my brain is trying to tell me something...

[lagilman]

I never get the really wild, weird-ass, WTF dreams. My subconscious is remarkably straightforward in working things through, and most of the time I either a) dream in archetypes (oh, loook, I'm walking through an old, bare house, toward the attic, and I meet up with an old woman whose hair is being brushed by a young girl! And there's a unicorn on the street below! [actual dream] or b) have a very reality-based dream about exactly what's bothering me (sitting having dinner with friends who have suddenly decided I've blighted their world and cannot be spoken to any more [also an actual dream]).

I'm starting to wonder if that's because I use all my weirdness ideas up in the job, or if I just don't have the time or energy, even in my dreams, to puzzle through the twists and turns. I'm busy, here! Let's get the issue out and on the table, already!


So. How do you dream? Would Freud be proud, or just bored?

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I don't dream.

Okay, that can't be objectively true. But I remember perhaps two dreams a year, and I remember a snippet of them--half a sentence, whatever.

Somebody told me that the shorter (and deeper) one sleeps, the less one recalls of one's dreams. This seems anecdotally correct, because I habitually sleep 5-6 hours, and my friend Sarah, who has these long complicated phenominally intricate dreams, sleeps more like ten.

[lagilman]

hrm. I remember a dream almost every morning, even if (as tonight) I only got four hours' sleep total.

But we knew I was gonna throw the curve off when we started.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

how long do you sleep if you don't set an alarm and you awake feeling rested?

[lagilman]

you awake feeling rested?

what is this feeling you describe?

I average about six hours of sleep a night. I might nap, but the only ime I 'sleep in' is when I'm sick. Too many years of getting into the office by 8:30 left their toll -- I'm awake if not actually 'up' -- b 6:30 every morning.

My journal name was not by chance.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*snrch*

Ah, sleep dysfunction, the bladder stone of the late 20th and early 21st centuries....

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

a) dream in archetypes... or b) have a very reality-based dream about exactly what's bothering me ...

I guess it wouldn't surprise you that this is exactly how I dream, right?

Right.

Didn't think so.

More (b) than (a) though, strangely enough.

[wrathchylde.livejournal.com]

Hm, you may be onto something there. Now that I think about it, my dreams have been a lot tamer the last few years, since I've been writing regularly, though I am still subject to the occasional nightmares and video-game type scenarios.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

I dream two types of dreams: First, as if I'm sitting at a computer writing the dream out. I even edit myself. ("No, no, that's stupid. *click, click, click, type, type* Ah, that's better." Visually, the dream rewinds and fixes itself.) Alot of my dreams are that way.

I also have funky-ass dreams that make no sense, seriously, and either make me terrified, sad to the point I cry in my sleep, or some other extremely intense emotion.

And probably weirdest of all, I typically never dream of myself. There are always other people involved, people I don't know, having issues I couldn't possibly "relate" to. Ex: I dreamed the other night that I was a single african-american woman in her forties who was trying to figure out how to tell her twelve-year-old daughter that she (the mother) had terminal cancer without freaking her daughter out. This was one of those intensely sad dreams where I woke up crying.

I'm suspicious that these last type of dreams are actually my mind "wandering" while I sleep and attaching itself to random real people . . . but that's just too weird to contemplate.

[delkytlar.livejournal.com]

My dreams tend to be real world situations, but with all sorts of people from various time periods in my life showing up together, and then things get surreal. The other night I had one where my Christina is about 25 and about to get married. She, Amy, Austin, my Mom, my Dad, Christina's fiance (who had no face or name), and I were in a restaurant. As we were discussing the wedding plans, the restaurant announced that Roy Rogers was going to sing. My dad said "I love Roy Roger" (which he does), and Roy heard him and had him come up on stage to sing "Happy Trails". (Dad, after being told this the next day, thought this was the most fabulous dream, and asked if he could borrow it.)

Then, there is the recurring nightmare of a particular day in 2003 that wakes me in a cold sweat. I had it nightly for about a year and a half. Since then, it's tapered off, and I only have it every couple of months now. Very real, very detailed, very unpleasant.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

I'm suspicious that these last type of dreams are actually my mind "wandering" while I sleep and attaching itself to random real people . . . but that's just too weird to contemplate.

So this is where you don't want to be told that the first phenomenon is commonly called "lucid dreaming" and the second is generally considered a variety of astral travel...?

[lagilman]

Gimmie back my brain!

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those dreamers who has the sort of trippy dreams. You know, where the Red Baron confesses that WWI had nothing to do with ArchDuke Ferdinand and everything to do with the inability of the Germans to import low-cost, high-quality orange juice. Or where Captain Hook tearfully admits that the reason he became a pirate is because he was sent to boarding school as a child. And my all time favorite -- the mix of the Arthurian saga, Animal Farm, and a traveling company of Shakespearian players.

There don't seem to be any issues, or underlying themes, or any of that deep, heavy stuff. Just a random assortment of thoughts and images accumulated throughout the day, all thrown into the mental Cuisinart and hit "Puree". I rarely, if ever, dream about characters or current projects, although a dream will occassionally give me the idea for a new project.

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

Although, this is the reason I can't watch the news. It will all get spewed back in my dreams. And I'll wake up from nightmares. Reading the news is okay, it's the images that I can't deal with.

[lagilman]

I rarely have nightmares. Even post-9/11, when I was subject to PTSD symptoms, I was more likley to simply not sleep than have nightmares.

That said, when I have one, it's a wake-screaming (or crying) doozy.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Every now and then I get the weird-ass: the meteor shower in my backyard, the disembodied hands, the faces embedded in the wall. Sometimes I get very cognitive dreams that are clearly attempts at making sense of something going on in my life. Other times, I get the archetypal stuff: wandering through a house, wandering through a garden maze, wandering through a school where the staircases end in empty space, stepping on stage and forgetting my lines. And sometimes, as I've mentioned in my own journal, I hear The Voice, which always seems to have some Zen-like statement for me about writing. It hasn't visited lately. I wish I could do something about that. ::sigh::

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Oh, and when I have nightmares, I have nightmares: shaking the whole bed with my trembling nightmares. I have a very vivid (and f*cked up) imagination.

[gjules.livejournal.com]

I very rarely remember my dreams. When I do, it's almost always when I'm (a) sick, (b) overtired, (c) generally stressed, or (d) wigging about something in particular. Dreams resulting from (d) are really damn obvious, because my subconcious is about as subtle as a brickbat when it wants to get something across. (EG, before moving back into the dorms at school every year I had nightmares about the housing situation.)

Dreams resulting from the first three are all over the map. I generally don't dream about/as myself, and my dreams generally aren't set in my day-to-day world -- mostly, they're not even set in this universe. They also tend to have plotlines and a fair amount of forward motion. I suspect I actually have these sorts of dreams all the time, and the sick/tired/stressed factor just makes me more likely to remember them.

[hilleviw.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid I had a recurring nightmare about cannibal pirates invading our Surrey home. While I hid inside a kitchen cabinet, watching, the pirates captured the rest of my family, chopped them up and ate them raw. It was in black and white, except for the blood and always scared me awake. Once my crap breathing was brought under control by meds the dream went away and I started sleeping through the night.

Other than that, I never remembered my dreams. Then in my teens I knew some of the dream-masters quite well, and - I know it sounds weird - Jeremy Taylor taught me how to dream. Now the only dreams I really remember are ones I consciously create by setting them up as I am starting to fall asleep. I don't choose the whole thing, but I pick a mood and a couple of the main details. For example, last night, Johnny Depp came over to takea break from promoting his film and we picked wild concord grapes and made grape jelly together. I know: totally a dream; the grapes won't be ripe for another two months.

[greeneyedkzin.livejournal.com]

Although I do dream of actual people and occurrences in my past, they're arranged in a way I can only call metaphorical.

When I remember my dreams in the morning, they do indeed reflect how I'm processing current experiences.

For example, I'm about to start a new job. It's a good one. So of course I dreamt of my first job after grad school, where I encountered the first of many bosses who were -- let's say -- less than fair or competent, but managed to get away with it.

For the first time, however, I saw that the place was pretty. It simply wasn't a place I wanted to be in.

From that dream, I deduce that -- stage fright be damned -- I'm far more positive in my outlook than I've been.

My dreams tend to be paradigmatic, especially at stresspoints in my life. I've had a bundle of them.

As for nightmares, the last few I've had, I've actually taken control of the dream and waked myself.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

Some time ago there was a guy on NPR who had tried to corrolate the types of dreams people had with their political beliefs. He claimed that progressives had wacky dreams full of weird imagery and conservatives had dreams about their every day life.

It sounded pretty thin to me, but he got to talk to Linda Wertheimer, so good for him.

[dianora2.livejournal.com]

My anxiety dreams tend to be obvious and real-world-based -- I have a final and haven't been going to classes; a science project is due and I haven't started it; I'm leaving on a trip and am late for my plane. But then most of my other dreams are completely bizarre. I had one the other night where I was in the car with someone and we spotted an animal, I can't remember what kind, I think maybe a cat, wrapped in backpack straps and hanging from a post. We pulled over to rescue it and on the ground was an enormous fish, desperately trying to breathe. We rescued the cat and went back home, and when we got there the cat turned into Winnie the Pooh and Roo stuffed animals, which were infected with small crawling bugs. And we had to decide whether to take them to the vet or just throw them out of the house, which I did not want to do. That's all I remember. But that's not even a super weird one for me. *g*

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Are these good? Bad?

And I also left out the third kind of dream I have. But that kind is a "private" dream that, while extremely fun, shouldn't be discussed openly on LJ.

Working out things

[johnwrt1.livejournal.com]

I am convinced that dreaming is the mind’s way of working out problems that the conscious mind hasn't been able to handle. The problems could be personal or work related. I have often found the solutions to difficult problems are obvious in that half sleep state as I wake up. If things are going well and I have no issues, I tend not to dream at all. General anxiety and stress doesn’t cause me to dream.