Dreams: S vs N(i?)

[UDP]

Yeah, I know this is ambiguous and MBTI like, but, I just want to hear what people talk about in terms of having dreams or how they affect you. I know there was this thread recently http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...ad.php?t=16244

I don't ever remember my dreams, only if there is something unresolved or very troubling me, which is extremely rare. Even more rare are "nightmares" or unpleasant dreams.


I've been talking to some people lately and apparently they are very common for some people? Is this true for you? How so?

I wonder what factors are involved here... and why so many people have them but I do not.

[Ezra]

I usually enjoy my dreams, as surreal as they are. Often I have dreams of catching buses and trains, and worrying about the time (Ni suggestive? Hahahahaha). They always take different routes from the ones I regularly go to. Sometimes I am being chased, like a few nights ago, I was being chased by a brown bull across some country roads in English fields. Sometimes I dream of me in Halo, and it is modified completely. Often I'll dream about forests, and sometimes about guerillas and me either being a soldier, or someone evading the guerillas. Sometimes I go back to my old house for various reasons, and different things occur.

I love to explore my dream landscapes. I love it. The locales are often sensually fantastic. It is the richest place for fantasy, and it's reeeeal gurrrrd soul food. It's unique; no one will ever know where you've been, and you'll never be able to describe it to them.

[snegledmaca]

My dreams are for the most part uneventful in that they are not really interesting. Just some stuff that was lying in my psyche that day that never quite reached my consciousness. Like for example, I was listening to the news and heard some sports news but didn't really catch it as I was perhaps doing something else. This will then appear in my dreams, this person or what they did, depending on how I initially perceived the information.

The landscape is basically a mix of all the things I knew, have seen somewhere. Often times described more by my impressions of things, like, parts that now appear not so big, were most likely huge when I was a child as their "equivalent" in my "dream world" is humongous.

I do have unsettling, upsetting dreams, often of being chased, but I cannot say that I've ever had a nightmare. There were a couple of times when I remembered a part of a dream that freaked me out, but at the time of the dreaming, from memory, I was totally unaware of this impression vise, I was not spooked at all, perhaps not even noticed it.

Normally I don't remember my dreams but I do when I oversleep and end up in that semi dreaming state. That's how I know that normally my dreams are uneventful and composed out of mental "garbage" from the day before.

[sigma]

I don't ever remember my dreams, only if there is something unresolved or very troubling me, which is extremely rare. Even more rare are "nightmares" or unpleasant dreams.

If you want you can train to remember them. Is not that hard.

mine are either
- extensions of my imagination (like the time I dreamed about discovering a hole in the basement leading to a cave with a small inner pond complete with submarine and underwater tunnel to a nearby lake. This was after reading Mysterious Island by Jules Verne)
- reiterations of the efforts from the previous day
- weird fucked up shit like when I dreamed my aunt having a cream bra decorated with thin pieces of cabbage leaves.

[Slacker]

I have weird dreams. I do usually remember them, but they don't seldom really mean that much. Last night I dreamt my daughter's barrettes were popping up all over the place. I imagine that's just because I'm tired of picking up barrettes. Sometimes I have anxiety dreams like that I can't find her, or I can't find my husband and I need him. Those are my most common dreams.

[UDP]

If you want you can train to remember them. Is not that hard.

mine are either
- extensions of my imagination (like the time I dreamed about discovering a hole in the basement leading to a cave with a small inner pond complete with submarine and underwater tunnel to a nearby lake. This was after reading Mysterious Island by Jules Verne)
- reiterations of the efforts from the previous day
- weird fucked up shit like when I dreamed my aunt having a cream bra decorated with thin pieces of cabbage leaves.

Dreams seem relatively pointless, so, I don't think I will "train myself" to remember them.

No offense to your...... descriptions above though.

[snegledmaca]

Wow UDP, your avatar is really.... appealing. I hadn't noticed this until now.

[UDP]

The funny thing is it was the little news icon on "yahoo news" yesterday, something about being careful about juices you drink in your diet. She is very striking, and, I like juice, too.

[sigma]

Dreams seem relatively pointless, so, I don't think I will "train myself" to remember them.

The only reason to train yourself to remember them is if you want go lucid.

Lucid dreams can be fun.... or so I've heard.

I only had a lucid ending of one dream. I remember being in a dream with a ship and a big treasure. I woke up inside the dream, realized I was dreaming and started to think about a way in which I might be able to transfer at least a few of those gold coins to real life.

