Do you attribute any meaning to your dreams?

[CrystalViolet]

A lot of people believe that their dreams are messages, unresolved subconscious struggles, or just random chemistry. What do you believe?

Scientists don't actually know why we dream. Psychoanalysts took a stab at explaining it but there's nothing really to back up their claims. I personally believe that dreams are semi-random experiences. So although neurons might be firing kind of randomly, neurons that were more active during your day are more likely to fire during your sleep. So you have an orchestra of neurons activating a specific memory from childhood, a specific olfactory experience, a recent memory of a conversation, a scary image etc., and this recipe just scrambles up a dream.

 

[Queen Michael]

Sometimes, I use them as good sources for ideas of stuff I should do. I once dreamt of a comic shop I used to visit, so I started going there again a few days later. I dreamt about a library where I could find Cynthia Voight novels, so when I woke up I got some from the library and read them.

 

[Michel Henzel]

I believe I sometimes hate waking up as I want to know what was going to happen next in the damn story. I will never know what happened after I became mayor of a town that was occupied by pink alien nazi's. (Yeah I'm not even trying to be funny, I did dream that 4 days ago). Never seem to have a continuation of past dreams, such a pity. But I really don't think there is any deeper meaning to dreams, just random memories mixed with pure fantasy.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

I think I'm rather odd in that I rarely dream, and when I do, I never remember the dream for long.

Most of the time, my dreams that I can recall are random amalgamations of stuff that may be going on in my daily life, or that I thought about for a while during the day. I still get the occasional deja vu dream sensation from my brain playing tricks on me as well, but I think it doesn't happen nearly as often now as it did while I was still growing up.

 

[davidmc1158_v1legacy]

Depends. Sometimes they are just interesting flights of fancy. Sometimes, however, it can be pretty obvious that my subconscious is using imagery to try and work through some issue.

Most of the times, I really can't remember anything more than that I had had a dream or two the night before.

 

[Guffe]

I remember dreams very seldom, so when I sometimes remember dreams my thoughts go around "oh cool!" and then I forget them
So no, I don't do any psychological analysis about my dreams.
The last one I remember was maybe 2 or 3 years ago when I was a secret agent on a boat, can't remember anything else but that I was swimming away from jetscooters chasing me and I swam so fast I didn't get wet. That was cool

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

I reflect on reasoning that I remember from dreams to see if it seems sensible awake. It holds up well pretty often, but its also total gibberish pretty often.

 

[KINGBeerZ]

I don't put a lot of stock in interpreting dreams to mean anything special but it can be fun to do so, because of that I found out my spirit animal is a green tree frog. Although I dreams probably mostly reflect stuff that's on your mind, for example I've got my HSC (High school final exams) starting tomorrow and the other day I had a dream about completely failing them, probably due to me thinking about the exams so much, so I suppose that dreams can reflect what you've experienced during the day, so not totally random.

 

[Fox12]

Sometimes I get good stories from my dream. They can actually be pretty emotional. I had a dream about a single father, and at the end his daughter got struck by lightning and died. It was freak'n depressing.

Otherwise my dreams are pretty obvious. If I dream about failing my midterm in my underwear, then I'm probably worried that I'll fail my test the next day and forget to wear pants again.

 

[giles]

No. I can only really "remember" a dream when I wake up from one and then the memory quickly fades within the span of a minute or so. That's because your brain can't connect the nonsense with anything so it just leaves unless you really focus on it*... and when you do that, how much can you really tell what was a dream and what is just you filling the gaps to make a memory?

It's a difficult subject to understand scientifically, but pseudoscience and quackery have apparently figured it out completely. Personally I'm at the point of just dismissing anything that relates to "dream experiences" out of hand. Yea, it's not completely fair but my patience with this shit is finite.


*Most people have several dreams every night. Just imagine how many useless dreams you have forgotten. Why place any importance on the ones you have convinced yourself to remember?

