Do you remember your dreams? Also, the meaning of dreams?

seadoug

seadoug

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I frequently remember my dreams and sometimes if my alarm goes off in the middle of a bad one it ruins my morning. I've been retired since June 2020, yet the past two nights I've dreamt about being with work colleagues and 1) being late for a flight and 2) not being able to find my car in the parking garage at work because we moved to a new building. I have no idea what they mean except that we are traveling on vacation soon and maybe I feel a bit lost right now. Maybe I miss the socialization with my former colleagues?

My alarm went off during the first one and I had been in the back of a car with someone racing to the airport to get me there on time. I had 20 minutes until boarding. When I woke up, I was both relieved that it was a dream and rattled because of the experience.

Do you remember your dreams? Also, if you do, do you think about what they mean? Do they sometimes stress you? Please do share.
 

There has always been something different with dreaming in my brain versus the standard dream science narrative of only dreaming during rapid eye movement aka REM sleep. I've always dreamed 100% of the time I'm asleep. Cannot ever recall waking up without being in a dream. Even when slipping into a dream just for moments say while watching TV when sleepy or while driving long distances with eyes so weary one starts to momentarily fall asleep at the wheel that one's head drops that one then awakens from that motion. Always do so dreaming.

Thus have an enormous region of brain sequential organized memories of dreaming that is actually stored and revisited. I don't lucid dream though on rare occasions am aware I'm dreaming. And indeed it is difficult to recall what I have been dreaming about unless upon waking make an immediate effort to recall. Have also studied neuroscience, especially consciousness over decades so understand the phenomenon with some depth. Our brains are sort of like dual ported memories with one port open from our senses and motor control while the other is an internal hallucination when we imagine or dream. The reason dreams seem so real is because they use the same memory model structures our senses use.

One of my frequent dreams is losing my vehicle in parking lots after say returning from going inside stores. That is because our brains internally hallucinate by continuously morphing that won't correctly duplicate a situation that was just recently active. For instance in my dream I may recall leaving a blue sedan I once drove in a parking lot but a minute later in that dream despite frantically looking with just as many vehicles in the lot, there are no blue ones because that vague recall has changed due to constant morphing as my brain creates ie hallucinates trying to predict what is next.

The same thing will morph with other objects like people. In one instance a person is someone familiar but a little later that person is no where to be found and replaced by someone slightly different as my brain hallucinates filling that person in with someone else. Most of my dreams involve other people, sometimes lots of people, some of which are from the distant past as those in my family that have long since passed away. In my dreams, I am not aware they have died which is rather odd.

In these two TED videos, Ani Seth a neuroscientist describes how human brains hallucinate our perceptual realities. Our brains do so because they are prediction machines that internally model the external world. All earth creature higher animals have brains that do so.

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

How your brain invents your "self"

How your brain invents your "self"

This article explains shows how our neocortex actually has an internal structure we hallucinate internally over reflecting all parts of our physical body. When we imagine or dream the port to that memory from our real senses closes and our internal executive control pilot just experiences this second inner model of our external world.

Cortical homunculus - Wikipedia
 
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seadoug said:
I frequently remember my dreams and sometimes if my alarm goes off in the middle of a bad one it ruins my morning. I've been retired since June 2020, yet the past two nights I've dreamt about being with work colleagues and 1) being late for a flight and 2) not being able to find my car in the parking garage at work because we moved to a new building. I have no idea what they mean except that we are traveling on vacation soon and maybe I feel a bit lost right now. Maybe I miss the socialization with my former colleagues?

My alarm went off during the first one and I had been in the back of a car with someone racing to the airport to get me there on time. I had 20 minutes until boarding. When I woke up, I was both relieved that it was a dream and rattled because of the experience.

Do you remember your dreams? Also, if you do, do you think about what they mean? Do they sometimes stress you? Please do share.
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The first thing that came to my mind was how did you feel in the dream? That should give you a clue. It seems like you might be stressing over the trip. Maybe afraid you will "feel a bit lost."

My mom had a dream about me a couple of days ago, and she called first thing in the morning to see if I was ok. She didn't tell me what it was, but she sounded worried. Meanwhile, my basement was having problems with a breaker that was tripping and thus, the lights weren't working. The electricians came today and told me that the wiring in that breaker (and three others) was burnt because they had overheated, and that the house could have caught on fire. I was literally shaking. So, you never know.