[UDP]

Are you really serious about these dreams though? I mean, they sounds like something from a comic book or science fiction stuff. Although my dreams are somewhat irrational too, they are relatively realistic.

I never dream about treasure, or aliens, or anything really. I have never killed anyone, or really died myself. No reoccuring dreams.

[snegledmaca]

I often know that I am dreaming, it's how I know to keep myself out of trouble. Actually, I know that I am dreaming in all of my dreams. Sometimes I actually think to myself, for god's sake this is just a dream! I don't need this!. However I don't have lucid dreams. For the most part I just don't care.

I never dream about treasure, or aliens, or anything really. I have never killed anyone, or really died myself. No reoccuring dreams.

Same here.

[implied]

I love to explore my dream landscapes. I love it. The locales are often sensually fantastic. It is the richest place for fantasy, and it's reeeeal gurrrrd soul food. It's unique; no one will ever know where you've been, and you'll never be able to describe it to them.

i'm with you on this 100%. i find dreams (at least the good ones -- well, especially the good ones) incredibly appealing and they're great to explore. if i could ever figure out how to lucid dream, i'd probably get hooked on it.

i usually have bad dreams when i have instability in my waking life, and usually only then. once the instability is fixed or i get rid of it in some way, the nightmares disappear. usually my dreams can be easily tied somehow to something that has occurred during the day.

[UDP]

I mean, the last dream I had (which was last night), consisted of this:

I was at a family event
I looked at who was there, and to my surprise it was someone I know, a girl I used to be interested in
She was there with a (new?) boyfriend
I left the room
We all found each other
We talked
I ended up getting into fisticuffs with the boyfriend because I didn't like him and the girl seemed unsure about things but unable to prevent us
We stopped and talked again

.... and that was it.


The oddest thing about that dream (for me) was the girl's boyfriend and that we actually got into a fight, which I don't usually do. That's it. Nothing that wouldn't be possible in real life. That was a rare "negative" dream, too - negative because it was annoying in regard to the people involved. But I don't usually have negative dreams, usually they are just happenings, neither good or bad.


Maybe 1 dream in 3 (or 4) weeks is what i remember? Of any significance anyway, like a real "long" dream. Sometimes I get a few minutes of nothingness, but even that is rare.

[sigma]

i'm with you on this 100%. i find dreams (at least the good ones -- well, especially the good ones) incredibly appealing and they're great to explore. if i could ever figure out how to lucid dream, i'd probably get hooked on it.

Technically is not all that difficult. It just takes a little bit of discipline, just like it take with any other habit you are trying to form.

Here is one of the best resources on the web.
http://ld4all.com/

I've tried their dream recall suggestions and it is developing amazingly fast. You go in a couple of days from writing 2-3 words that describe the dream you just woke from to something where is boring to write everything you remember.

Why should one try to go lucid? well, at least in theory you can control the environment of the dream. So you can reach a point were you'll be able to say... "Beam me up Scotty!" and find yourself at the helm of Enterprise.

[Creepy-Diana]

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[UDP]

What everyone is posting in this thread is quite foreign to me. Hm.

[Slacker]

I have known I was dreaming when I was dreaming before. Not that often but it has happened. I didn't know it was possible to do that on purpose though. It has happened when I've had a nightmare and I've thought, "This can't hurt me, it's just a dream" - it's come like an epiphany - and then I can make things get better.

[UDP]

When you guys wake up, do you find it difficult to differentiate between dreams and reality? Or, how does it affect you in your awakened state?

[Slacker]

Sometimes, after a really realistic dream, it takes me a minute. When I have anxiety dreams about something bad happening to my daughter, I often go into her room to make sure she's there.

[iAnnAu]

I never have a problem determining that I'm awake once I am. I sometimes have dreams with intensely disturbing qualities, and as soon as I wake up, there is zero psychic residue.
While I can think of two exceptions to this, we're talking about two exceptions in over 20 years of enjoying the entertainment my dreams provide, and both exceptions dealt with a person I loved who had recently died showing up in my dreams - and me knowing in the dream that the person was dead.
I usually forget my dreams in the first few minutes upon awakening. I open my eyes, (hit the alarm clock,) close them again to think about the more vivid and/or intelligible aspects, then I get up for my shower. Usually everything's evaporated by the time my shower's done. It's like watching a mediocre movie - I'm not exactly clamoring for my money back, but I don't fret over remembering details, either, just get on with my day.
One of the more consistent traits of my dreams is that I change who I am a lot. As in sometimes I'll be me, sometimes I'll be the dog, sometimes I'm a disembodied awareness witnessing a scene, and often I'll be one person and then another person and then another in rapid succession. It's as if the concept of identity has lost its tether in favor of multiple perspectives.

