O/T: HEALTH What do you think of dreams/dreaming?

[Fox]

I don't mean success dreams - I mean literal asleep at night dreams.

- Do you dream a lot at night?
- Are they intense or normal?
- Do you think it relates to anything in your actual life?
- If so how do you interpret what they might mean/signal?

For as long as I can remember I have had super vivid intense dreams.
I am often in the middle of some crazy situation and a ton of wild stuff happens.
I would say 80% of mornings I wake up right after some type of intense dreams.

I also don't take any stimulants (no coffee, alcohol, very little sugar etc) and sleep usually 10pm-6am.

Would anyone with insight say this normal (I have a strong imagination) or a sign of stress or fatigue? I had a sleep wristband thing before and always scored 95-100% excellent sleep - so my sleep quality is good on paper.

Anyone want to share their own insight or experiences?

 

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[tigerbalm]

I would think that intense dreams are a sign of good sleep. Dreams are an indication that you have entered REM sleep, and this typically happens more at the end of your last few sleep cycles. As for the content, not sure I can comment. If you haven't, check out "why we sleep" by Mathew Walker, it is an amazing book that covers most of the science of sleep.

 

[Devampre]

- Do you dream a lot at night?
- Are they intense or normal?
- Do you think it relates to anything in your actual life?
- If so how do you interpret what they might mean/signal?

1. Yes, I dream every night.

2. Some nights they are more intense than others, but I'd say that even the normal dreams I have are still quite silly to reflect on. I also experience sleep paralysis once in a while. Which used to be quite frightening, but now I find those experiences fascinating.

3. Sometimes, there are correlations between my dreams and my life. So I may dream of people I know , places I've been or life experiences I had. But, as the dream plays out these often change. The people I know might turn into chickens, my home town suddenly is on a different planet entirely and that life experience where I simply hit the ditch with my car is now extremely dangerous as now I am teetering over a cliff and there are zombies running towards me.

4. I'm a skeptic when it comes to dreaming. Is there real meaning behind my dreams? Can I be sure that there is meaning behind my life... Okay, I'll stay out of the existential weeds and answer the question. I interpret my dreams sort of as if they are movies.

Sometimes there is substance to what I experience in a dream that can have some impact on my reality. For example, once in a while I'll have a dream where I hear music and then the first thing I do when I wake up is learn to play it on guitar or keyboard.

Other times my dreams may be weird for the sake of being weird and even if it seems quite vivid.

I had a dream I was walking down a long hallway and having a conversation with some intelligent man. Right off the bat, he told me he knew I was dreaming and tried to explain how the universe, reality and everything works. Of course it was well beyond my level of understanding for him to give me a concise answer, so he told me to find his book or paper that mentioned "Offbeat Physics." I woke up and started searching the internet... That man in my dream either lied to me, I couldn't find it or there never was such a work published.

Would anyone with insight say this normal (I have a strong imagination) or a sign of stress or fatigue? I had a sleep wristband thing before and always scored 95-100% excellent sleep - so my sleep quality is good on paper.

Anyone want to share their own insight or experiences?

It may be normal for you. Dreaming seems to be an area where different people have a different baseline of normalcy. Of course, if one ever was concerned that it could signify some underlying health issue I would recommend seeing a doctor or sleep specialist.

 

[Raja]

I would think that intense dreams are a sign of good sleep. Dreams are an indication that you have entered REM sleep, and this typically happens more at the end of your last few sleep cycles. As for the content, not sure I can comment. If you haven't, check out "why we sleep" by Mathew Walker, it is an amazing book that covers most of the science of sleep.

man, I sleep like a baby still I rarely dream(maybe I forget before waking up).

 

[Kybalion]

My dreams are intense. Sometimes my brain comes up with dumb inventions, and sometimes I am too excited/frightened/confused to go back to sleep.

Tonight I had a dream about composing a sick rap song and producing a music video clip for it... I woke up excited af...

It's morning now, and when I think back to lyrics it's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard.

P.S.

I am not even a hiphoper.

 

[Xeon]

I don't mean success dreams - I mean literal asleep at night dreams.

- Do you dream a lot at night?
- Are they intense or normal?
- Do you think it relates to anything in your actual life?
- If so how do you interpret what they might mean/signal?

1) Seldom. Maybe once every few months.

2) Normal, short ones.

3) Yes, sometimes. When I think about certain things a lot during the day for weeks, it may manifest itself as a dream once at night.

4) Dreams are just the subconscious mind coming into play.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

This thread is already attracting the meditation spammers. Deleted 3 today.

That said, I used to have nightmares all the time, really freaky shit.

Once I cut out the sugar in the late afternoon/evening, they stopped.

Now my dreams are pretty banal and harmless, usually on the positive side.

 

[PapaGang]

- Do you dream a lot at night?
- Are they intense or normal?
- Do you think it relates to anything in your actual life?
- If so how do you interpret what they might mean/signal?

1. I average 2 dreams per night, if not more. Also no caffeine or stimulants. I find that I dream more when I'm "clean."

2. They are weird. At first they seemed silly, but then I started reading Jung, and now I'm actually beginning to think that my subconscious is telling me things. Most are not menacing at all. I used to have threatening dreams, but over time I took control of those and I almost never have a nightmare. Some can be intense, but not threatening.

3. Yes. Sometimes no. I'd say 40% yes, the rest is gibberish nonsense I can't figure out.

4. Mostly I write them down, think about them, and usually I come up with an answer as I'm writing. I actually think Jung (and Jordan Peterson) are on to something when they say that dreams really mean something. I just don't buy that that's always the case however.

