Does anyone have an issue describing their dreams?

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Naotakun
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22 Aug 2023, 5:46 pm

A long time ago I was with a group of friends and describing our dreams. One of my friends, who was always excitable, started to describe a disjointed dream that involved spiderman, then switched to knitting, then had a bunch of business men in suits, and pirates, and gems, and on and on.
We all laughed about it because they were once again being ridiculous, but they insisted that was how they dreamed. It didn't really dawn on me at the time, but I eventually came around to the idea that this was actually spot on to how I dream, and no one else describing their dreams has ever come close to experiencing dreaming in that same way.

Since understanding I have autism, I've begun to reflect on a lot of aspects of my life, and this includes the way I dream. I often wonder if the two are related.

Does anyone else on this forum experience dreams in this same rapid-fire and/or disjointed manner? In my life I've had conversations with friends about 'weird' dreams, but their dreams are always 'clean' somehow, like watching some sort of bizarre movie.

Any thoughts?



blitzkrieg
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22 Aug 2023, 5:48 pm

I have dreams that are sometimes realistic, but more often I have disjointed dreams, where one action or scene blends into another, with zero logic to any of it.

If I try to describe them to people I sometimes try to phrase how I tell them to people in a way that seems reasonable, even if it doesn't entirely portray the exact dream I have had, in full accuracy.



Mikurotoro92
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23 Aug 2023, 1:31 am

My dreams involve falling in love with and having sex with fictional characters :lol:



vividgroovy
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23 Aug 2023, 1:56 am

I don't usually have an issue describing them. I remember them in pretty good detail.

I frequently have dreams where the situation suddenly and frequently changes, though it all seems natural while I'm dreaming it. Often, I'll have a dream that will switch back and forth between me passively watching something on TV at home and me being the character, experiencing what's happening in the story first hand. Furthermore, the dream will also switch back and forth between me being the character and me being myself, but in the character's situation.

My most frequent recurring dream, since childhood, is that I'm trying to get to Disneyland (which is one of my main special interests) and things keep going wrong. Or they built a Disneyland in the city where I live, but I still don't wind up getting in there. Or I'm in Disneyland, but everything is different than in real life.

Another dream that I've had several times is related to the fact that I don't drive in real life. In the dream, I'm in a car with no driver and I'm reaching over from the passenger seat, trying to steer. Don't ask me how this works without me reaching the pedals! :D

Most of my dreams involve some kind of frustration, though I recently had a nice dream about being given a toy that could transform into all the characters from the 1990s cartoon "Extreme Dinosaurs." Even the frustrating dreams are interesting to me afterward, due to their surreal nature.

I also often dream that I've woken up and I'm telling someone else about what I dreamed before that. Sometimes multiple times before I actually wake up.



naturalplastic
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23 Aug 2023, 3:22 am

If someone interrogated me and asked "what did you dream last night?" 99 times out of a 100 I wouldnt be able to describe anything. This past night I dreamt some..thing..but its all a blur. But once in a while I do have vivid dreams that I remember that do have plots. Often the alarm wakes me up in the middle of some desperate drama. Some I remember yeas later.



blitzkrieg
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23 Aug 2023, 8:42 am

vividgroovy wrote:
I don't usually have an issue describing them. I remember them in pretty good detail.

I frequently have dreams where the situation suddenly and frequently changes, though it all seems natural while I'm dreaming it. Often, I'll have a dream that will switch back and forth between me passively watching something on TV at home and me being the character, experiencing what's happening in the story first hand. Furthermore, the dream will also switch back and forth between me being the character and me being myself, but in the character's situation.

My most frequent recurring dream, since childhood, is that I'm trying to get to Disneyland (which is one of my main special interests) and things keep going wrong. Or they built a Disneyland in the city where I live, but I still don't wind up getting in there. Or I'm in Disneyland, but everything is different than in real life.

Another dream that I've had several times is related to the fact that I don't drive in real life. In the dream, I'm in a car with no driver and I'm reaching over from the passenger seat, trying to steer. Don't ask me how this works without me reaching the pedals! :D

Most of my dreams involve some kind of frustration, though I recently had a nice dream about being given a toy that could transform into all the characters from the 1990s cartoon "Extreme Dinosaurs." Even the frustrating dreams are interesting to me afterward, due to their surreal nature.

I also often dream that I've woken up and I'm telling someone else about what I dreamed before that. Sometimes multiple times before I actually wake up.


I do not drive and also have the dream about trying to control a car, though for me it is in the driving seat and I am terrible at driving and am usually on a high speed motorway or something thinking I'm going crash & perish.



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23 Aug 2023, 12:49 pm

I definitely have a problem, because I rarely seem to dream anything at all. But, when I do have a dream, it's often times just me continuing to think after I've gone to sleep. It is kind of cool because on more than one occasion I've woken up having invented something. Sadly, nothing that's actually even slightly practical, but always something that would otherwise work.

I wish people would stop claiming that everybody dreams every night, because it's not true. Dreaming doesn't automatically happen, and it's certainly not synonymous with REM. You can dream in other states and you can have REM without dreaming. You can also dream while not even asleep. So, who knows.



blitzkrieg
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23 Aug 2023, 1:53 pm

^ I suppose a lot of people might not be aware when they have dreamed also, due to forgetting their dreams.