[sigma]

When you guys wake up, do you find it difficult to differentiate between dreams and reality? Or, how does it affect you in your awakened state?

The only way a dream can affect me is if it is intense. Like so shocking that it wakes you up.

I had a reoccurring dream where I saw a big black wolf in a bush. Every time it woke me up. and even if I knew I was awake and safe my heart kept on pounding like crazy. My guess is that the dream might have triggered a discharge of adrenaline inside my body.

[Creepy-Diana]

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[Kim]

I have always had vivid dreams, but since I started taking Zoloft (for anxiety), my dreams are absolutely amazing (a study suggests that this might indicate that serotonin levels were indeed low before taking the drug).

I dream elaborate stories of all kinds. What I find interesting is that often I dream of fights between some sort of good and evil and I am a heroic figure. It is as if in my dream I am fighting off what scares me and I am always successful and never anxious. So Zoloft seems to help with my anxiety while I am awake and sleeping.

I have nightmares sometimes, but they are not as terrifying because I have more control over the situation (sometimes in the form of lucid dreaming, which also happens far more often now).

I always remember my dreams when I wake up and often tell my boyfriend about them. He keeps saying I should write them down because they are so trippy and make really good stories.

But I have always had vivid dreams. I got shot in a dream once and it really hurt and I passed out in my dream and woke up in a different place and from there the dream continued. My dreams take place in all sorts of settings with people, monsters, dragons, animals, etc. They can be realistic or surreal. But most of the time they are actual stories, not just episodes. Oh, and I used to dream that I lose my shoes all the time, which was really terrifying in the dream. But I don't dream that very often anymore.

[Kim]

For some time afterwards I still feel like I can do what I did in my dream, and have at times even tested it. Gravity is not friendly to me in my waking life however.

[Expat]

When you guys wake up, do you find it difficult to differentiate between dreams and reality? Or, how does it affect you in your awakened state?

If I wake up right in the middle of a dream - those are usually the only occasions when I remember dreams - I get confused for a few seconds, then I realize that it was a dream. If the dream was too bad, or too weird, or very pleasant, I may think about "what if?" for a while. Usually I forget about it the moment I start doing something.

[force my hand]

I recall a great number of my dreams, and every morning am aware that I have dreamt the night before.

The bulk of them are non-sensical and benign, but a number of them are quite disturbing and can leave a psychological 'aftertaste' with me the rest of the day. They are usually related to something I've seen on television, and incorporate things about my past.

One example: After watching the BSG pilot, I had a dream of running through a wheat field a couple of miles from my childhood home while mushroom-head clouds erupted all around me on the horizon. My family was with me, and I was trying to help them escape, but they kept tripping and falling, and the whole while I was screaming, "forgiveness denied" at the top of my lungs.

[munenori2]

When you guys wake up, do you find it difficult to differentiate between dreams and reality? Or, how does it affect you in your awakened state?

I don't have any problems with that. They can, however, leave me with profound feelings, particularly the dreams that are positively euphoric.

[Mea]

I believe everyone has dreams, it's whether you pay attention(or remember) to them or not.

My dreams are usually either very surreal, futuristic or taken straight out from a fantasy novel or something.

I don't have nightmares, it's mostly just sleep paralysis, hate them.

[Mea]

When you guys wake up, do you find it difficult to differentiate between dreams and reality? Or, how does it affect you in your awakened state?

No. Not difficult at all. Just that I'd feel like I just walked out of a very interesting story/setting.

But when I have sleep paralysis, the hallucinations are too real and it takes me awhile to realize that I'm fully awake and not dreaming.

[sigma]

I believe everyone has dreams, it's whether you pay attention(or remember) to them or not.

You don't have to believe this, it has been proven scientifically that we dream every night. Actually preventing a person to enter the dream state for a number of days is very unhealthy.

[Mea]

You don't have to believe this, it has been proven scientifically that we dream every night. Actually preventing a person to enter the dream state for a number of days is very unhealthy.

Umm. Yes. That's what I'm trying to say.