At one point, I was writing my dreams down. Several of my dreams have come true.
 
seadoug said:
I frequently remember my dreams and sometimes if my alarm goes off in the middle of a bad one it ruins my morning. I've been retired since June 2020, yet the past two nights I've dreamt about being with work colleagues and 1) being late for a flight and 2) not being able to find my car in the parking garage at work because we moved to a new building. I have no idea what they mean except that we are traveling on vacation soon and maybe I feel a bit lost right now. Maybe I miss the socialization with my former colleagues?

My alarm went off during the first one and I had been in the back of a car with someone racing to the airport to get me there on time. I had 20 minutes until boarding. When I woke up, I was both relieved that it was a dream and rattled because of the experience.

Do you remember your dreams? Also, if you do, do you think about what they mean? Do they sometimes stress you? Please do share.
Click to expand...
You are having frustration dreams. You are frustrated.
Between the horns of a dilemma, a rock and a hard place, damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Just my opinion, lol what do I know.. .
 
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Since starting CPAP therapy I have been dreaming again. Only problem is the dreams are extremely bizarre and sometimes frightening and I remember them vividly whether I want to or not. They're so all over the place I have no idea if they have a meaning.
 
I used to have somewhat disturbing dreams which I discovered were caused by my Beta-blockers (for blood pressure). My then GP was reluctant to change them, but another GP changed them and the problems disappeared.
I still have curious dreams - mostly a mixture of places I have been. Some are very vivid and I wake up wondering if I have actually been to that place, or was it pure imagination.
 
100% I dream. They can be vivid and intricate too. I've even had instances where I've become aware, in the dream, that it's only a dream. The source for my dreams can normally be traced back to some event in the past, or something said. But from there the dreams spin out in weird ways.
 
I dream pretty much every night. They almost always take place in the forest where I lived before coming here. My different pets are usually in them. Especially my dog and one of my horses. Sometimes my ex-husband is in them. Not the same house I lived in though it a cabin type of house. I can wake up and get up and then go back to sleep and continue my dream. Kind of strange since I don't remember doing this before. Many times I will write my dream down so I don't forget it. Sometimes my son is in the dream but as a little boy. My parents too, but they are younger and my mother is not crippled.
 
Someone once told me that, it is not the content of the dream but the way it made you feel so, if in your dream you were anxious, that was what the dream was about. I don't know if that's true of course but, I guess it is as good an explanation as any :)
 
palides2021 said:
The first thing that came to my mind was how did you feel in the dream? That should give you a clue. It seems like you might be stressing over the trip. Maybe afraid you will "feel a bit lost."

My mom had a dream about me a couple of days ago, and she called first thing in the morning to see if I was ok. She didn't tell me what it was, but she sounded worried. Meanwhile, my basement was having problems with a breaker that was tripping and thus, the lights weren't working. The electricians came today and told me that the wiring in that breaker (and three others) was burnt because they had overheated, and that the house could have caught on fire. I was literally shaking. So, you never know.

At one point, I was writing my dreams down. Several of my dreams have come true.
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Interesting question. I don't really have an "age" in my dreams.

Even more interesting that your mother had that dream about your well-being!
 
Well, I did look up why I am dreaming about work and found this.

"Repeated dreaming about work after retirement generally indicates unresolved conflict. These might include an unwillingness to move forward, the need for a new direction or greater acceptance of self. Once those issues are addressed, these dreams usually disappear. Our subconscious minds are very powerful."

My position was terminated due to Covid after 35 years in my industry, so that is most likely my source of conflict. It wasn't mya choice, but I disliked my job toward the end and was actually ready to take a severance package. "Moving on" for me was the ability to manage my own time and not answer to anyone else. I live a happy life but if seems I need to get involved in something meaningful (like volunteering) to close the chapter.
 
This morning immediately after waking up, recalled I was at a workplace from about a decade ago in a friendly female manager's office who needed a clarification of a word I had hand written on some paper sheet that wasn't legible.
 
I am usually facing some sort of communication frustration in my dreams. I don't remember them unless I am in the middle of one when I wake up.
 
MarciKS said:
Since starting CPAP therapy I have been dreaming again. Only problem is the dreams are extremely bizarre and sometimes frightening and I remember them vividly whether I want to or not. They're so all over the place I have no idea if they have a meaning.
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Have you tried any type of meditation before bed? It could help with that.
 

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