What affects what you dream about? I'm just curious to see what others think.
I used to have a friend whose dreams could be manipulated by what you told her immediately before she went to sleep;
for example if she was going to sleep and you told her the names of five people she knew, said something about a purple elephant and the planet mars
those people objects and places would appear in her dream.
Also i have been reading some research on certain prescription drugs (mainly SNRI's) that cause the people who use them to have extraordinarily vivid dreams- sometimes so realistic that later they will remember something from the dream as something that they think happened in waking life.
I was just wondering if anyone else has heard of stuff like this; another common example is being too hot while asleep causes nightmares in some.
I'm not sure if anybody else ever did this, but when I was little I used to always get nightmares on hot nights, because I was scared that the monsters would get me if I didn't have the covers fully covering me, and then because of this, I would become even hotter. And I'd even start sweating because i was so hot, but I wouldn't get rid of the covers, and this would make me have really bad dreams.
And I've heard about how people who sleep with nicorette patches have really vivid dreams too.
But I think it is mostly about what you're thinking about before you go to sleep. If you're worried about something, you'll most likely dream about that, and if you're angry you might feel angry in your dream. And maybe it'd be what you were thinking before you fell asleep at the start of your dream, and then it would progress to something else as your mind continued along that thread, which is why you might feel better about something when you wake up.
i think your emotional state has alot to do with what you dream, in terms of themes and character archetypes that appear in your dreams.
also, i have had dreams where the last people i have spoken to before i went to bed have appeared in my dreams, usually in a totally unrelated state to their reality as people ( one was a vampire hunter [img]http://s2.images.proboards.com/tongue.gif" alt=":P" border="0"/> )
i have dreamt about being at work - god, thats a sign if there ever was a sign! and its been a totally normal work-related scenario in my dream, nothing weird.
if i read before i sleep, i have crazy dreams! when i was reading the Bitterbynde triology i had some of the most amazing dreams! i was walking in another world. it was awesome!
i can never remember the particulars of my dreams, just a general feeling i have when i wake up, like sometimes i will know who has been walking in my head, or where i have been, or if i have even been me in my dream.
i did dream i gave birth to a litter of kittens once though - and i have no idea why!
MK
Wanderer Ward
15 years ago
Wanderer Ward
Mage
That "mother" drink, if I drink it close to bed-time, I have the most horrible nightmares, usually involving the death of a loved one :(
When I was little I sometimes had terrible nightmares, so I convinced myself that if I slept facing the door I would have nightmares, but if I slept facing the wall I would have good dreams, and it worked!
I also used to think about a particular book or a particular event so that I would dream about it when I slept ;D
I read that pickles can also cause dreams.
Ã'm like a lot of people here - I have to sleep completely covered up and usually on a particular side, because when I was little, that side face the 'safe' direction. I think that's why I love winter - I get a good night's sleep then...
I have a friend like that, One time I told her about Cluedo, and she had a dream where she was the murderer in a game of cluedo? It was really odd. And she keeps dreaming that Im Elspeth which is preposterous because I look and do nothing like Elspeth.
My dreams are usually influenced by what ive read or fear, I only have nightmares occasionally if ive read something or been told something.
Wanderer Guilden
15 years ago
Sat Aug 09 2008, 02:49pm
Wanderer Guilden
Mage
mostly nothing triggers my dreams. i mostly dream vividly and sometimes ii can't tell wether something was a dream or reality, like if i had a dream of my friends and I having a fight, I have to make sure that it was a dream or if it was reality... I always have nightmares, though i get very little sleep these days, when I do sleep I usually have nightmares... nothing usually brings them on, but when i have dreams, they are usually very peculiar... I had one last night that involved walking in the middle of a war-field, surrounded by wildflowers? I hadn't read anything that could have triggered it.
I woke up from a dream one day and I say a black hole in the wall, I blinked and it was gone. Also when I was really young like 5 - 7 I was out of my rrom to go toilet and then I saw my bag turn into a few monsters, I was really scared and couldn't go back to the toilet until my mum took me there.
My dreams are generally influenced by whatever's going on in my life at the time. For example:
(Tuesday night's dream)
The beginning doesn't really matter, except that it established, in that way that you just know in dreams, that I was a 12-year-old boy who lived at the top of a tower with a younger sister. And my father, whose friend, for reasons that never were explained, wanted to eat me. Well, being a fairly life-loving boy, I didn't want to be eaten, and I escaped from the tower and hung out for a bit at the town down the bottom, but eventually accepted my fate.
I began the long climb up the ladder that stretched 170 floors to the top of the tower. It was very high and windy, and clouds floated past below me. Finally, I reached the top of the ladder. I had to step out from the enclosed ladder onto a narrow bridge, shaped something like the sole of a foot, and walk across it to the house at the top of the tower (where, presumably, I'd be eaten). But the thought of leaving the protective ladder filled me with horror. I looked at that exposed bridge, and blanched. I froze. And froze. And froze. I could not move forward, but I was now too frightened to climb down again. I stood, frozen in terror, at the top of the ladder upon which I had struggled, for hours, to climb, staring at the bridge onto which I must step, and could not move.
