Dreaming too much?
Discussion
This may sound very odd, but does anybody else feel like they dream too much and it's affecting their sleep? I have at least three dreams a night, and the majority are of the nightmare variety (murder, illness, rape, plane crashes, maggots eating my flesh etc) and I swear that sometimes I wake up absolutely exhausted because of all the dreams I've had!
I'd be interested if anybody else has any experience of this?
I don't feel that I am particularly anxious, but I have suffered from depression the majority of my adult life, but that seems to be behaving itself at the moment and I actually feel quite ok!
I'd be interested if anybody else has any experience of this?
I don't feel that I am particularly anxious, but I have suffered from depression the majority of my adult life, but that seems to be behaving itself at the moment and I actually feel quite ok!
Ha, yep know that feeling! Not many nights I don't shout, or flail myself awake!
I'm on venlafaxine, 75mg one day 37.5mg the next as I'm trying to come off them (which is a whole other thread, it's withdrawal central when I initially reduce the dose) but because I've been on that for years I can't really remember if the two were connected. Certainly as a child I had very vivid dreams.
It's just annoying as if this is the reason I seem to wake up tired then I don't know what I can do about it, which is why I asked on here!
Have you always had it? Do you find anything makes it better/worse?
I'm on venlafaxine, 75mg one day 37.5mg the next as I'm trying to come off them (which is a whole other thread, it's withdrawal central when I initially reduce the dose) but because I've been on that for years I can't really remember if the two were connected. Certainly as a child I had very vivid dreams.
It's just annoying as if this is the reason I seem to wake up tired then I don't know what I can do about it, which is why I asked on here!
Have you always had it? Do you find anything makes it better/worse?
Lippitt said:
This may sound very odd, but does anybody else feel like they dream too much and it's affecting their sleep? I have at least three dreams a night, and the majority are of the nightmare variety (murder, illness, rape, plane crashes, maggots eating my flesh etc) and I swear that sometimes I wake up absolutely exhausted because of all the dreams I've had!
I'd be interested if anybody else has any experience of this?
I don't feel that I am particularly anxious, but I have suffered from depression the majority of my adult life, but that seems to be behaving itself at the moment and I actually feel quite ok!
AFAIK dreaming is normal and required for a healthy brain. Latest science i've seen say it's the brain consolodating neural pathways recording your experiences, the cascade of action and that memory is fragmented and dsitributed throughout your brain, results in a dream that can appear 'out there'.I'd be interested if anybody else has any experience of this?
I don't feel that I am particularly anxious, but I have suffered from depression the majority of my adult life, but that seems to be behaving itself at the moment and I actually feel quite ok!
Psychologists say it's you mind practicing for an event, good or bad, so that you are better equipped to deal with them should a similar scenario happen.
Psychiatrists say they are consciously suppressed wants or fears playing out or are a subconscious representation of you current mental calm.
Given that you feel ok during the day, appears to indicate that your dreams, whatever their real function, are doing a good job...
I say it could easily be a combination of all those! Particularly if you sleep in an environment where somesort stimuli are still possible - such as sleeping next to an open window, noisey birds, traffic, a misbehaving boiler, creaking floorboards, especially if these noises are a new development etc. which you hear whilst asleep and set off a cascading brainwave pattern that initiate a dream.
It seems you have no trouble remembering you dreams though, which is a good start to proper lucid dreaming - controlling your dreams. If you can remember them vividly it's only a small step the realising you're dreaming while you're still asleep - you just kind of need to program that conscious thought into your subconscious and you'll never have a nightmare again. At least, it worked for me.
I must admit though, those subjects are deeply psychotic! Probably a recent uncontrolled change in your environment or life. Shrinks are the best people to see about that kind of thing.
As for affecting your sleep, it's unlikely unless you wake with night terrors, as dreaming about anything is normal, waking several times a night is normal and thrashing around is normal.
mattikake said:
Psychiatrists say they are consciously suppressed wants or fears playing out or are a subconscious representation of you current mental calm.
Psychiatrists are in the job of studying and curing mental disorders.Many people think psychiatrists place a little too much emphasis on dreams.
goldblum said:
mattikake said:
Psychiatrists say they are consciously suppressed wants or fears playing out or are a subconscious representation of you current mental calm.
Psychiatrists are in the job of studying and curing mental disorders.Many people think psychiatrists place a little too much emphasis on dreams.I used to program neural nets at Uni as part of my degree and the cascading effect of just one input is little different to many inputs a waking sensory organ would generate - it's the same maths/logic. 1 input or 10,000, they all cascade through the network like a nuclear fission reaction. If memory is distributed throughout the brain both connnected to sensory organ structures and stored elsewhere, then one tiny input (like a bird tweeting outside) could and would easily create a dream, as the rest of the brain is already active, busy consolodating the days experience. I know for a personal fact, I have more dreams if I sleep with my bedroom window open...
