xkcd

by **IcedT** » Tue Feb 22, 2011 7:53 am UTC

My dreams rarely have a 'mission' or anything like that. They tend to be more exploration, and oddly most of the people who appear in my dreams are people who I rarely think about or talk to- distant relatives, acquaintances from high school and the like. When someone close to me appears in a dream it's a pretty big deal. People also change shape or form pretty regularly, and buildings, places and objects tend to be weird, counterintuitive combinations of normal ones. Sometimes the general geometry of a place is folded in like an M.C. Escher painting, or multi-tiered, with a sense of climbing or descending between different layers of the dream, or changes dramatically as the dream progresses. It's also fairly common for me to dream that I'm partly or fully naked- these aren't embarrassment dreams like the classic "giving a speech in your underwear" one, it's more like my identity is completely exposed and without pretext.

I always get the sense that my dreams are incredibly rich with insight into my personality, but I have a pretty tough time remembering enough details to make much sense of anything individually :/

by **Promicin** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 1:37 pm UTC

I used to have nightmares about missing Halloween at least once a month from ages 14-16. I still have them on occassion.

by **roband** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 2:41 pm UTC

I dream a lot about being in places which resemble places I know, but are different in lots of ways.

Like, I'll be in my grandparents old house, but once you get upstairs, it's a mansion which is huge.
Or, my local shopping centre, but different again.

I have had lucid dreams 4 or 5 times, ever. Each time was awesome and came after waking up and going back to sleep.

This is where I get weird.
I have a repetitive dream.
I wake up, knowing that I've had it.
I will experience things in day-to-day life which make me think, "oh, that's in the dream" but then I can't understand any link between what I've been doing and the dream.
I have no idea what the dream is about.

It's the most unsettling thing in the world. Waking up, knowing I've had the dream but not knowing what the hell I was dreaming about.
This has happened since I was a little kid, and I've managed to piece some of it together:
There's a lot of pressure on me.
There are numbers which are being counted upwards, starting fast and getting faster.
I know that the numbers will never stop, because numbers never do.
There's something being said, repeatedly.
I don't know what it is.

The thing that made me realise about the repetitive words are songs with repetitive lyrics. They often make me think of the dream.

Like I said, weird, eh?

by **DavidSpencer** » Wed Feb 23, 2011 11:25 pm UTC

I've never thought about it before, but it seems like a lot of my dreams involve not being able to do something right. I'll try to run from someone, but my legs are stuck and somehow I can only waddle or jog. I want to play chess, but the pieces are invisible, or I can't remember quite how they move. Just last night, I was doing 50 mph in my neighborhood (~80 kph) and I tried to brake, but I wasn't slowing down at all.

I don't know what that means, especially since what I'm probably worst at in real life (talking to people, although that is getting easier) is never a problem in dreams. In dreams, I just say any old thing and the other person accepts it and shoots nonsense back at me that I understand absolutely.

EDIT:

roband wrote:There are numbers which are being counted upwards, starting fast and getting faster.
I know that the numbers will never stop, because numbers never do.

Time? Just a guess.

by **roband** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 12:39 am UTC

No, because it's visible. I think.

by **TheChewanater** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 2:59 am UTC

I often dream my right hand is missing. This is especially disturbing when I wake up to paresthesia in that hand. I also dream about something chasing me a lot, but I'm not sure what. It often starts yelling, "Get up, you're gonna miss the bus!" towards the end of the dream. My only lucid dream was when I was really really young. I was in Bikini Bottom jumping around ridiculously high or something.

by **mmark9094** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 4:45 pm UTC

I've noticed people talk a lot about recurring dreams. Strangely enough, I never have the same dream twice. Maybe becoming so good at remembering them negates the chances of me having them again?

