Whats the diffence between autistic dreams and NT dreams?

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no one can truly tell you first hand what the differences would be like as autistics and non-autistics only have their own dreams. any comparison you get is going to be made up of half second hand information.

my non-autistic dreams take many forms. it could be like an entire scripted movie, or it may just be disjointed images. at least thats how i remember them upon waking. i dream in both first and third person, and one dream may cover both modes or switch back and forth during the dream. sometimes they are fantastical and highly imaginative, other times so normal and realistic that i wake up and can barely tell the difference between the dream and reality. ive had dreams where people from my past that i literally havent even thought of in a decade are the prime characters, and its really common in my dreams for people to morph into other people, or to BE one person but physically look like someone else i know. when i am pregnant i tend to have more vivid and more frequently scary dreams, including one with my long deceased mother as a zombie (had a hard time sleeping for a few days after THAT one).

if i am intensely absorbed in something, that will come out in my dreams. someone posted a few days ago about video game dreams. i am a gamer and after a particularly long gaming session i sometimes do have dreams about whatever i was playing. thats one way i know i need to step back because i am spending too much time gaming =) likewise if i have an important event happening the next day, i tend to have bouts of insomnia the night before and barely sleep, and when i do sleep, its fitful and punctuated by frequent dreams usually revolving around the event.

there is one dream ive had.... i cant tell you now what its about or what happened in it, but when ive had it, i absolutely know that i have had that exact dream before, multiple times. i usually remember it right after waking but it fades from my memory quickly. i always know ive had the dream before, but i can never remember it for long. its been a few years since i last had it, maybe next time i will write it down. this has happened maybe half a dozen times throughout my life, with the same dream.

i tend to think autistic dreams are probably the same as non-autistic dreams: widely varied, covering a lot of different topics and in different "styles". how we react to and perceive them may be different tho.

Except that's just a stereotype. Many autistic people don't dream about our special interests much at all, and do dream about people. I almost never dream about my special interests. Sometimes I dream about people, sometimes I dream about places, and sometimes I dream about things that there are no words for at all. And ever since I got on a certain medication I have long detailed dreams with plots almost like movies, that go on all night even if I wake up. (I'd had dreams continued after waking up and falling asleep before, but now it's the norm and my dreams are much more solid and it's weird.)

I dream about both my special interests and other people. Dreams are about the subconscious trying to make sense of things that have happened to you, and often people say and do things that I find confusing, and then they turn up in my dreams, continuing to be confusing! I suppose it depends how much contact you have with other people in your day to day life.

Once I tried writing my dreams down when I awoke in the morning. However, my dreams are so detailed that it took a couple of hours each morning writing everything I'd dreamed that night - it would take pages and pages. I wonder if our attention to detail makes us remember more of our dreams than NTs do (as a sweeping generalisation, which of course won't apply to everyone). Because in my dreams I am noticing every little detail just as I do in real life, except in my dreams everything is more bizarre than real life is.

I'm more NT in my dreams. And I've never heard any NT say they dream about stuff like that in their dreams - they always say their dreams are as mixed up as mine.
Having a disability doesn't affect what you dream about - even babies dream, and they don't know nothing yet.

i used to dream i could fly a lot. sometimes in the following week, i would be in the middle of a dream trying to find my way or something, and then remember: oh yeah duh, i can fly.....
sometimes i would try to fly ( a sort of push of the feet while lifting my arms) and it wouldn't work, and i would jump about in the most ridiculous fashion, swearing , and getting very annoyed at the fact that my flying powers were gone.
it's really funny how i link all my dreams like that...
same with places. i can dream of the same house 2 years after a dream has happened , involving that house.
i keep "dream memory", as if it was a parallel life.
i've done that "waking up in my dream" thing also, and then i try to do something cool, like transforming everything i touch into chocolate or whatever. very childish lucid dreams i have

Last edited by ediself on 30 Nov 2010, 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

Who is more likely to remember dreams upon waking: NTs or aspies or neither?

I can recall two really bizzare dreams. I've on rare occassion dreamed in computer code. Not a dream of images and sensory experiences. Just computer code or abstract object models running through my brain.

Another one: As a kid, I was struggling to play "Tequilla" on the trombone, just could not get my arm to move the slide to the right positions. Then I had a dream where I played it perfectly. It was fresh in my memory upon waking and I was able to reproduce the muscle memory of my dream performance to play it perfectly on my first attempt the next morning.

My dreams are all over the place: sometimes they make sense, sometimes they're bizarre and trippy. Sometimes they're about social situations, sometimes its just me wandering in a strange unpopulated land. Sometimes my dreams have very intense meanings to me, sometimes they are pure nonsense. Sometimes I take control of my dreams, like Callista, but mostly my dreams have a life of their own. In some dreams I have experienced synesthesia. Sometimes I cannot tell the difference between dreams and memories.

You tell me...what's the difference?

I have wicked (awesome) dreams about the world ending and giant robots taking over. Once I opened my window and got taken away into space by the wind. Also I dream about video games if I play them too much.

My sister dreams about hot sex and her daughter growing up to be perfect, in every way. I dream about Mods & Rockers and The Kinks.

That's true of most dreams, TBH. A dream is a world in which you can do anything.

How can dreams be compared. We have, at best, fuzzy memories of our dreams. There is no way to experience an NT dream and as AS dream side by side for comparison.

ruveyn

My dreams usually make sense. The weirdest dreams I have are me basically playing a video game. The only one that didn't really make sense was one in the victorian era.