Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dreaming

I'm dreaming of a well-rested Unicorn...

Unicorn on the cob — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:48:12 -0800

Almost every dream I have is a nightmare, if I remember the dream. Is there a way to train myself not to do this? Inspired by this question, I realized that almost every time I dream, it's a nightmare. They are typically very vivid and not "anxiety" dreams, like taking a test without studying. On the scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is, say, a sex dream and 10 equals me being in a situation where I have experienced hours of physical torture and eventually am eaten alive by rabid animals (and waking up feeling nauseated, heart pounding, sweaty), I'd say the majority of my dreams are in the 6-8 range.

I have also experienced cyclical nightmares every night for up to 10 months. By this I mean I can wake up 6-10 times a night and pick right up in the nightmare where I left off, or experience the same nightmare every single night for almost a year. I mostly dream like this:

- One night per week I'll have a fantastic, amazing, vivid dream that is weird/fun (it's never more frequently than that)

- Two or three nights per week I won't dream at all

- Three nights per week or more, sometimes up to six nights a week, I will dream about unpleasant things like going to jail for something I didn't do, having my teeth disintegrate slowly and painfully while I try to get them fixed, dying from painful and irreparable injuries, trying to run away from something but being pulled back slowly in an unbearably long, thin trail (like the spaghettification effect of a black hole)

Not sure if this matters, but about 3x per week I have to rely on Ambien to sleep at all and have suffered chronic insomnia since I was 11. The Ambien appears 100% unrelated to my dreaming patterns, as I have had happy dreams, no dreams, and nightmares all on Ambien.

Is there some kind of meditation, visualization or medication I could try to break this? I frequently feel physically and mentally exhausted and DO get sleepy, but dread sleeping knowing that I most likely will wake up terrified. I handle the nightmares fine if another person is in the house with me, for some reason.

If I could break cycle, I think I'd be able to feel rested. Has anyone else experienced this and been able to change it?

Never had a nightmare

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:25:29 -0800

I've never had a nightmare. Why? Is this normal? I can't fully account for when I was a small child, but in recent memory I cannot remember ever having had a nightmare, or even a truly disturbing dream. I've had exceptionally vivid dreams as well as the usual anxiety dreams of being naked or falling on rare occassions, but never anything close to nightmarish. Amongst my friends and family I can't find anyone else who has never had a nightmare. It feels weird.

Googling "never had a nightmare" shows I am not alone, I just wonder if there might be a cause, or an article or some sort of insight into this. I've had a normal-to-difficult life including problems with depression and anxiety and a fair share of waking problems, I can't think why I might be immune to having nightmares. Is there a cause, or am I just lucky? Any tips for inducing a nightmare? I guess I am coming from a view of nightmares being an accepted part of everyone's life, perhaps they aren't?

FWIW I'm not on any medications or diet, I drink moderately, no drugs, exercise daily, eat healthily. Slept in all sorts of environments home and abroad and no other sleep issues. Mid 30's.

Staggering Insomnia Almost Seems Preferable

EatTheWeak — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 13:41:16 -0800

Please hope me get control of my bad dreams until I can resolve their real-world roots. Hi. Here's the situation - I quit smoking marijuana at the start of the summer and have reduced my boozing to a very low level - like, maybe once every six weeks if there's an occasion that warrants it. As a result of these lifestyle changes, I've regained an awareness of my dreams. The bad news is that these dreams have been, with a single exception, uniformly shitty for the past few weeks. I woke up yelling this morning and have felt crappy all day. I can't take much more of this.

These aren't nightmares, exactly - "anxiety dreams" would probably be more accurate. I'm a fella highly prone to anxiety and depression and this is an especially anxious time for me. I've got two main sources of tension in my life right now - one of which I'll be able to unravel towards the end of next week and another that has to wait until mid-August. Examining the symbolism and the situations that I REM myself into at night seems to trace these dreams back to my real-life tension pretty reliably, so I realize that the permanent cure here is to address this tension in the waking world.

Until I am able to do so, however, I would really like to stop dreading my bed. Being able to sleep through the night was one of my favorite early benefits of sobering up, but these dreams are getting really vivid now. Hell, the one that woke me hollering today had a humiliating plotline. So, what are some reliable, short-term techniques to tamp down these awful dreams during the interval preceding my first opportunities to dial back their real-world causes?

Degrees of Difficulty: In some previous, similar AskMes that I've read, a frequently given piece of advice is to exercise more. In my case, I'm already doing rather a lot of that. The best control I've ever found for my aforementioned anxiety and depression problems is my four formal weekly workouts. If you include my bicycle commutes in your reckoning, then I workout daily at this point. It's also frequently suggested to reduce one's caffeine intake - at the moment, I'm already down to one or two mugs of coffee a day with breakfast. I'm open to eliminating caffeine entirely if you really think that's the best thing to do, but it would mean more sleeping in order to have the energy to manage my life. And at the moment, sleep is where I'm not at all a Viking.