by **L4nce0** » Thu Feb 24, 2011 11:26 pm UTC

I just don't remember my dreams 98% of the time. If I do, I'll forget quite quickly. The joys of it all happening in the short term memory centers and me sleeping for way too long =) OR I just kinda block them. I'll admit I've had a few dreams I remember, and wish I didn't. We have all had those, no? The theme is 100% I'm trying to get somewhere and things just get more crazy and I keep getting farther away from the goal.. but the montemy in the dream prevents me from being upset... That's really the only way to express them. Toss in some craaaazy stuff. I wont tell you about the dream that stemmed from me disliking Michale Jordan shoes. Which I do, they look stupid.

by **PatrickRsGhost** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 5:15 pm UTC

roband wrote:I dream a lot about being in places which resemble places I know, but are different in lots of ways.

Like, I'll be in my grandparents old house, but once you get upstairs, it's a mansion which is huge.
Or, my local shopping centre, but different again.

I've had these dreams as well. I'll dream that I'm leaving my bedroom in the house I live in now, but when I open the door, instead of the flight of stairs I have to go down, I'm in the hallway in the apartment my roommate and I lived in, or I might be at my grandma's house when I lived with her from 2000 to 2002.

I once had a dream where I was following her around as she was getting ready to go somewhere, with her brushing her hair, putting on a black vest she wore over a red blouse with a black skirt, putting on her earrings, and every room we entered was a room in a different place she lived in, like her house she lived in before she died, then the house before that, then one of her apartments, and at one point the trailer she lived in.

by **mmark9094** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 8:24 pm UTC

roband wrote:I dream a lot about being in places which resemble places I know, but are different in lots of ways.

Like, I'll be in my grandparents old house, but once you get upstairs, it's a mansion which is huge.
Or, my local shopping centre, but different again.

I as well.

What's really interesting to note is that, months ago, I had a dream about running through a long factory floor, and when I get to the end, I come out into this gravel-dirt-mud parking lot, fog in the air, some old pick up trucks parked outside. Yesternight, I had a dream where I followed someone to a gravel-dirt-mud parking lot, daytime, around high noon, and I never equated the two in the dream, but only after I consciously thought about it for a while. So two dreams that I've had, months apart, took place physically right next to each other, in different time frames. Well, the more recent "half" was all Minecraft style, and the other "half" was Call of Duty style. This still intrigues me.

Anybody who plays Minecraft / watches gameplay video of the game have dreams in the same art style?

Come to think of it, one theme I've always had in my dreams was that there was someone else with me, or other people around. I am never alone in a dream. Odd.

by **roband** » Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:44 pm UTC

I've had Call of Duty, Zombie mode dreams before. Scary

by **PatrickRsGhost** » Mon Feb 28, 2011 11:13 am UTC

Has anyone ever had dreams where characters from your favorite books, movies, or TV shows were in the dream, and they were interacting with you? I've had a couple in the past.

One dream I had when I was about 14 or 15 involved the cartoon series "Goof Troop". I dreamed I was in a comic story of the show from the magazine "Disney Adventures", where Pistol (the little girl) had bought a hypnogun from some comic book ad, and had used it on P.J. and Max, where they jokingly pretended to be under her spell. I played along.

In another dream more recently, about 7 years or so ago, I dreamed I was with Harry, Ron, and Hermione from the Harry Potter books. We were practicing flying without brooms, and we were flying over powerlines and treetops, following a road in a city I used to live in.

These weren't recurring, but I've heard of people having recurring dreams involving characters from TV shows or movies.

by **Zukilune** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 7:03 pm UTC

I don't know if this counts as a dead thread or not, but...

i lucid dream all the time. i didn't know that was uncommon/unusual until probably recently. i'm pretty sure i have never dreamed in black and white, because i remember colors from dreams i had years ago, although they probably only registered once i woke up.

in my dreams i am always wanted, i am the goal or the prize or zombies want to eat me or whatever.

there is usually epic-adventure-style conflict, lots of chase scenes, too. LOTS of chase scenes.