In case you don't know, I've just spent about a year applying for a place at Cambridge, and yesterday I did the last of the paperwork - sending off my student visa application. If all goes well, I'll be travelling all the way to the other side of the world, away from all that is familiar and safe.
Symbolism indeed. God knows where the stuff about being eaten comes from, though.
Also, I sometimes incorporate physical stuff that's happening into my dreams - like the sound of sirens or alarm clocks or the phone. On Monday night I dreamed I was driving through the bush in an open car and kangaroos started nibbling me on my back. I woke up and realised my back was twitching in exactly the same spot.
Mystic Guilden
15 years ago
Mystic Guilden
Mage
Sometimes I have no idea what influenced a certain dream. Other times I know exactly where it came from.
Recently I had one in which i was pregnant, this came from recent events at work in which one colleague announced she was pregnant, another had a baby girl and another colleagues sister had a baby boy. So its been babies on the brain the last few weeks.
The funny thing was, in the dream I had a lucid moment in which the thought crossed my mind that I couldnt be pregnant...and suddenly, not pregnant anymore :P It was like my dream went "eek, quick, change scene!"
Sometimes books I've been reading before going to sleep affect my dreaming, though this usually happends a few days after finishing the book.
I've often dreamed that I was pregnant. I've always assumed that it was symbolic, although the many pregnancies around you, Ariadne, suggest that your pregnancy dream was more influenced by real life than being symbolic.
My pregnancy dreams are so odd. The circumstances never change - I'm always pregnant in some kind of miraculous way, and when I wake up, there's a moment of 'I'm pregn- wait, I can't be pregnant' and then a miserable sense of loss. Then I remember who and where I am, and realise that no, being pregnant right now wouldn't be such a good idea.
Anyone else had pregnancy dreams?
Mystic Guilden
15 years ago
Sun Aug 17 2008, 06:28pm
Mystic Guilden
Mage
I have had many pregnancy dreams. In one I actually gave birth...it was so weird being in dream labour :P
I also had another, that i mentioned either in here or the ober blogs, where I was pregnant and being stalked by two men who wanted to kill me. I went out the back of a store and slipped over. I had horrible pains in my stomach, then one of the hit men was beside me wanting to cut me open....but it was to save my baby, not to kill me.
Actually, I had another dream that I was pregnant back in, at a guess, the late 1800's early 1900's. I was with my husband/partner and we had been for a walk. As we got to the house I double over with abdomen cramps. I was having a miscarriage.
Dolorosa, i can relate to that feeling of being pregnant, then the feeling of loss as you wake up. I have woken on one occasion actually holding my tummy :P
I had a really odd, out of place dream that I was in a pool, and I gave birth underwater in the depths of the pool, but only a foetus came out. ??? I wasn't around pregnant people at the time...and i was too young to even be giving birth really...so that was quite off-putting.
One I can remember, I was pregnant, which I was excited about, but then i gave birth to triplets. 2 girls and a boy i think. And when they were born, I pushed them away. i rejected them.
And this was something so shocking to me, as its always something I'd dreamed of (the whole maternal thing) it was such a strong rejection from with in me.
but then after I while, I see the babies, and all of a sudden theres this realisation that they're mine. And I remember being in awe that these were my babies, that I was their mother. And then the overwhelming guilt at the rejecting them in the first place hit, plus the excitement that I was a mother was a strange mix of emotions,
I think I woke with that strange sense of loss as well- all of a sudden i didn't have the babies anymore, :-/
Pregnancy dreams?! :-? Urm... I don't really know what affects my dreams... Mostly since I don't remember them when I wake up. XD. But then... If I sleep with certain things, they affect my dreams in some odd fashion. I went to sleep with my manga by my side, and things which happened in the manga happened to me... Which is the main reason there are no horror stories by my bedside... >.<
(I've just about checked every thread here trying to find this thread. :P )
ugh. pregnancy dreams :-/
I had a really vivid one last night - that I was fullterm, and spent the whole dream walking around touching my stomach (and apparently I'll be a very very moody when pregnant - since I snapped at anyone who got in my way - telling them quite bluntly where to go ~:| )
I knew it was a girl, and I could feel her moving. I panicked when I realised I'd had alcohol in the past 9 months (thats what makes me think it was slightly lucid - since half way through my dream - I was like 'Oh!! but i've had alcohol recently 8-| )
and then I was also starting to go into labour, (this part I think is work related since I work on a maternity ward) and I was having these pains and 'niggles' and I was so calm about the whole thing - but had this sense of excitment and impatience about finally meeting this person.
There was this such an overwhelming feeling of love for this baby, and then I wake up and realised none of it was real - that I wasn't pregnant and never had been - and this baby didn't exist. :"(
Not quite sure what influenced it - of course when I woke up - all I saw on tv was pregnancy related stuff which just rubbed it in a bit more :| but, I do work in maternity, but havent been there for abuot a week or so, I've been on other wards, I might be feeling clucky perhaps >< but I do quite like my freedom at the moment - especially considering I'm moving overseas in a couple of months.
but yeh, the dreams really messed with my head, I've felt down about it today - since the dream was so vivid still :-/
That's the worst thing about pregnancy dreams, Eilidh. The overwhelming sense of loss you feel when you wake up and realise you're not pregnant, you never were, and you don't have a baby. It's a horrible feeling.