But due to this memory activation, dreams will always have a significant or complete basis in your own experiences, which they normally do - people, places, objects but most of all, nearly always from a first person perspective because that IS your perspective of reality. And because the brain is in the middle of the days memory consolidation, dreams tend to be about what you've recently experienced or have been on your mind a lot (even remembering dreams that were otherwise unconnected to this, become connected due to the memory of the dream). I.e. have a bad dream, wake up, interpret it as about rape, next dream... is of course about the rape memory/thought you just generated! These could easily misinterpreted as a classic Freudian suppressed wish etc.
The brain is a once-runtime event that is never reset.
In a more recent study, they've found the brain is more active when asleep than when awake. It's doing loads of stuff when you sleep and isn't 'resting' at all.
In short, dreams mean nothing other than your brain is doing what is should when you sleep, but there has just been an accidental sensory activation. And when you sense something, it seems real...
Unless of course, you really are a psychopath!
^ But that's all IMO/interpretation, but it makes perfect sense to me, given what I have also seen with neural nets.
Yeah, I love dream science! It represents a 1/3 of your life afterall!
Edited by mattikake on Monday 16th January 01:22
Lippitt said:
Ha, yep know that feeling! Not many nights I don't shout, or flail myself awake!
I'm on venlafaxine, 75mg one day 37.5mg the next as I'm trying to come off them (which is a whole other thread, it's withdrawal central when I initially reduce the dose) but because I've been on that for years I can't really remember if the two were connected. Certainly as a child I had very vivid dreams.
It's just annoying as if this is the reason I seem to wake up tired then I don't know what I can do about it, which is why I asked on here!
Have you always had it? Do you find anything makes it better/worse?
I only ever had the occasional vivid dream before I started taking medication. Now I get them most nights. As Matt says, it is definitely more likely with the window open as your brain is receiving stimulus that it needs to deal with and this tends to intrude on your sleeping self in the form of a dream. I'm on venlafaxine, 75mg one day 37.5mg the next as I'm trying to come off them (which is a whole other thread, it's withdrawal central when I initially reduce the dose) but because I've been on that for years I can't really remember if the two were connected. Certainly as a child I had very vivid dreams.
It's just annoying as if this is the reason I seem to wake up tired then I don't know what I can do about it, which is why I asked on here!
Have you always had it? Do you find anything makes it better/worse?
Most days I will wake and remember exactly what the dream was about. When having bad dreams, I will wake maybe 4 times a night which tends to leave me tired in the day.
The strangest ones I have had recently are one where I was having a perfectly normal dream, then someone appeared to the right of me and punched me in the face. It was so real I woke up shouting and would have sworn that someone had really been in the room and hit me, despite the fact I was on my own.
The one I had on Saturday night involved me smashing up all of my boyfriends stuff and then turning my attention to smashing the downstairs windows with a baseball bat. Not sure where that one came from as I don't have a boyfriend!
Your brain is amazing, but sometimes it does seem intent on screwing with you
Wow, quite a lot of information there! (Bet I’ll be dreaming about that tonight 
) Some of it is far too intelligent for me though, maybe you could translate into idiot speak?
It’s funny you should mention lucid dreaming, as sometimes (as often as once a week) I do realise in the dream that I am dreaming. Usually it’s when I am in a situation where I am out of control and probably about to die (brakes failing on car, plane going down, clinging to a cliff top etc) that I go hang on this must be a dream and just ‘let go’ and stop fighting whatever situation I’m in (say with the car one, I stop stamping on the brake and just let go of the steering wheel and shut my eyes) and then I wake up with a start. It would be very cool if I could learn to control this.
Bit concerned that you’ve mentioned psychotic and psychopath twice there mattikake The dreams are definitely incredibly disturbing, like being in your own horror film…. Some of them are recurring as well, like the spot that looks like a normal spot till I pick it and pull the head of a worm out that then releases loads of maggots and the hole keeps getting bigger until I’m scraping handfuls of my own rotting maggot infested flesh and I can see my organs and I’m trying to hold them in… Hmm, yeah maybe psycho is the word. It is weird though, because I don’t actually have a fear of going mouldy lol…
So ultimately it does look like I am just a bit of mental but it's ok my brain is dealing with it yes?!
) Some of it is far too intelligent for me though, maybe you could translate into idiot speak?It’s funny you should mention lucid dreaming, as sometimes (as often as once a week) I do realise in the dream that I am dreaming. Usually it’s when I am in a situation where I am out of control and probably about to die (brakes failing on car, plane going down, clinging to a cliff top etc) that I go hang on this must be a dream and just ‘let go’ and stop fighting whatever situation I’m in (say with the car one, I stop stamping on the brake and just let go of the steering wheel and shut my eyes) and then I wake up with a start. It would be very cool if I could learn to control this.
Bit concerned that you’ve mentioned psychotic and psychopath twice there mattikake
The dreams are definitely incredibly disturbing, like being in your own horror film…. Some of them are recurring as well, like the spot that looks like a normal spot till I pick it and pull the head of a worm out that then releases loads of maggots and the hole keeps getting bigger until I’m scraping handfuls of my own rotting maggot infested flesh and I can see my organs and I’m trying to hold them in… Hmm, yeah maybe psycho is the word. It is weird though, because I don’t actually have a fear of going mouldy lol… So ultimately it does look like I am just a bit of mental but it's ok my brain is dealing with it yes?!
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