I fly a lot, and fail at flying a lot. i breathe under water, i duel the baddies and even win sometimes.

most dreams are adventure types, some are repeats. like some person said before, i love when it is scary and desperate, because its hella more interesting than what usually happens.

i randomly have dreams, very realistic ones, about missing teeth.

fictional characters show up all the time.

by **Nautilus** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 2:42 am UTC

Sometimes I have magic dreams. Think earthbending a lá Avatar, controlled by focusing a mental itch similar to what results from OCD. Awesome, powerful feeling.

Also zombie dreams, squinty dreams when I'm sleeping in bright light, kissing dreams, etc, etc.

by **Samik** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 4:26 am UTC

Zukilune wrote:i randomly have dreams, very realistic ones, about missing teeth.

I have those periodic teeth-falling-out dreams as well. Always have. Sometimes it's one tooth, and sometimes my jaws are rotting. And everything in between. What's with that?

Mostly my dreams are not dominated by recurring themes. I have a large quantity of dreams I remember every night, and the content swings pretty wildly across just about anything you can imagine.

Some notable tendencies:

Spoiler:

by **Black Dynamite** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:21 am UTC

Living as a girl.

by **Magnanimous** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:47 am UTC

Someone nearly always dies in my dreams, usually one of my friends or me... and I've usually made some kind of mistake and people are yelling at me. (This should be easy to psychoanalyze.)

And I've had a lucid dream a few times, although once you wake up it's a little hard to tell if you actually did have a lucid dream, or if you just dreamed it.

Black Dynamite wrote:Living as a girl.

Put yo' ankles in it!

by **emceng** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 2:02 pm UTC

Weird shit. That pretty much sums up my dreams. They vary so much they can't be summed up any better. As for remembering them - I usually remember them quite well right when I wake up. I even think 'I should remember and write this one down'. Unfortunately, they fade. Usually I will either hit snooze, or if I get up they'll fade by the time I have finished my shower. I try to write down the ones I do remember.

by **Sheikh al-Majaneen** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 11:53 pm UTC

Black Dynamite wrote:Living as a girl.

I had that one once. It would have been just fine if it wasn't for other people. And why was I in an upscale hotel in Mexico City? And why was the British Ambassador to Mexico Satan? And why did he insist on hitting on me all the time? It didn't even make sense in my dream's logic. And I usually understand Satan-involved dreams portentiously...but this one...is hard to understand.

Actually, Satan has been an occasional visitor to my dreams. Killed me once, with a bullet to my throat, in my bathroom. He was mafia, then.

by **notzeb** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:15 am UTC

The things I have dreamt about in the dreams I remember (I assume the dreams I don't remember are all boring): flying, immortality and true love, accidentally destroying the universe just as I wake up, time travel, vast conspiracies involving Shakespeare, dreams within dreams, a family member dying, shaggy dog stories with me as the protaganist, top secret organizations, not being able to do a certain secret handshake, being attacked by Chaos Zs in Angband, and a few lucid dreams.

The giveaways I've noticed for being in a dream have been not seeing my own nose, feeling warm and cozy, spontaneously deciding I should be able to fly if I can just convince myself I'm not awake, and looking carefully at people's faces. On second thought, don't try to look too carefuly at someone's face in one of my dreams... it can be freaky. People in lucid dreams weird me out - there is something very creepy about knowing that these people are not real. They look like really good tries at being people, as if a deranged man spent his whole life alone, trying to create a realistic imitation of a human being but somehow completely missing the point. It's a very uncanny valley, I just want to kill them, or run away, or something, even though I know there is no reason to fear them.

by **Samik** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:38 am UTC

notzeb wrote:They look like really good tries at being people, as if a deranged man spent his whole life alone, trying to create a realistic imitation of a human being but somehow completely missing the point. It's a very uncanny valley

Now THAT is interesting to me. Your dream fails to completely render their faces, yet allows you to become aware of this?