I'm pretty convinced that pregnancy dreams are not necessarily about babies or maternal instinct (no matter how clucky I seem to be these days) but more about the symbolism. New beginnings and all that.
Wanderer Ward
14 years ago
Wanderer Ward
Dreamscape Artist
I've never had a pregnancy dream. Maybe because I've never actually considered myself as being pregnant any time in the future. I always just assume I'll adopt for some reason.
For about a month I've been having random nightmares every night. Sometimes I remember them and think "Why was that even scary?", but most of the time I wake up terrified, not remembering anything, but knowing I've woken because I've had a nightmare. My dad thinks I'm reacting subconsciously to being punched. I was punched in a club by some girl for absolutely no reason. At the time I was upset and offended, but there was no lasting damage and I didn't dwell on it. When I think about it now I think it's quite a funny story. It just seems to much of a coincidence that that would happen, then I immediately start having nightmares every night.
Mystic Guilden
14 years ago
Mystic Guilden
Mage
[act]grugs[/act] Kaede. Despite the rationality upon waking making them seem stupid, nightmares are horrendous things while they are occuring. I hope they go away soon.
Eilidh, I came in here to read your post after you mentioned it at the meet yesterday. It all sounded so typical pregnancy until the part where you woke up :( That feeling of loss...its like the dream messes with your body, almost physically, and it takes a day or so for you to feel 'normal' again. For a dream that realistic, it must have been hard adjusting to the reality :-{
The last time I had a pregnancy dream I amost cried when I woke up, then spent the day depressed because it felt so nice being "dream pregnant". It also doesnt help that, when I do wake up enough, I remember I cant (or most likely cant) actually have children. :P
Here's Wishing Everyone Sweet Dreams!
Perscription drugs definitely change the way you dream. I am a testament to that. Part of it is that I remember my dreams really well. More so than anyone else I know.
The big thing I notice that has changed with my dreams since I started taking SNRI's is the withdrawl effect.
That is, when I forget to take my pills at night, and go to sleep without taking them, I have the most utterly vivid and crazy dreams I've had in my whole life. It's strange, because normally my dreams are weird, sure, but not so vivid. But these times, I feel so much *more* than when I remember to take my medicine.
Its almost as though what is happening in the dreams is really happening to me, these nights. Pain is very real. Anxiety is crushingly realistic too. Overpowering, and heavy anxiety is very common when this happens. Also, things like love are vivid. Most of the time, I get this huge urging feeling that I want to wake up. I consider these nightmarish, in the quality of feeling, even though they are not *bad* dreams, per se. But the ammount of anvil-esque feelings make it really hard to deal with. The dreams seem to last hours, and I can't wake myself up. I usually know that I am dreaming by the end of the sequence but that changes nothing.
Last time this happened, I dreamt that I was in a land made mostly from lego pieces. I had healing powers, that I would use by pressing my hand down on things and I would push some of my lifeforce into them. A lot of stuff happened that I dont care to explain (the dreams, like I said, are very loooong) but eventually, I was 'commissioned' by a grasshopper to heal his wife, who was frozen moments before death from some huge insect (who was also frozen) as if petrified in amber. first I had to seperate the female grasshopper from the insect, which I did successfully. But when I laid my hand on her, I broke her into peices accidentally. I was heartbroken, but the male grasshopper was distraught and it was painful to watch. I tried to convince my fellow peers to let them have a real burial, but when I turned my back on the grasshopper and his wife's remains, they dissapeared. This is where I got really anxious. Turns out that he revitalized his wife, though she was still fragmented, and sailed out to sea and to some weird shrine made of legos. They became like pirates and harrassed people, and it was up to me to stop them. And soooo ooooon.
That is one of the weirdest sounding ones. Mostly, though, they aren't as weird as that, but the feelings are always painfully vivid and magnified.
I don't take perscrption drugs, so I can't comment on that, but I get nightmares when it's too hot, for certain. And I mean freaky-psyco-could-be-made-into-horror-movies type nightmares.
Like just a few weeks ago, when it hit +30 degrees (Celcius) and I dreamt of a psychotic little girl who had tantrums to lure people to where they could be red-shirts in a slasher movie 8-| (and I don't even watch those sorts of films. Never have. Never will)... I was so scared I woke up at like 3AM and could not move or go back to sleep, and when my alarm went off at 6 I almost had a heart attack....
On the other hand, if it is even a touch chilly, with that cool autumn morning type wind blowing through my window, I have the most wonderful, inspiring dreams, and I am always able to write so much better for the whole day following (I think because wind is the intellectual element, associated with writing. At least, that's my explanation). Sometimes I even dream about the characters in my novels and I wake up knowing what needs to happen next, or understanding something about why two characters interact with each other they way they do. I love those dreams. The details are so much better to remember than the details (and there are awful details) of the nightmares.