How do I get my weird dreams back?

aliasless — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:52:54 -0800

How can I get my weird dreams back? I love sleeping and I love dreaming. For most of my life, I've had extremely vivid, highly symbolic, and often nonsense dreams, which I have enjoyed immensely, even the bad ones. I have a huge dream journal, and occasionally have had significant personal realizations from my dreams. I've even dreamt lucidly a few times.

Starting around the beginning of the year, my dreams have become more and more pedestrian. Now, instead of spending the night riding a giant seahorse to the potato moon of the dog star planet, I end up dreaming that I am about to go overdue on a bill, or that my passive-aggressive neighbor left a note on my door. That type of thing is pretty much all I dream about now.

How do I get the weirdness back into my dream-life? So far I've tried creative writing exercises, a spontaneous vacation, and even a dose of hallucinogenic drugs, none of which have had a noticeable effect on my dreams. I'm a perfectly healthy male in my late 20's, in climate zone 8b.

SWM seeks dream.

allkindsoftime — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:16:55 -0800

What is it like to dream? You: Average, normal sleeper / dreamer. Have dreams occasionally, frequently, or even every time you sleep. Can remember what the experience of dreaming is like and relate it in a simple yet effective manner that will help me understand the experience. No drugs / other substances used to help the experience. Not practicing any of that strange "lucid" stuff. Just straight up, run of the mill dreams.

Me: Might have had dreams as a kid, but really can't remember. Had exactly 2 dreams that I can recall in my 20's. People tell me I dream more than that (and just don't remember it), but its still an experience that I simply can't conjure in my mind. As an aspiring writer, I wonder a lot what it is like and whether it might help my writing (I burn envious when I hear about those people who keep a pencil and pad by the bed). Interested in stories about your dreams, great or terrible, and what they most feel like when compared with a real-life experience that I could comprehend.

I just want to know what the experience is like. Is it like watching TV? Is it more real than that? Is it always about plausible stuff or do you frequently find that you are a dragon-fighting robot made of cheese? Do you just see things or do you actually hear / smell / feel them too? Do you remember them clearly or do they fade fast? Do you generally dream about the same stuff, or about anything at all?

I realize everyone is different and the question may be a little vague, but I'm just wondering what a "normal" experience of dreaming is actually like. I've read through all the dream questions I can find and almost all of them assume some ability too...assume I don't have that. TIA.

Peter Block books and more?

zeek321 — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 09:20:07 -0800

First world problems, analysis paralysis, and personal actualization: Book's similar to Peter Block's The Answer to How Is Yes? I haven't even read this book, actually. But, I probably will. Clarification inside. This is really a two part question. The first question is, do any of Block's more recent books articulate the ideas presented in Answer with more maturity and clarity? (I know all of his books revolve around similar themes.) Second, are there books by other authors that touch on these themes in similar ways?

Here's what led me to this book in the first place: On a personal level, I focus way too much on "how" for the things that matter most to me.

Generally speaking, for most areas of my life, I am neither a procrastinator nor a perfectionist. Most things in life are pass-fail, and I generally "pass" and don't look back. I think I use GTD pretty effectively--it stays in the background, and I spend very little time on it each week.

But when it comes to those most stirring visions, values, and dreams, I'll read twenty books on a subject, learn all sorts of things, but still feel like I'm spinning my wheels. It seems like I need a big, grandiose plan to motivate myself into some semblance of action, but then I waste all my energy by reading twenty books because I'm thinking, I don't know how to make this a reality. Or, If I start moving on this, I'll lose my vision and it'll all slip away. Or, I can't fully articulate this yet. I need to learn more. Rather than enjoying the experience of drawing, for example, I have to pick out and read the best book on learning to draw that there is. So maybe I didn't really want to learn how to draw in the first place? And yet, clearly I feel like something's missing. (Drawing is just an example, even though I did go through that phase. If someone put a gun to my head, I'd go with writing, speaking, and teaching.)

I act intuitively on all sorts of things, but I still succumb to analysis paralysis, over analyzing, and over researching on wants and desires that I can't articulate or won't allow myself to articulate.

Is another book the answer? I would vote, no... :) But clearly, "just do it," isn't going to work, because it would have already. I've skimmed through a bunch of creativity books like Twyla Tharp's, Steven Pressfield's, and several more.

Part of the problem, I think, is a tension between personal actualization and service, and an unflinching awareness of a finite lifespan. I realize these are good problems to have. Anyway, help?

Why do I always dream about stairwells and elevators?

coizero — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:06:41 -0800

Whenever I dream, stairwells, elevators, and large buildings with multiple levels always figure prominently. There'd be nothing strange about this except a) my daily life does not involve stairwells, large buildings, or elevators in any way, and b) they're in absolutely every dream I have -- no exceptions. This has been going on for at least a year, possibly longer. What could be possibly be causing this?