Example: I frequently dream that I'm in a subway / underground rail system, but with a lot of shops and sidewalks and alleys, just like above ground, with signs and intersections. Once I was wandering around and this person told me, “The thing about being underground is that it’s easy to get lost, so you must pay attention to the signs. The words are important.”

I interpreted that to be my subconscious mind telling me to watch out and pay attention to where the hell I'm going when I'm dreaming.
I guess?

 

[plutownium]

- Do you dream a lot at night?
- Are they intense or normal?
- Do you think it relates to anything in your actual life?
- If so how do you interpret what they might mean/signal?

- I dream about once every 5 days. If you count the strange content the mind creates while on the precipece of sleep, then its every day.

- They're generally normal. About once every 4 months I have a vivid dream though. Ones that probably mean something in a metaphorical manner. For instance, I had a dream about a nuke going off in my city shortly after getting over my ex. An indication of clearing out the past.

- As above, yeah sometimes they relate to my life. Another intense dream I had featured an airplane and my grandmother's house sitting empty. My grandfather had recently passed away and grandma isn't far off. Something about it being time to pack up and move on.

- re: interpretation, when the meaning isn't clear, I sometimes tell two friends about the dreams. One is a hypnotist who recognizes complex visual metaphors. The other is like... an artist.

 

[Ing]

Thanks for the thread. It makes me think about dreaming for the first time since an eternty .


Dreams come up every now and than.

There are problem solving dreams. The are about real dreams in my life, but only 10% are helpful. Often they are abstruse or funny.

There are sexual dreams. They are funny sometimes and sometimes I enjoy them a lot.

There are strange ones.
One strange dream is me flying over an area of gravel by wagging my arms, which is very exhausting in my dream. On the gravel there are lying coins. One and two DM coins ( DM is Detsche Mark, the money we had before Euros).
And I can collect them only while flying.
In the end I either have a lot of coins or don. Depends on ... . Don’t know.
That dream is repeating since about 50 years again and again.

In general I dream less as I become older.

 

[becks22]

I never remember by dreams unless something horrible happens but I know I have them. Sometimes I wake up in a sweat or with my heart racing so I know I'm dreaming about something but very rarely do I remember. I also know I don't get the best sleep possible. My cat likes to wake me in up in the middle of the night when he's hungry. He also has a tendency to like to lay down on my hip bones which isn't that comfy for relaxing.

The dreams I remember something involving loss or death usually. I have nightmares on occasion about being at my mom's funeral (she's 70 and very healthy). The only funny-esq dream I have is that I'm still in HS and I forget my gym clothes and need to take an absent for gym that day and being the nerd I am, that makes me very upset.

 

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[fridge]

If I take ZMA (a magnesium supplement that puts you into deeper REM) I tend to have extremely vivid dreams. Normally my dreams mean nothing, but there are a few times in my life where I believe that my dreams did symbolize something. For example, last year I was going through a gritty breakup where I slept only 2-4ish~ hours a night due to pure stress and anxiety. During that time, I had a dream where I was being chased by bears (the interpretation of this dream from what I've read is that you're running away from problems instead of facing them head on). A month or two later after I had somewhat recovered from the breakup and came to grips with it, I had a dream where I had killed the exact same bears that had been chasing me in the previous dream (the interpretation of this dream is that you have become stronger and are ready to tackle the difficulties of life). Personally, I don't believe in nearly anything (I'm not religious or spirtual) but I can't help but believe my subconscious was giving me a message through those dreams.

 

[Itizn]

I think they are mostly a result of what we spend a lot of time thinking about, either conciously or subconciously.

I'm an infrequent dreamer. Had one last night for the first time in quite a long time. But it was centered around a person that I was thinking a lot about, particuarly that day.

 

[Fox]

If I take ZMA (a magnesium supplement that puts you into deeper REM) I tend to have extremely vivid dreams.

I had to stop taking ZMA - was like doing acid every night.

 

[AceVentures]

Vivid dreams all the time. There are definitely patterns that emerge between them. They're also cyclical. This has led me to relate the patterns in my dreams to uncover aspects of my subconscious desires and behaviors.

I have a recurring dream of being late for a flight. The gist of this dream is that I, in the middle of some happening, will remember that I have a flight, and I'm typically 30 minutes or less away from the flight departure. I consciously know I cannot make this flight. Despite knowing, I spend the rest of my dream anxiously dealing with any idea and abstraction in a fight against all odds to make this flight. I use to really struggle with this dream, and I thought it related to something specific in my life.

There was a time that I had this dream every night. My girlfriend suggested I practice "f*ck the flight". I started consciously talking out loud, reminding myself that there's no flight in the world I give a shit about. f*ck the flight, I'll stay home and smoke a joint. I literally kept saying some variant of this hoping it addresses my dream.

After some time, my flight dreams began to change. I would almost glitch in my dream. I'd realize I'm late for a flight, but by this point I believe I had some conscious adaptation to the idea of "f*ck the flight", so in the dream I glitch, a moment of awareness, and the dream suddenly changes.

Alas, I dream just as vividly as before, it's the content that is ever changing. What I find important is the general gist, or the energy, or the feeling of the dream. I can't know for sure, but I intuitively feel like what I experience in my dreams is a manifestation of the emotion I carry subconsciously. I can typically tell if I've been experiencing angst, lust, rage, excitement or depression through my dreams. If I've been leaning on a certain emotion without being aware of it, my dreams will start to eventually point to the obvious. Maybe not the content, but more how I carry myself in my dream.