Do you attribute any meaning to your dreams?

[Silvanus]

Sometimes, I think dreams can reflect personal meanings. They're often communicated to you in roundabout or vague ways, though. For example, anxiety may result in anxious dreams.

More than once, specific fears and wishes have been represented in my dreams, too.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

I try to if I remember them.
Psychology dictates that you *do* dream when you're asleep and I'm sure the science is correct on that but I *really* forget them, like, not even "Hm, what was that dream about" forgetting, I went to sleep, I woke up, nothing in between, I REALLY forget them.
But when I do remember them, I try to attribute personal meaning. I heard one theory say it's the brain trying to work out a problem so I try to think of current or recent themes that my subconscious is trying to tell my conscience.
Kind of a usual response but hey, I like it.

 

[Plasticaprinae]

Dreams to me are reflections of emotions or things you often think about. For example, my dreams often have a HUD. Since I write and draw fiction, my dreams tend to have narratives or scenes. I also have stress dreams about my pet dying. I try to relax myself when i wake up.

Fun fact, people who play video games before bed are more likely to lucid dream and be in control of their dreams.
http://www.livescience.com/6521-video-gamers-control-dreams-study-suggests.html

 

[Little Woodsman]

It depends on the dream. The vast majority of dreams for myself and people I know in person are jumbled bits of ideas and stories that rarely have any real meaning.

But sometimes, I'll have a dream that really helps me to work through a problem, or process an idea I've been mulling over.

Or a dream that tells a story in some logical order. I usually love those.

External stimuli definitely have an affect on my dreams--most obvious example being the time when I had fallen asleep with the radio on and in my dream people kept coming up to me and trying to sell me things. It was just how my mind worked the commercials on the radio in to my dream.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

They're either A) ridiculous fantasy dreams, which isn't unusual because I read fantasy novels and play lots of videogames and watch anime.

or B) sex dreams, which aren't surprising for a 19 year old virgin.

 

[Souther Thorn]

Often, though not in a 'prophetic' way unless it's particularly memorable or seems to have some prescient indication that can't be attributed to stress or otherwise. Though even then I'll often attribute it to my subconscious playing back scenarios and variables. I tend to sleep with an audio book in my ears, so usually I hope and aim to experience some of the story I'm listening to.

 

[Illesdan]

My dreams tend to be like tiny clips in a huge, over-arcing story. One of these dreams has gone on for years, and one day, I swear I will write all these dreams out, and it will read like the world's biggest mash-up of aliens, super-heroes, supernatural and sci-fi power fantasy anyone has ever seen. Its been awhile since I've had any dreams from that particular area; I think, upon looking back on that line of dreams, most of the storyline and characters have reached their eventual 'end'. Which was inevitable; it went on for almost a decade and encompassed three alternate versions of earth. Needless to say, the cast of characters was massive.

A more recent set of dreams, which started up a few years ago, isn't a mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma type thing. I kind of know why I've been having these dreams more and more; its more or less with me dealing with getting older and facing my own mortality. Basically, the whole premise of these dreams is that I'm a guide through Purgatory (You die and end up with a job in the afterlife, how's that for ya?) and it just kinda follows all the weird things that are there/happen there or to me. I find them kind of reassuring, which is funny, considering some of those dreams can be very dark. I guess I like them, just because it means I have a purpose when I die. I just had one of those dreams this morning; I was taking a woman to a village of people known as 'The Methuselah People'. Unfortunately, it was kind of a short dream, and I didn't really have all my bearings as to what all was going on, but I remember entering the village and being greeted kindly by an older woman. From there, my 'charge' (the woman I had guided there) was taken away and while I was waiting, I was speaking with some of the people who explained that the Methuselahs had no concept of time and they were always a little confused why 'The Short Ones' placed such a value on it. I thought they were calling me short (I'm around 6' tall in this setting) but they clarified that that was what they called anyone outside of their own kind, because everyone else's lifespan was so short in comparison to their own. The dream ended when the girl came back to me, so I don't know what happened from there. Damn it.

 

[Lieju]

Well my brain tends to work out stuff in dreams and that's how I figured out I'm attracted to women for example.
My nightly brain went : "Here's some lesbian porn, we figured you might like it."

Not all my dreams are deep and meaningful but they do deal with stuff a lot but they tend to be a reflection of me somehow.

 

[giles]

It's so absolutely not true.

***lots of garbage/anecdotes/general Mom Science***

If you think dreams do not have meaning, you either don't remember them, or don't want to accept what your subconscious is trying to tell you.

But sure.... "mom science". I'm just looking too hard to find meanings in my dreams, isn't it?

Look, lady, your anecdotes are completely irrelevant. Accusing me of being in denial is just the height of stupidity when I'm asking for science and you give me anecdotes that don't even go against my hypothesis. Did you fail to grasp what my hypothesis for your experiences was? You're filling the blanks yourself. The average human dreams several times each night (for about 2 hours total), you don't remember these dreams because your brain forgets them. They are not linked to anything so you can't remember them. In light of this evidence, the more plausible explanation for the "dreams" you remember is that you just made shit up to fill the blanks as you were waking up. Maybe some fragments are still there, but how do you distinguish that from the shit you added?
Get it now?
I could link you a few wiki entries as an introduction to the things you're ingoring (apophenia, differences between dreams of REM/NREM sleep for example), but you seem so disconnected from rational thought/scepticism/scientific approaches that I feel like I'd just be wasting my time.