My dreams have all sorts of trickses for fleshing out the environment in other ways if it can't render it completely the hard way. Most common is a brute force "this-is-what-you-are-experiencing" sense of understanding. Basically, if there is an inconsistency/incoherency, it just implants the idea in my mind of what it was going for, forces me to accept it, and quickly shuffles me along.

Of course, this is probably the main reason I can't actually lucid dream, so I don't know what would actually happen if I ever found myself in a lucid dream environment. Maybe things would break down just like in yours.

by **mercutio_stencil** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 5:55 am UTC

I'm all over the place; I have a fair share of 'mission dreams' where I end up plumbing the depths of a vast conspiracy or something, a decent number of 'sexy dreams' , although I don't want to say actual sex dreams because they often involve inanimate objects and impossible geometries, more than a few mundane work dreams, and a decent number of surrealist fantasy dreams.

by **Mostlynormal** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:15 am UTC

Hmm. I've got a few pretty specific things. They're a lot like templates: the details can be whatever but there's a very specific structure/sensation.

I'm being hunted down by something powerful. Usually a group of such things. It's a relatively restricted space (like a small playground (no reason I couldn't leave, except it was a dream) or a small building) It's less running than hiding. Which is ridiculous in such a small, easy to search place, but my dream doesn't care. Sometimes if they get really close I miraculously escape by runing past them or something. Meanwhile I'm looking for a way to kill them--usually they're invulnerable to most things but will be killed by some random object. So I'm looking around trying to find this thing so I can kill the bad guys and get away.

I'm jumping, or climbing, or going up a ramp or something, and suddenly I slip and "jump too far" it's like gravity somehow turned off right as I'm pushing myself upward, which launches me in the air. I get really high and sort of float there for a while, realizing how bad it's going to be to hit the ground. Then I'm falling, a wild, desperate falling sensation. The sensation of going too high, floating, and falling are the same every dream.

Samik wrote:My dreams have all sorts of trickses for fleshing out the environment in other ways if it can't render it completely the hard way. Most common is a brute force "this-is-what-you-are-experiencing" sense of understanding. Basically, if there is an inconsistency/incoherency, it just implants the idea in my mind of what it was going for, forces me to accept it, and quickly shuffles me along.

That's the way it works for me too. I've given up trying to think of my dreams as a videotape, or as anything like experiencing real life. It's usually more of a meandering narrative along with some incoherent sensations, and then when I wake up my mind fills in the blanks of what I "felt." And the narrative isn't like hearing a narrator or reading a book. It's more like pure understanding of what's going on, as you said.

by **dekralite143@gmail.com** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 7:19 am UTC

Most of the dreams I remember involve running away from something. Sometimes those dreams are good, like the one where I was avoiding or fighting velociraptors while/by traveling around a dream city in its public transportation system of gravity-defying high-wire waterslides suspended over the city. Though they are very rarely tinged with such awesomeness, just consisting of constant situation and gtfoing from unidentified whatever.

by **Sheikh al-Majaneen** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 10:54 pm UTC

What is this thing and why did it quote me.

Edit: it is a spam bot (google the user name), but I am no less creeped out by it.

by **thorgold** » Sun Aug 12, 2012 5:58 am UTC

My dreams sort of fall into one of these categories:

1. Running, being awesome. Usually involves escaping some higher power (think Jason Bourne) or blitzing my way through to an objective (think Halo Reach's "Deliver Hope" trailer). I don't normally fight, but it's more of a "dodge everything and look badass." Occasionally extremely nonsensical (run before the teacher gives you a twinkie!).

2. Confusion. I'm at a job or something and I'm being told that I'm supposed to be doing something. My dream self sort of goes through the motions right, but my brain is running on "WTF?" Bolstered by the common occurence of non-euclidian architecture (like that door from Matrix Reloaded's chateau scene)

3. Surviving. Nightmare material. I'm alone in some sort of scenario - or, at least, anyone I meet tends to die within a few minutes. Some higher power (usualy an expy of Slenderman/whatever SCP spooked me that day) is stalking me, and while I'm escaping random attacks, everyone around me dies horribly. Often, I'm actually allowed to live in order to watch other people get slaughtered/taken to elsewhere. Eventually, I'm the last person standing, and I wake up.