 

[Vault101]

well...I sometimes clearly know where my dreams "come from" they'll often be very bizarre rehashings of things that might be worrying me at some point...

somtimes though I have no idea where they come from, I once had a dream my twin brother tried to have sex with me...I was genuinely upset and freaked out as much the day after as I was during the dream

EDIT: for obvious reasons they shouldn't be taken too seriously

 

[Catfood220]

I believe I have had dreams that have predicted the future, the day before I met my first girlfriend I had a dream that I met her in canteen and had a meal together. We weren't that close at the time, she was just a girl in one of my classes that I had spoken to a couple of times. But the day after that dream, I met her in McDonalds and she asked me out. Then I had the dreams that she dumped me for a woman. Which she did.

We got together again a couple of weeks later and split up again a couple of months later. Ah young love. A couple of months later, we started talking to each other again just before we broke up for the Christmas break from college. For the 2 weeks of Christmas break, I had dreams that she had tried to kill herself in various different ways. When we returned to college, she told me she had tried to kill herself.

So anyway, fast forward to last year and I've not really spoken to her in years, our lives have sort of drifted apart but at this point she is married and has one kid. And I start having dreams that she is pregnant, these go on for a little while so I finally send her a text asking "are you pregnant?" and she texts back saying "yeah, she is due in May". The dreams stopped after that.

So yeah, I believe dreams can be psychic.

I do have the same dream over and over again. I think its some sort of bar work PTSD that has caused it. It is always almost the same place but it is always a place where I used to work. It starts off ok, a couple of customers come in and ask for drinks and I give it to them. Then it starts getting busier and the pumps start malfunctioning because they are not properly maintained, the tills don't work because they are ancient and the optics don't work properly because they aren't maintained either. And people just keep coming in and they're getting annoyed because the aren't being served fast enough and I'm getting more frustrated and angry too.

Yeah, not nice.

And finally a nice one. My friends girlfriend was pregnant and it was near her due date and I had a dream about her giving birth. I woke up with this dream fresh in my head and thought, "I really need to congratulate them" this is about 4o'clock in the morning. Thankfully in the time it took for my body to wake up and reach for the phone I thought "wait, it was just a dream, if I ring them now she will kill me." I told her about the dream when I saw them next and she said "yeah, I would have killed you".

 

[BEE-BOT]

It would be foolish to imagine that theres nothing they could tell you, that said, Im not specifically concerned.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

"Stayed up too late" or "I'm getting stressed over something"

I never dream if I am happy or enthusiastic. They're almost always signs of an over-active subconscious for me(hence stress/getting bored so my brain wonders(especially at this age)).

 

[Aesir23]

The only meaning I really attribute to my dreams are that they are influenced by what's going on in my life or that they're a reflection of how I might be feeling, such as if I'm overly stressed.

I do have one friend who believes that dreams can tell the future but I'll admit that's not something I really put much stock in.

 

[Musette]

I can't remember my dreams often enough to really give much thought to them. I mostly remember dreams from when I was a small child, and the last dream I distinctly remembered having came from almost two years ago. (I fainted in public, taking a few blows to the head on the way down, and then I had a quasi-lucid dream that night. It was the only dream I ever remembered having where I had any control over the dream state at all, which is probably why it stayed in my memory.)

Still, I'm not into psychoanalysis, so I don't see much point in trying to assign any meaning to my dreams.

 

[kasperbbs]

I don't really pay that much attention to them and i tend to forget them almost instantly if i don't think about what i dreamt about the instant i woke up. Most of the time it's something like 'shit, it's already 5 A.M., i need to get up and i had such a nice dream too'. By the time i get dressed i'd have forgotten all about it.

 

[giles]

I'm pretty sure dreams do hide clear messages. Not everytime, but as a general rule, if you brain makes up something it's for a reason.

[citation needed]

Otherwise I would file your "general rule" under Mom Science.