Discussions about dreams and creativity

moonmilk — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:42:47 -0800

Inspired by this question: are there good message boards or discussion groups out there on the web for talking about dreams and creativity? I'm not interested in dream interpretation, nor in lucid dreaming per se except as it might apply to using dreaming as a resource for waking creative projects. I seem to be a lot more talented in any number of areas when I'm asleep than while I'm awake- or maybe I'm just dreaming that I am. I'd love to talk about this with like-minded sleepers if there's a place for it. I'd also appreciate links to non-interactive or semi-interactive sites like blogs on this topic.

Put it on the big screen, Scottie.

trinity8-director — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:46:44 -0800

What was this cool visualization ability I had for a while? Normally my visualization/memory/dreaming is dark and indistinct. Last year during a period of a few weeks I had brief episodes that were dramatically different. Here's what happened:

During the process of falling asleep I would hold my eyes completely steady and look through them at my closed eyelids (as opposed to seeing with the mind's eye). After several minutes I would suddenly 'pop' into a completely imaginary scene.

To say that it was vivid does no justice; it was absolutely like being there. If I moved my eyes at all, I would 'pop out' and be present in bed -- this was terribly difficult to avoid because of all the visual activity in the scenes. I could usually pop back to the scene fairly quickly, though.

Questions:
1. Is there a name for this phenomenon?
2. Where can I get more info on it?
3. If I can visualize like this during these conditions, why don't I visualize like that all the time?
4. Is there a way to develop wide-awake visualization to that degree?

I haven't been able to do this since then and would like to experience it some more and experiement with it. I don't think this is lucid dreaming since I haven't fallen asleep yet.

Am I a genius only when asleep?

zardoz — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:09:30 -0800

On occasion, I have dreams in which I write a story within a dream, and by the end I complete a bona fide epic novel, which, to my dream mind is the best book ever written (naturally, 5 minutes after awakening every detail of the “book” vanishes from my mind). Have any famous (or not so famous) writers ever written or talked about this phenomenon, of writing books within dreams? And does this mean that I have a novel or two in me waiting to get out, or is it something more mundane? These dreams have the usual morphing of character—sometimes I’m “me” in 1st person, or the dream will switch to 3rd person, but when writing in the dreams, I’m often literally sitting in front of a computer, typing away at keyboard for subjective hours and days on end. And the words flow like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve hacked away at writing, on and off, my whole life and have had some success with it in some ways, but I’ve never had anything published.

What happens when alcoholics dream they're drunk?

Elmore — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:26:10 -0800

What happens when alcoholics dream they're drunk? In my experience I've had dreams where I've been drunk or stoned, even though in reality I've not taken any booze or drugs before my head hit the pillow. These are usually quite vivid dreams - sometimes in the dream i 'feel' and 'act' drunk; there is a sense of euphoria, movement is uncoordinated, I say things I normally wouldn't. So, even though I haven't taken any alchohol, when I dream being drunk, the dream experience is very similar to actually being drunk. My question is what effect does this experience have on alchoholics?

I've speculated about this already, so I'm not looking for any more speculative 'answers', I really just want first hand accounts, or those from a second party who can pass on what an alcoholic (or drug addict) has experienced about dreaming the effects of inebriation and told them.

are slow motion dream disasters a new thing?

garfy3 — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 20:39:27 -0800

do dream sequences set in slow motion (as in horrific-but-un-stoppable-accidents) pre-date the use of slow motion photography? specifically, are there pre-film literary references to dream events taking place in slow motion? (yes, a question similar to this one, but i'm interested in slow motion in the dream-scape here).

Would anyone read a blog about my dreams???

nintendo — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 22:11:59 -0800

Would anyone read a blog (if I wrote one) about my nightly dreams, or would that suck for everyone but me? For about four years I've been writing down my dreams and am getting pretty good at it. Im also a writer for a local newspaper, and I realized recently that my dreams are far more interesting that anything I've written about real life. This seems like a great idea to me, but would anyone read it????

P.S. I did a search and realize there is already a ton out there, but still is anyone reading this stuff??

Screaming nightmares?

callmejay — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 17:57:46 -0800

So I've been waking up from nightmares a few times a month by screaming out loud... It doesn't actually bother me much -- as soon as I'm awake, I'm no longer scared and can usually go right back to sleep. However, my girlfriend would appreciate very much not to be regularly woken by someone screaming. :-)

In the dreams, I'm usually about to be killed by someone (methods vary) and I can't get away. So I scream.

It's only been going on for a few months and I can't think of anything new in my life which could be causing it. Also, I'm not the type of person to worry about getting killed in my waking life. In fact, I haven't been significantly worried about anything lately.

How do the blind see in their dreams?

davebush — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 13:48:59 -0800

This has puzzled me for a long time. People who've been blind since birth - how can they dream images? Do they? Without a visual history for reference, how can it happen?