in my dreams (gone for a year and a half), but sometimes it is my truck or even a large truck or a school bus.

When I worked as a sales rep/manager for the dairy, I would have recurring dreams about walking into one of our major accounts to find none of our product on the shelf, or opening the back of one our trucks to discover none of our biggest seller.
Ten years after leaving the dairy, I still have one of those from time to time.
Usually now I can feel the amusement within the dream, knowing this is no longer my situation. It is kind of odd to know I am dreaming, but the dream continues.

The mind is a funny place.
Best
Les

My scariest dream was barelling down a road as a passenger in a Jeep. The actual road ended but a 2-track continued up a very steep hill. We went rocketing a hundred feet almost straight up into the air. Right at the apex, when motionless I woke up, heart pounding drenched in sweat. A somnambulistic panic attack!

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) disrupts or prevents deep and REM sleep by making people struggle for breaths when they relax (falling deeper into sleep). Effectively, they cannot get well rested or dream because they're in and out of twighlight for most of the night. For some sleeping on a side or their abdomen can help as it can prevent relaxed soft tissue from collapsing the airway.

Some think OSA folks die in their sleep when blood CO2 rises enough to cause changes which prevent them from waking to clear their airway...game over with no obvious cause for death.

Nope. Only sometimes wake up with the notion that I was dreaming about something really weird.

I definitely remember my dreams. If you are a creative person, it can be helpful to write them down right away in a notebook you keep by the bed, perhaps in an end table.

i had a great dream last night that I was a sex therapist, (I kid you not), and I recorded messages to the woman I was "helping out" on a stack of vintage audio equipment. It was Yamaha gear. The woman was someone famous, but that's as much as I'm giving away for free. :)

I honestly have no clue WTF it means, other than maybe I'm due for some vitamin P. Hoping. :)

I have an interesting story, for you dream theorists.

I was a lawyer for 13 years. Back then, our files were kept on paper, in manila folders, with deadlines written on slips of paper and in big red calendar books. It wasn't until the end of my career that litigation calendaring software was being used. Basically you had to keep track of deadlines manually. And if you were busy, every day you had two, three, five critical deadlines across the fifty or so cases you were handling. Critical meaning if you did not get a brief filed or a document served or a form delivered by 4:30 pm that day, your client's case was prejudiced and you had committed malpractice. Kind of a nightmare. Ulcer stuff.

So, I don't normally remember my dreams. But during those 13 years, if I did wake up and remembered a dream, that was my sign to rush to the office and physically search through every single case and find the deadline that I had miscalendared and forgotten. I'd find it, and make the deadline. It worked EVERY SINGLE TIME.

When I stopped being a lawyer, my "dream alert" stopped too. My dreams no longer alert me to companies that are about to miss earnings or stocks that are about to blow up. Bummer.

I keep a log of my dreams to see if I can find a pattern to them. They usually revolve around water...ocean to be more precise. At least a couple times a month I will have a dream where I remember it.

OSA also causes atrial fibrillation in about 50% of those who have it.

I remember my dreams some of the time. I think the deeper I sleep, the more favorable it is that I will remember them.

I remember most...this one as well:

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I used to, and maybe still do, have a dream that my rotation date from VietNam came and the people in charge lost my papers, I couldn't leave. Felt like Charlie on the MTA.

Interesting. Twenty two years later and I have the exact same nightmare. Nearing finals and suddenly realize I never attended a class I was enrolled in. I graduated from SDSU so that might be a factor :)

Lucid dreaming rocks.

You are dreaming...and then you realize you are dreaming...and then you can control it.

During the dream, you will suddenly realize "hey, this is kinds f''''ed up....maybe this is a dream". You can test yourself in the dream by holding your nose and trying to breathe: if you can still breathe....yep, you are dreaming...from there on, it's up to you where you go.

Takes some practice

This is much more common than most people realize--and people have been having dreams like this since the beginning of recorded history (there are written records of such dreams from ancient China--rather than school the dreams were related to civil service exams). The going theory is that these types of dreams reflect a time of transition from child/student to adulthood.

Mine is always about an English class that I never attended and never wrote any of the required papers. Must be because I hate writing, and I was always afraid I wouldn't graduate because of some inane liberal arts requirement (I was an engineering student). :D

I've also had a few dreams that I wanted to use as the basis for a sci fi novel or two...but cf. my comment above about writing. :(

I rarely remember my dreams. One of my favorites is flying in my dreams.

those are cool.

This. I've been lucid dreaming for years. Its pretty killer.

Sometimes I solve problems in my dreams.

I also have a recurring dream that the outcome of a real life event is changed. I love that one, it 's almost like a daydream, but is so real when I wake up it takes a few seconds to come back to reality.

I seem to have more "bounce" dreams than just flying dreams. Where you kind of bounce up and fly around for a while and glide back down to bounce up again. Probably some kind of symbolism there, but I think it's kind of cool to just bounce.:)

Ditto...and I also graduated from SDSU...home of the mighty Jackrabbits!!! What are the odds??:)

I asked a fella I know if he ever is in his wheelchair during a dream...he says he is always able to walk in all of his dreams. I've also never met anyone who doesn't fly in their dreams.

Damn, is it just me because I seem to only remember bits and pieces of my dreams. I remember one from last night, again only little bits of it. I am surprise so many people remember them so clearly.

This is apparently a VERY common dream to have.

I also had it for near 40 years after getting out of undergrad............

weird.

I remember a few dreams. I never have nightmares. I do have the opposite of a nightmare, a nightfunny? I often wake up giggling. My wife wakes me up sometimes because I am giggling in my sleep and making so much noise she can't sleep. I usually forget the dream in a few hours unless I talk about it. The dream is never as funny when I am awake. I have always believed dreams are just your brain doing house cleaning. They have no profound meaning at all.