Realistic dreams.

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Hello everyone,

I was wondering if anyone here ever has this, as it's something that really gets under my skin when it happens and don't know how to deal with it other than sit it out.

My dreams are always really realistic, but I pretty much always know I'm dreaming by realizing I can't run, read, fight, or because the subject of my dream is too fake with aliens or being in the second world war or whatever.

However, every couple of weeks I'll have a dream that feels TOTALLY real. I have full body control, and no restrictions I would normally have like not being able to read anything. I'll dream about going to bed, waking up and having dreamt something, going to work somewhere, going home, having dinner, going to bed again. My dream will feel like it lasts for weeks, months, sometimes even years. I'll have met someone, gotten children, just living my life happily without worries.

Then.. I -really- wake up and feel totally disoriented. I'll feel like my "real" life has just been stripped from me. I'll fully remember the faces of my wife and children and have DEEP DEEP grief about losing them and can cry rivers about this. All I can do is think about them and that life, for hours. Then it starts to fade and I'll lose the "full" picture in my head. It will still feel really close, but out of reach, just like when you normally dream something and wake up and know there was something, but can't quite put your finger on it.

If you've ever seen Star Trek The Next Generation.. there's this episode (I quickly looked it up, and the episode is called "The Inner Light"), where Piccard gets linked to this probe of an ancient civilization, and in his mind, lives a full life on this planet, while in reality, is in sickbay for an hour. He learns to play a flute "in his dreams", which then ends up being inside the probe and he's able to play this flute because he learned doing so "in his dreams".

My dreams are really similar to that experience. Except that I've of course never brought anything physical back.
But I do have found myself discovering the answers to questions I had, or actually getting better at maths because I did/practised that for months in my dreams. Or being stuck on a level of some game, and remembering the solution as if I watched a walkthrough guide on youtube. But nothing really big, like actually learning to play an instrument, or another language.

Over the years I've had many many theories about this, ranging from my brain not fully unloading my dreams when I wake up to the theory about how the entire universe is a single particle travelling back and forth in time, bouncing against itself to create everything we humans are able to see "in our perception of time".

I feel I've said this a lot, but perhaps not on this forum:

Dreams are the brain's way of organising past events, running scenarios and preparing for them in reality, or practicing some regular activity to improve on waking life. Have you experienced dreams related to recent activity? Because it is on your mind you will dream about it. You just may not remember it since waking and sleeping memory are in different parts of the brain. The memory of the events is later erased, but not the neurone-memory (like muscle memory)

I don't have lucid dreams as you describe, but I am a vivid dreamer, and have not attained sustained lucidity because of the realism of my dreams. I have also experienced 'dream practicing'.


And with regards to TNG: Picard was not taken to sick bay and lay on the bridge floor, the Ressikan flute was recovered from the probe (so he didn't bring it back), and he was only unconscious for a short period of time.

I can often read text in my dreams and it is usually quite clear and well formed. Somehow I am usually able to direct myself to reread the text. The funny thing is that upon rereading the text, it is not so clear and well formed and it never matches what I read it as the first time unless it is something very, very simple like a stop sign.

It's kind of like part of the mind is dreaming and another part is watching the first part dream. Whenever the one part reads the text and then rereads it and gets something else, the second part realizes it is only a dream, something it didn't seem to be able to do the first time through.

For sure. There are places and people from my dreams which I truly miss.

Haha it had to be mister spock to call out my bad remembrance of a star trek episode. Plus, I technically mentioned the flute being inside the probe, and the whole paradox of the episode was exactly about how the hell piccard can clearly be involved/the cause of the probe being launched (his daughter inspired by -his- interest for the stars, iirc?) and the flute being in there in the first place (it was -his- flute), but then it being a 10 minute dream inside his mind in "real reality".

Anyway, back on topic.

Do you guys think this is something related to autism in any way, or does "everyone" have this every now or then?
I mean this literally makes me call in sick because it's so intense and real. And I hate that because there's no way to see it coming. It doesn't happen when "things are tough", but just randomly. Although I have to say I always had one when I was on vacation -about- the vacation and location, but those always lasted 2 weeks or longer so it may have been coincidence.

It could be some kind of internal brain stuff doing something like my "active brain" does during the day, which is think about every possible scenario. Like normally "they" all randomly shout their ideas over each other but every couple of weeks "one of the people inside my head" will have a full plan finished and then shows it to all the others on movie night so it has their full attention, haha .

Maybe it's something chemical, and I run out of something every couple of weeks and without realizing this event makes me eat, drink or do something that fills it back up.
Maybe.. the matrix.. just maybe..

I'd say some NTs would lucid dream too, just google it and you'll find lots of people wanting to be able to do it. Being autistic would make it stronger I guess just cause we tend to feel some things more deeply, and a lot of us have crazy imaginations. I have very intense dreams randomly and they can make my day or week amazing or terrible so I know what you mean there, but I realised, just like a few of my 'special interests' they were effecting my moods a lot so I tried to smother them out a bit. Unlike you, mine mostly occur when 'things are tough' though (with a few exceptions), and I guess it's a way my mind has of saying 'hey, things aint so bad, just get back up on your feet!' like when you're depressed and you go for a walk, and outside there are some nice cloud formations (my mind doesn't control clouds but you know what I mean). The universe I guess sometimes just tries to cheer me up maybe?



Amen. I feel this way about a lot of things and I suspect it definitely is. Your mind needs food just like your body.