 

[giles]

I honestly have to wonder: Did you even read my post? You didn't address the fact that none of this contradicts my more plausible hypothesis that you're just making most of it up as you're waking up or the fact that you forget the vast majority of your dreams. How do you explain the fact that you don't wake up remembering 3-5 dreams every night? How do you unify this with your subconscious trying to tell you something? Is your subconscious dialing the wrong number most of the time?
You're just repeatedly accusing me of denial at this point and repeating that it's "obvious" instead of providing evidence, as well as appealing to percieved authority of nebulous "psychiatrists around the world" (psychiatrists aren't necessarily scientists fyi). It's obvious to me you don't care about testable evidence and just want to keep believing your dogma that dreams have a deeper meaning. Come back when you actually have something other than idle accusations and anecdotes. Oh wait, I already explained to you that dreams aren't well understood so there can't be any good evidence for your "dreams are my mind trying to tell me something" bollocks.
Also lol@ "it's a true story, I remember having read on that magazine". Fucking science right there. The plural of anecdote is not data. Keep trying though, I'm sure it'll magically become science one day.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Sometimes, it depends on how clear the dream was and if I can remember it. Sometime the dream is on something that happened recently or it can be a vision I don't know about (but I like to think it was a vision from the future) and I did had a recurring dreams of being back to high school or being with former friends back then. Those one I can easily decipher that it means I want to be back in High School (when it was simpler and not worring about paying the bill etc).

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I've discussed my experiences with dreams before.

The first kernel of info about me and dreams is that I don't typically dream regularly or even often.

The times that I do dream typically end up being nightmares, and those are never pleasant.

However, when I do dream/have nightmares, they tend to fall under two categories: junk drawer memories or current events and thoughts.

With junk drawer memories, I take a lot of past thoughts and experiences together and create a strange dream world, of which I can quickly determine that I am in a dream and merely go along with sequence of events. In a dream, there is very little interaction between me and the dream and I tend to wake up towards the end with little to no consequence to my physical awake state. In a nightmare, however, this can be very different. Sometimes reoccurring nightmares cause me to manipulate the dream in order to escape the nightmare and in many instances I just simply wake up violently. I usually try to think of positive thoughts so that I can merely go back to sleep and wake up a few hours later into dawn.

Dreams/Nightmares brought upon by current events or thoughts are a bit more straight forward. I see/hear/smell/taste/learn/feel something disturbing, painful, frightening, or just plain evil, I'm more likely going to have a nightmare that same night, usually dealing with a very real scenario centered on the information that I just recently learned. Sometimes I would have dreams instead, where I'm placed in a position in which I need to "fix/figure out/cure" whatever I heard about that day and I rarely have reoccurring dreams of this nature.

People state that they get a lot of their creative ideas from dreams or spotty precognitive visions, but for me, it is more akin to my daydreams. I tend to daydream often, not so much that it interferes with my works, studies, or conscious state, but enough to spark many creative ideas for stories, characters, and games. Also, due to my observant nature, I experience dejavu constantly and I can often predict the outcome of a situation based on a set of fixed behaviors and settings; granted, this only works with things and people that I interact with everyday.

 

[Ranorak]

It doesn't matter if you strenuously refuse to believe what every psychiatrist knows as a scientific fact.!

Funny, as psychiatry is still heavily debated on to even be a proper science or Pseudo-science.

Anyway,

As far as I know, dreams are nothing but random images your sub conscience might have picked up at one point.

I do believe that resent events or activities can heavily influence what you remember of those dreams.
After playing a certain game for 2 days in a row, for almost all the time, I'm very likely to dream (or rather remember those dreams) to be about said game.

Or the night before a big exame my recollection of the dream will often be about fear of those exams.

I don't believe they can predict the future. They can be about the future and happen to be similar, but that's basicly your brain having a lucky guess.

Nor do I think that any dream is trying to tell you something. You ARE you, your brain is you. You might dream about something you're trying to forget. But never can your brain know something you don't.

 

[Ranorak]

It doesn't matter if you strenuously refuse to believe what every psychiatrist knows as a scientific fact.!

Funny, as psychiatry is still heavily debated on to even be a proper science or Pseudo-science.

Anyway,

As far as I know, dreams are nothing but random images your sub conscience might have picked up at one point.

I do believe that resent events or activities can heavily influence what you remember of those dreams.
After playing a certain game for 2 days in a row, for almost all the time, I'm very likely to dream (or rather remember those dreams) to be about said game.

Or the night before a big exame my recollection of the dream will often be about fear of those exams.

I don't believe they can predict the future. They can be about the future and happen to be similar, but that's basicly your brain having a lucky guess.

Nor do I think that any dream is trying to tell you something. You ARE you, your brain is you. You might dream about something you're trying to forget. But never can your brain know something you don't.

Of course dreams can't predict the future... dhu!

But sometimes dreams can and will certainly show you your hopes or your fears. This is an undeniable fact. Which is why, for example, people who have an exam will very often dream about failing that exam; and things like that. If dreams were random and meaningless, people who are anxious about failing an exam would not happen to coincidentally dream about failing the exam.... isn't it obvious?

As you just pointed out, your brain knows what you know. This is why your dreams show you your life. It can be something trivial like a videogame you've been playing. Or it can be something deeper like that lingering fear or hidden hope that you yourself do not want to acknowledge consciously.

Frankly, I'm surprised that there's even people thinking dreams mean nothing. Even the dumbest thing, like dreaming a videogame you played, has a clear meaning: your brain is telling you that you've been playing that game a lot.

But it doesn't TELL you anything.

It just processed images and thoughts you might have had.
There is no message. The fact that you interpertate that message as in "You played that game a lot." is meaningless. I could dream about a totally different game the next night, one that I haven't played in days. Does my dream tell me "You use to play that game." That's not telling me something, that's remembering something.

Hell, like someone already said, I might very well be possible that I never actually dreamed about that video game, but I mixed my memories of last night with what happened in the dream and tought I dreamed about the game.