Living another life in your dreams

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Just wondering to what extent this happens to other people

Every now and then, probably a couple of times a year, I have vivid dreams.

These are never the same in content but there are similarities. Regardless of where the dreams are situated and in what time frame there is a consistent theme.

The theme is that I have am part of a family, social or work group, none of whom bear any resemblance to anyone I know in the real world. I have a series of interactions with all of these people over a long period of time. In other words the length of time covered is usually many years.

This can involve scenarios that have no bizarre or exciting content such as normal day to day life in rural mid west America or on the other hand a mining colony on a distant planet.

Over what feels like many years the people in these dreams and I develop relationships - we are co-dependant and have meaning to each other. Sometimes I have children and grandchildren. I in effect 'live another life'

When I wake up, which is usually a gradual process, I feel all of this 'life' including the people I care for so much slipping away from me. I am left with a powerful feeling of loss and in the brief moments before I am fully conscious struggle to find a way to keep them and the life I have created alive. Of course I never can and once awake and for most of that morning have a residual sense of loss. I feel genuinely upset for most of the morning.

The interesting thing is that for days, sometime weeks I can recall what has occurred in these dreams with remarkable clarity.

I suspect that all of this is relates to some kind of unresolved and subconscious issue or abnormal electrical brain activity akin to a form of epilepsy. Not sure.

Just interested as to whether this happens with anyone else.

I once had a dream that I'd reached thirty and was looking back on my memories. Then I woke up and was disappointed that I hadn't actually done any of it. I suddenly felt self-conscious that I hadn't achieved the things I'd dreamt of.

My dreams are often vivid and disjointed. I tend to wake up utterly confused on days I remember my dreams. All sorts of lives have been lived through them. Especially if I'm lucid dreaming, but even when the dream is steering itself it goes in bizarre directions. Sometimes the lives have nothing to do with mine. I had one where I was an imaginary friend to a lonely child. Another I had a dramatic breakup with an entirely fictional girlfriend who got on a plane after our fight. When I woke up I felt sad she left me, but I got over it.

I was once a male teenage ghost trying to claim inheritance money despite being dead, so I showed up to his family's mansion and played on some turntables, put on electronic music and tried to get their attention. Yet they were oddly chill about it when I showed up as him blasting the music. People started dancing and responded "Hey, you're back" rather than, oh I don't know, how is my dead relative somehow alive as a ghost and why is he trying to DJ?

Frankly it's weird when my dreams aren't vivid, all over the place and complete nonsense. I'm quite used to being a different person in my dreams. Sometimes I feel sad because I get attached to the story and wanted to live that life a little longer. A friend of mine found it amusing when I told her about my dreams, she thinks that they are rather cartoonish. Many of them are in their comedic absurdity. Apparently she has more grounded reality-based dreams.

Last night, well this morning technically, I had yet another dream about being back in a group home and trying to call my mother to take me home because going back was a mistake, even though I have no idea why I'm back in that place.

I've had lots of dreams where I was someone else; other females (once someone I knew IRL), different non-existing boys, and I've been other things too, including a dragon boy.

I've also had dreams where my life was very different, like I was married and had kid/s, or just had a kid, and once I got a job with an airline.

I'm able to recall dreaming of living through several worlds and realities.
With constant identities and the worlds themselves is just as consistent in it's own right whenever I dream being in it.

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