MatchboxVagabond
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23 Aug 2023, 5:10 pm

blitzkrieg wrote:
^ I suppose a lot of people might not be aware when they have dreamed also, due to forgetting their dreams.

That's the argument. The problem though is that it's not scientific as you'd have no way of knowing whether people were forgetting versus not having them in the first place. There's no inherent reason why the brain would need to stimulate the neurons related to the sense organs at night.



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23 Aug 2023, 5:13 pm

i dont really have issues describing my dreams.

my dreams tend to be science fiction or fantasy like with sometimes rapidly shifting narratives that later dont make sense but of course do while im dreaming.

also anything that i hear happening outside of me dreaming like say someone having an argument will show up somehow in my dream. like once my sister and mother were arguing and all the people in my dream started reacting to it.



Naotakun
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23 Aug 2023, 6:25 pm

This has all been really enlightening, and honestly reassuring to my sense of human understanding.

I also hope that everyone accepts the way they dream or don't dream. I think the consensus is that it's all golden.

I do enjoy hearing about people's dreams, so please feel free to continue sharing :D



MatchboxVagabond
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23 Aug 2023, 10:03 pm

Naotakun wrote:
This has all been really enlightening, and honestly reassuring to my sense of human understanding.

I also hope that everyone accepts the way they dream or don't dream. I think the consensus is that it's all golden.

I do enjoy hearing about people's dreams, so please feel free to continue sharing :D

For completeness’s sake, I'm on the fence as to whether I don't dream at all most nights or if I dream in verbal ways that just look like me taking hours to fall asleep because my thought process doesn't shut off when I go to sleep.

That being said, the limited evidence I have points to me dreaming in words rather than images and sounds, so I probably do dream most nights, the whole idea of trying to describe them makes little sense as it would just be me saying what I was thinking about the same way that I would if I were having wakeful thoughts.

From what I understand it's a relatively common trait of hardcore insomniacs to want to be up all night and for the thought process not to shut off just because the body is asleep.



vividgroovy
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05 Sep 2023, 8:52 pm

blitzkrieg wrote:
vividgroovy wrote:
I don't usually have an issue describing them. I remember them in pretty good detail.

I frequently have dreams where the situation suddenly and frequently changes, though it all seems natural while I'm dreaming it. Often, I'll have a dream that will switch back and forth between me passively watching something on TV at home and me being the character, experiencing what's happening in the story first hand. Furthermore, the dream will also switch back and forth between me being the character and me being myself, but in the character's situation.

My most frequent recurring dream, since childhood, is that I'm trying to get to Disneyland (which is one of my main special interests) and things keep going wrong. Or they built a Disneyland in the city where I live, but I still don't wind up getting in there. Or I'm in Disneyland, but everything is different than in real life.

Another dream that I've had several times is related to the fact that I don't drive in real life. In the dream, I'm in a car with no driver and I'm reaching over from the passenger seat, trying to steer. Don't ask me how this works without me reaching the pedals! :D

Most of my dreams involve some kind of frustration, though I recently had a nice dream about being given a toy that could transform into all the characters from the 1990s cartoon "Extreme Dinosaurs." Even the frustrating dreams are interesting to me afterward, due to their surreal nature.

I also often dream that I've woken up and I'm telling someone else about what I dreamed before that. Sometimes multiple times before I actually wake up.


I do not drive and also have the dream about trying to control a car, though for me it is in the driving seat and I am terrible at driving and am usually on a high speed motorway or something thinking I'm going crash & perish.


That's sounds scary.

I've also had a variation of that dream where I'm in the driver's seat of the car, but I'm aware I don't have a driver's license and I'm afraid I'll get caught.

I think my Disneyland dreams are also related to being in the metaphorical "driver's seat," as on real-life Disneyland trips with other people, I'm usually the "expert" who is in charge of planning things, unlike in regular day-to-day life. So my dreams about trying and being unable to get there are possibly some sort of metaphor for me trying to get more control in my life.



IsabellaLinton
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05 Sep 2023, 8:57 pm

My daughter and I both have recurring Disneyland dreams too.

In mine there's a chainlink fence at the entrance instead of the railway thing. On the left, immediately upon entrance, there's a big indoor attraction which has flying seats. They aren't the cable car ones but very similar, minus any cables.


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vividgroovy
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05 Sep 2023, 9:22 pm

IsabellaLinton wrote:
My daughter and I both have recurring Disneyland dreams too.

In mine there's a chainlink fence at the entrance instead of the railway thing. On the left, immediately upon entrance, there's a big indoor attraction which has flying seats. They aren't the cable car ones but very similar, minus any cables.


That's interesting. Sounds like my dreams where I'm there, but everything is different. I once had one where there was a walk-through attraction in Frontierland based on The Alamo, and in the dream I even "remembered" online discussions about how it was going to be closed down.

There really was a chain link fence in the early days of Disneyland:
https://www.yesterland.com/entrance.html



IsabellaLinton
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05 Sep 2023, 9:53 pm

The first time I went was 1972.
I wonder if the fence was still there then?
I have home movies of it so I'll have to check.
That's cool because I don't remember there being a fence at all.


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