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Dreaming (Or the lack thereof)

Discussion in 'Physical & Sexual Health' started by LSunday, Aug 11, 2012.

  1. LSunday

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    Are there other people out there who just don't dream? I'm 18 now, and I have never had a dream that I can remember. For a while, I didn't think anything of it, since I knew there were times that people don't remember their dreams, but recently I've wondered if there was more to it.

    I have tried a lot of the methods to help with dream recall; repeating to myself that I will remember when I go to bed, being woken up suddenly by an alarm, etc. My therapist once asked me to keep a dream journal, but in the two months that I was keeping it, I never once was able to fill in an entry.

    I recently found a study about it, which mentioned this:

    However, none of the other psychological signs that the article says goes along with not having dreams particularly apply to me. I'm a creative person (I hope to be a writer), and have done a lot of work in spacial relations for various things, and have actually been told I'm better at it than a lot of other people.

    I may just be overreacting a little; there is a small history of mental illness in my family, but not particularly close to me. I also haven't displayed any other symptoms of mental illness, but I don't know.

    Is there anyone on here that can give me some suggestions?

    And, on a more curious note, what is it like to dream? My experience with sleep is more of blinking-and-the-clock-skips-forward, whether I'm sleeping at night or during a really boring class. Sometimes I can fall asleep and rejoin a class without knowing I even fell asleep (I once leaned back in my chair against a wall, then moved forward again after a few seconds... later that day my friend was making fun of me because I'd apparently slept through 20 minutes of class).

    Obviously, I can't really compare my sleeping experience to others because... I only have my own sleep. Can anyone point me to a proper, scientific study on the subject? (all a google search turns up for me is a bunch of people telling other that EVERYONE dreams no matter WHAT, and I figured EC would be a place I can find people who actually think about stuff like this rather than assuming their own experiences are obviously the only 'right' way)
     
  2. Noir

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    Hello, again! :slight_smile: Sorry to hear that you're being troubled by this, I don't really know what could be the cause. O-o But if you'd like, I could offer a description of what it's like to dream since I seem to be very active in that department (sometimes, too much so). And thus, I offer a briefing of my dreaming history!

    I'm also a naturally creative person, and I also aspire to becoming a writer as well as an artist someday. Ever since I was little, I've had an overactive imagination and sometimes I couldn't tell if I was dreaming or not. I'd get in trouble a lot in school for daydreaming (have you ever had daydreaming? It has nothing to do with REM sleep, it's just when you let your mind wander and you seem to go somewhere else, like when you're listening to a story and visualizing it in your head at the same time), and I didn't realize that most children don't imagine as deeply as I do.

    It freaks me out, but it only happens now if I'm reeeeeeally tired or home alone at night where the part of my brain that dreams becomes active when I'm awake. I've never been diagnosed, but I'll see or hear things or listen to conversations that aren't really there. Especially when I was around age ten, I would wake up in the middle of the night and see my hamster next to me waddling around on my bed, and it would be so sudden it seemed real! It didn't help that sometimes my hamster really would escape from his cage and find his way to my room. Once I freaked out and woke my parents up because I saw the illusionary hamster get into one of my stuffed animals and I couldn't get him out, and I figured he would suffocate--we went to see his cage and, to my relief, he was still safely inside.

    Even nowadays, I'm far old enough to be left home alone by myself, but I try to avoid it because of this. Earlier this year, I was just watching a movie in my computer room on Netflix while my brother was at work and everyone else was off seeing a play while I stayed home sick. My dog was with me, too, and we heard what sounded exactly like the hall closet opening from my brother. Mind you, it's a very heavy, old, folding door that makes a LOT of noise when opened or closed. I sent my dog out to see if my brother was home, but I didn't hear anyone greeting her or calling out to me. When I went out and looked, everything was as it had been, and no one was home.

    As for my normal dreaming experiences, when I'm blissfully asleep, I usually remember them best when I've been sleeping in a lot. If I wake up naturally, and I'm still tired and fall back asleep, I have my most detailed dreams. As far as I can tell, it can seem like you're walking around in real life with no more than a haze over your eyes, or it can also be compared to visualizing while you read a book. It's difficult to describe it exactly to someone who doesn't know what it's like to dream....

    Sometimes I would even wake up as a child and I would have moved as I had been before I woke up--once I was dreaming I was falling to the bottom of a pool and I woke up with my arms and legs sticking straight up as I was on my back; once I dreamed I was answering a question in class and I woke up to raising my hand; sometimes as I'm drifting off to sleep I have the sensation that I'm walking, then (being the clutz I am) that I'm falling and I jerk awake violently because I think I'm going to hit the ground.

    That's pretty much my experience, though I don't know how unusual I am compared to other people. As you said, I only have my own sleep! I hope you at least found my story interesting, even if I can't do much in offering solutions. Thank you for reading! :slight_smile:
     
  3. LSunday

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    Thanks for the answer! As for daydreaming, I would say yes. If I'm in a room where there aren't many other distractions, I can 'see' a situation and 'hear' talking, and that's always the closest I've ever been able to imagine dreams; but every time, I'm still aware of my surroundings, and it's more like processing two different worlds at the same time (with the daydream feeling much less 'real').

    Thank you for the incredibly detailed response; I sometimes feel like I'm missing out on all this stuff.
     
  4. Noir

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    No problem! ^-^ That pretty much sounds like daydreaming to me, and I agree that the daydream feels a lot less "real."

    Lol, I'm just glad you didn't think I was weird! I felt like it would be good to post it, though, because it applied. And I wouldn't say you're missing out all the time--sometimes it gets me in trouble if I'm at school or I get frightened because of my own mind. :confused: I hope you can figure out what's causing your lack of dreams! Although, now that I think about it, for years my older brother said he could never remember his dreams and now he's grown out of it and can dream normally again. :slight_smile: