The Gaming Den

I don't know how much of this is outcome bias and how much of this is confabulation, but, one thing I believe that I have noticed is that when I'm having a dream oftentimes the subjects are something that I've only thought about briefly during the day. Moreover, it seems that thinking heavily about a subject right before I fall asleep is a guaranteed way not to dream about it. I've only had dreams about work or school during an extended stretch of time in which I was not thinking about either (for example, on vacation) but when I'm actually taking classes or working I never (to the best of my recollection) dream about those environments.

Is there anything to this? I figure that there's some heavy magical thinking to all this, but I want to be sure.

We forget most of our dreams, so it's hard to say anything overarching. My advice would be to put a notepad by your bed, and take a couple minutes each morning to write a quick note on whatever you remember from your dream. Keep that up for a bit and you'll start remembering them much better. Plus, you'll have a data set that you can use to see what you're actually dreaming about.

So when I go to bed I should spend a lot of time thinking about my teeth shattering, getting arrested, being chased by a giant rubber ball, and giant lobsters with clown faces trying to steal my bedroom fan?

...those are pretty regular things to dream about, right?

I can't really remember any of my dreams. I used to, and occasionally I'll have one that just really sticks with me (the last one had to be more than a year ago). Usually they're completely gone before I even finish waking up, but even if they're not I can't retain them even if I'm actively thinking about them. I'll be laying there after a weird dream trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and then I will start losing details as I am thinking about them. It's really weird and slightly unnerving.

That said, yeah. Trying to assess your dreams is pretty much impossible because it's going to be full of good ol' human bias. You're more likely to remember the dreams you were having just before you woke up, and you're more likely to be woken up by certain kinds of dreams, and you're more likely to remember certain kinds of dreams more easily than others, and etc, etc. Whatever's notepad idea will help, but it won't remove some of the error (if you're woken up in the middle of the night by scary dreams about clown-faced giant lobsters trying to steal your shit, for example, that's the dream that will end up in your dream journal, not the one before that about your car turning purple which was not at all emotionally intense and unlikely to wake you).

Also, I don't think I can beat the clown-faced giant lobster burglars, but I did dream the Power Rangers tried to kill me once when I was little. I always thought that was kind of funny.

Koumei wrote:So when I go to bed I should spend a lot of time thinking about my teeth shattering, getting arrested, being chased by a giant rubber ball, and giant lobsters with clown faces trying to steal my bedroom fan?

...those are pretty regular things to dream about, right?

Hair and teeth loss are pretty common dreams to have, and being arrested is one of those "naked in public" anxiety dreams that are also fairly common. The giant rubber ball and the clown lobsters are weird, but dreams in general are weird. I'm actually more surprised when I have a dream with a coherent plot and setting than when I have one that's a random mish-mash of unrelated themes.

I dream about my teeth rotting out, and having to constantly spit tooth shards out to speak as my mouth fills up with them.

EDIT: Here's one that used to be frequent. When I was seeing the last girlfriend, I used to constantly dream that she had invited 10 of her female friends to have a 12-way, and kept making me start over because I "wasn't doing it right".

From my research, dreams of losing your teeth symbolizes a perception of weakness, and dreaming of too many sexual partners at once means you are feeling overwhelmed. Considering back then she was leaning pretty hard on my emotionally and financially, as well as me going to class and working full time at that point, I can see that.

Dreams get weirder as your health goes down too . .
Fever-Dreams is not a coincidence. And strong anaestetics have the same effect . . well, not while you are under, usually, but both times i had my operations i dreamed really weird shit after having gotten out of narcosis.

weirdest dream i remember from last month when i had one operation was about my girlfriend showing up at work, starting to kill people and dragging me off to get married so i would stay at home and she could nurse me back to health all the while taking over half of the city using only house hold tools . .

One time I was at the hospital and was freaking high from Fentanyl. I had a very vivid dream of an incredibly busty brunette with long hair floating down from the ceiling, settling her body against mine, and holding me. And I have never felt more at peace than I did that time.

Since then, I have dated two incredibly busty brunettes, with considerably less positive feelings. It seemed less risky than becoming addicted to narcotics.

My dreams are usually a mix of all the junk I've been seeing and thinking about lately.

So the other night, I had a dream in which I was pushing an ancient, ancient dryad somewhere in a wheelchair, her having been put through a ritual which temporarily let her go away from her tree so she could go to a doctor or something.

I recall she was a sweet old lady.

I'm leaving out a lot. The giant tourist-trap elevator-tower thing on the beach did give a hell of a view, but doesn't fit in with any coherent narrative. Neither does me putting a chokehold on someone to 'assist' them out the door. I barely remember those anyway.

But the dryad? Yeah. I liked that part.

I once experimented with a dream journal and I learned two things:

1. My subconscious is a terrible person.

2. Dreams are crap and should be ignored. It's kind of awesome that we forget them so easily.

As soon as I have booze in my system I get vivid dreams. Yeah it's a common thing, but it fucking rocks. My dreams are normally scary or mundane, but these dreams typically end up as badass or just weird.

Gunning down monsters in museums Fallout-style, then being forced to team-up with government agents to bust some badguys? Well, the G-Men were trying to get me killed, and weird stuff happened... But hell yeah.


As for dreams over an extended period of time... I used to have them in highschool. Being shot at in the school and zombies. Never the two together, thankfully. Did have dreams that seemed to build off each other of the course of a short period of time, a few times.