121–130 of 180 posts
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What exactly does aphasia have to do with this?
I assume they meant aphantasia. As far as I know, there's no evidence that people with aphantasia cannot dream, however. Anecdotally, I believe I have aphantasia and I very rarely remember any of my dreams, but it does happen.
I don't get particularly vivid dreams but I sometimes get dreams of really interesting stories. The dream itself is like a movie, I'm not the main character but I'm just kind of watching it unfold. What's really interesting is that these "dream movies" always have a half-decent plot. IMO a lot of movie plots are really bad and stick to typical tropes and lessons. My dreams don't stick to these tropes and have actual…
Lot of people discuss ways to improve dream recalls, or to have more lucid dreams. Is there a way to do the opposite, to stop remembering dreams or stop dreaming at all? I personally very much dislike the concept of dreaming, it feels like being forced to watch (or participate in) a movie I have no interest in. My best sleep is when I feel I was “turned off”, with no dream or at least no memory or feeling of dreaming…
Interesting byproduct. When I learned about lucid dreaming in my 20s, I spent an inordinate amount of time (every day for years) developing the skill, including journaling — in as much detail as possible — my dream as soon as I woke up. Unfortunately, I cannot turn off the ability now and now have to deal with the consequence of recalling all my dreams: good and bad.
I did the same thing in college and learned fairly quickly that I don't really care to remember all of my dreams. Nights where I remember all of my dreams don't feel restful and are sort of disorienting. It's hard to describe exactly what was so unpleasant about it for me, but there's some element of time perception involved...it was as though my memories of dreams were encoded on the same track as my waking memories…
After such a dream, when I wake up, I really feel like "damn, I should have found the best move and shown them!" but also like my brain is burned out from thinking so much and visualizing so much in my mind. Not restful.
But fortunately I have better dreams as well and sometimes, when I feel lonely, my brain turns on self-healing mode or something and I dream of someone I love. I will gladly take all the exhausting dreams, to keep the good ones.
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By now I'm pretty sure that during a large period of my life I almost didn't dream. I dreamt perhaps once a month, and usually in clusters of a few days. Nowadays, I dream very often, almost every night. I also wake up more often during the night. Unless my brain rewired significantly, I think the conclusion that I simply didn't dream back then is quite likely.
No if you REM you dreamed. I also don't remember my dreams at all. This is the way it's supposed to be for us. If you remember your dream it means you were woken up in the middle of it. Something is disrupting your sleep whether it's the brain itself or something else. The waking up in the middle of the night thing could be sleep apnea. For people like us we're not suppose to remember dreams. But if we do, it means o…
REM is not the definition of dreaming.
You can improve your dream recall ability. It's not fixed. I did it when I was younger. I was lucky if I could remember one dream per month, and I went to remembering around six per night. Here's how to do it: as soon as you wake up, pay attention to whether you were just dreaming or not. Don't get out of bed and go to the bathroom -- if there was anything to remember from your dreams, you'll lose it by doing this. D…
It's also getting a lot easier to pinpoint the origins of dream contents into things I had been thinking about while awake, too. The connections just seem a lot more apparent.
I've always suspected that these dreams are somehow linked to coding and the spatial/navigational sensations I get when constructing some idea in code.
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> At times I've had pretty interesting dreams, but since I was a teen (decades ago) wondered if perhaps the dream was made on the spot as I "remembered" it. This is easily disproved by observing that people sometimes mutter in their sleep as they dream. Cats/dogs vocalize and twitch while dreaming too sometimes.
Not necessarily, unless you have some decent data on this to share? Not everyone might mutter in their sleep. The overlap between the people who mutter and those who self-report might be minimal. Muttering behaviour might have an unexpected relationship with dream recall, etc.
Lot of people discuss ways to improve dream recalls, or to have more lucid dreams. Is there a way to do the opposite, to stop remembering dreams or stop dreaming at all? I personally very much dislike the concept of dreaming, it feels like being forced to watch (or participate in) a movie I have no interest in. My best sleep is when I feel I was “turned off”, with no dream or at least no memory or feeling of dreaming…
Yes, it totally is (see also my response to user dorkwood). I used to have very unpleasant dreams up until I was a teenager and now all my nights are 'turned off', like you describe. When you wake up and your dream is still present, just think about something in your real life and actively tell yourself to forget the dream.
Lot of people discuss ways to improve dream recalls, or to have more lucid dreams. Is there a way to do the opposite, to stop remembering dreams or stop dreaming at all? I personally very much dislike the concept of dreaming, it feels like being forced to watch (or participate in) a movie I have no interest in. My best sleep is when I feel I was “turned off”, with no dream or at least no memory or feeling of dreaming…
I hardly ever remember dreams, maybe once per month or less. Sometimes if I eat specific foods like pizza right before bed it can trigger a potent dream, but I avoid eating stuff late at night now anyhow. I haven't specifically tried to dream less but I've never tried to remember anything either. When I wake up, I immediately start thinking about my plans for the day and/or check HN/instagram (admittedly, a bad habit…