4. Environmental. Something I'm doing where I fell asleep influences the dream heavily. Music tends to shift the dream to match whatever genre it is (which is why I sleep with good running-dream music, to promote that category); physical anomalies are often reflected in the dream (blood-restricted limbs are wounded, burned, or otherwise effected); lack of balance or falling sensations are almost exactly reflected in the dream (if I'm falling out of my seat, my last dream moments are of me starting to fall). These dreams are extremely disorienting, especially in the case of physical conditions. Once I dreamt my arm was being eaten by ants (childhood flashback :shock:

), when I woke up my arm was tingling from being asleep and I flipped out.

The themes are always the same, though. Either I'm running from something, sacrificing myself to stop something, or hopelessly watching everyone around me get destroyed.

And there was that one dream about the strip club but that was just ~~once~~ ~~twice~~ a few times a while back

What I think is that people who have "mission-oriented" dreams are the sort of folks who are feeling like their lives don't have much purpose, presently. Dreams are, in part, subconcious fantasy, so the habitual dreaming about a set mission, especially one with observable implications, is a sort of wish fulfillment for a life with greater meaning. I say this from personal experience of my own feelings, anyone else care to corroborate?

by **3fj** » Wed Aug 15, 2012 11:46 pm UTC

Serenity in the face of death or suffering.

They range from graphic and sIlly (Bloody stumps as a paintbrush) to low-key and traumatizing (reliving my gran's funeral)

I wish they would be fun again.

by **SirBryghtside** » Sat Aug 18, 2012 1:43 am UTC

Me being useless. The two times I've ever got dream control I completely failed and ended up eating cake with Gabe Newell and forgetting to ask about episode 3, and a recently recurring feature is me meeting Felicia Day and being too self-conscious/shy to say anything. And I still absolutely love dreaming

by **Magnanimous** » Sat Aug 18, 2012 1:54 am UTC

Recently, a lot of my dreams have been me wandering around some sort of city. It'll either be a completely new (unnamed) city, or I'll be trying to walk home and the streets are suddenly different.

by **Byronic Commando** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 1:10 am UTC

Our last move involved me carting many of our possessions out, one carload at a time, in a non-air-conditioned apartment that broke 100 degrees during the day. After I was finished, it took nearly six months before the dreams stopped.

Beyond that, I dream about losing my teeth quite frequently. What the fuck, brain?

by **Sheikh al-Majaneen** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 3:08 pm UTC

Byronic Commando wrote:Our last move involved me carting many of our possessions out, one carload at a time, in a non-air-conditioned apartment that broke 100 degrees during the day. After I was finished, it took nearly six months before the dreams stopped.

Beyond that, I dream about losing my teeth quite frequently. What the fuck, brain?

I get that one too occasionally. Also breaking in half--especially my front teeth.

by **PatrickRsGhost** » Sat Aug 25, 2012 11:24 pm UTC

Another recurring theme to a lot of my dreams has been me being nude, and being at either school or work. The strange thing though is that if I'm at one place, people from the other are there. Like if I dream about school, my co-workers are there. If I dream about work, some of the kids I went to school with are there.

In relation to an earlier reply I made on this thread, sometimes I'll dream about being in one house I used to live in, or the house I presently live in, but the furniture could be that from a different house I lived in, or currently live in, or else furniture from someone else's house, if I remember it clearly. For example, I could dream about something happening in the living room of the house I live in now, but the couch is the one my roommate owned in our apartment, or else is one my great-grandparents owned down at the old farm house.

by **ikrase** » Sun Sep 30, 2012 6:36 am UTC

Tend to be ominously creepy, or TOO MUCH LIKE REAL LIFE.

by **thalia** » Sun Sep 30, 2012 2:04 pm UTC

I dream a lot, every night usually. The themes are strongly centered around saving everyone around me and being in immediate and mortal danger. The scenarios can be nightmareish, often playing on my own fears, but they don't come across as nightmares as much as they are problem-solving oriented.

Usually in order to save the world/a bunch of people I need to lie or deceive someone (which is incredibly hard for me, I am a terrible liar)

by **zmic** » Sun Sep 30, 2012 3:55 pm UTC

Samik wrote:
Zukilune wrote:i randomly have dreams, very realistic ones, about missing teeth.

I have those periodic teeth-falling-out dreams as well. Always have. Sometimes it's one tooth, and sometimes my jaws are rotting. And everything in between. What's with that?

I believe that dreams like that are about fear of getting older/irreversible decline of the body.

by **PeteP** » Sun Sep 30, 2012 5:41 pm UTC

I can't remember the last time I couldn't fly/super jump in a dream. It's often more jumping around very far and high than flying, but I can usually fly if I concentrate on getting higher. They are often rather dark and sometime I'm followed, especially if I enter buildings instead of jumping around outside. But despite sometimes running from things, I wouldn't call these dreams nightmares since I don't find it particularly scary.
On further thought I can vaguely remember dreams without flying I think I had 1 or 2 school related ones, demonstrating further that schools are mentally harmful for students!

by **modularblues** » Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:34 am UTC

PatrickRsGhost wrote:Has anyone ever had dreams where characters from your favorite books, movies, or TV shows were in the dream, and they were interacting with you?

Here's one of mine, with characters from Bones.

Most of my dreams involve running through a convoluted building that is an Escher-like amalgam of places I've lived and schools I've attended. Occasionally when I'm happy with real-life, my dreams might involve flying.

by **darkwombat** » Mon Oct 29, 2012 5:42 pm UTC

Nearly all of my dreams involve what I can only describe as mundane tasks that become hopelessly complicated.

For example: I dream that I need to go to the grocery store to get some bread before dinner. But when I get in the car, the battery is dead. So I call my neighbor over to give me a jump start. But then the neighbor trips and hurts his ankle. So I go inside to get him an ACE bandage. But I can't find the ACE bandage in the bathroom cabinet. Then I see my toothbrush and remember I didn't brush my teeth this morning. So I go to brush my teeth but there isn't any toothpaste. So I go to the grocery to get toothpaste -- my car miraculously starts this time. When I get home, I remember that I actually needed to go to get bread. So I start to go back to the store, but my car won't start, and the neighbor is still complaining about his ankle. So I go back in to find the bandage. But I remember that I still haven't actually brushed my teeth. But now the neighbor has my toothpaste that I bought and he won't give it back till I bring him an ACE bandage.

As near as I can tell, this crap happens ALL. NIGHT. LONG. No wonder I'm so tired when I wake up! It makes me sad. I long for the old days when I had cool flying dreams, or even the occaisional interesting nightmare. But I almost never have those now -- just boring slogging through complicated mundane existence, without progress.

by **Socks** » Tue Oct 30, 2012 1:05 pm UTC

I used to have recurring falling dreams. Typically off tall buildings, but the occasional jump from planes/blimps/hot air balloons/zeppelins.
I no longer have those, and my dreams are much more mundane, now. I dream about work Every. Single. Night. One night, my girlfriend came to bed late and said, "Hey, can you make sure I'm up in the morning?" and I said, "I can't right now. I'm writing this query, and I think I finally got this stupid join figured out." The next morning, I'd figured out an extremely complex query I'd been working on for two days. This happens several times/week. I asked my boss to start paying me for my dream time, but it didn't go so well.

I also have a tendency to dream about waking up - often several times/night (I "wake up," then realize it was a dream and wake up "for real" and "get ready to leave")

by **Darvince** » Tue Oct 30, 2012 6:59 pm UTC

Sometimes I have extremely realistic dreams and then I remember them and about three or four weeks later I get confused over whether or not that actually happened.

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