My dreams are officially a pain in the arse

[Darby]

So I heard a long time ago that in dreams if you talk to a person in them then you can gain knowledge about yourself through them because they are a figment of your subconscious (blah blah blah).

So just recently I had a dream where I was chatting with an old friend I haven't seen in a long time, and she says something like:

"Yeah, so we were selling our house and the guy who wants to buy it came in and we tried to be hospitable and nice and make him feel at home in our home, and he was just super depressed, how can you expect others to be nice to you if you can't even pretend to be happy? It's like he had no dreams, no goals. You know me well enough to know that (this comment was rather odd and I may be remembering this exact sentence wrong)."

My response was:

"Well I don't actually know you very well anymore, *laugh*. but I understand where he comes from, there have certainly been times when I had no dreams, not even a hint, and I can say that was not where I wanted to be, it simply was, but I also don't think I didn't have dreams, I just didn't realize them yet. I have dreams now, even if I don't know what they are."


Perhaps I just didn't get what I wanted, or I woke up in what felt like half way through our conversation, but I felt like my dream didn't provide me with anything new, I'm tired of rehashing old arguments I've had 1,000,000 times over with myself.

 

[smithcommajohn]

Dreams aren't always supposed to provide new information. I find them to be quite random and interesting. Sometimes I revisit themes, while others I discover new territory.

I think your friend's statement in the dream is intriguing. "how can you expect others to be nice to you if you can't even pretend to be happy?" Do you think this is how your friend really thinks?

 

[Jordan~]

When I first moved to university my dreams started mentally sabotaging me. After I got sick I started to question that it was really what I wanted, and then every night it was a vision of some impossible better alternative:

I went to Edinburgh University instead, and my ex was there, but he had a boyfriend, but I broke them up by getting him to cheat on my ex (with me) and we got back together.

Me and my friends lived in New York and saw my favourite singer busking, I insisted we stay and watch till he was done, we asked him out for drinks after and he said yes, I kissed him in a bar.

It was like my subconscious was going, "Bwahahaha, question what you were impossibly lucky to receive! Spurn the incredible opportunity, spurn it!"

Most of the time my dreams are just nonsense. Sometimes they make enough sense to be entertaining when I remember them. Sometimes they're excruciatingly realistically boring - I have dreams where I browse forums. Sometimes they're like blockbuster films with panning shots and massive landscapes and action sequences and stuff. Occasionally even with soundtracks.

 

[pjoa09]

I just use them as symbols because I am very unsure of my stress levels and emotional stability. Very basic ones are trucks and water.
Trucks mean that you are under stress and water means you are in emotional distress.

Other than that it is just rambling.

In your case it seems as if the daily nuisances and quarreling have gotten to you. You think life is selling itself short.
IMO.

 

[Darby]

I think your friend's statement in the dream is intriguing. "how can you expect others to be nice to you if you can't even pretend to be happy?" Do you think this is how your friend really thinks?

I'm not sure, I haven't seen/talked to her in 6 years (this is why I laughed when she said I knew her well), she was an old friend from middle school who I had a crush on.

 

[Dimensional Transition]

If dreams contain some truth, does that make positive dreams good and negative dreams bad?

Positive dreams providing security and support, negative dreams providing critique for one's self?

 

[Darby]

If dreams contain some truth, does that make positive dreams good and negative dreams bad?

Positive dreams providing security and support, negative dreams providing critique for one's self?

I don't think negative dreams are bad, just as you said, negative dreams often provide a critique of oneself, which I don't consider bad. I've had many "negative" dreams, same as positive, but I didn't consider either "bad" just tending to attempt to answer questions I have in some way without ever finding any conclusions, many of my dreams end in half finished debates/conversations with people from my past always resolving in the "wake up and wonder if I'm supposed to think more on what was said while I am awake, or simply ignore it as a random firing of brain thingies"

 

[smithcommajohn]

I'm not sure, I haven't seen/talked to her in 6 years (this is why I laughed when she said I knew her well), she was an old friend from middle school who I had a crush on.

I find that interesting. It makes me wonder if your subconscious is telling you what it knows to be true about her, or if you're placing an assumption on what you've always thought she felt about you.

 

[Dimensional Transition]

I don't think negative dreams are bad, just as you said, negative dreams often provide a critique of oneself, which I don't consider bad. I've had many "negative" dreams, same as positive, but I didn't consider either "bad" just tending to attempt to answer questions I have in some way without ever finding any conclusions, many of my dreams end in half finished debates/conversations with people from my past always resolving in the "wake up and wonder if I'm supposed to think more on what was said while I am awake, or simply ignore it as a random firing of brain thingies"

Yeah, I worded it wrong. What I meant to say was more that 'negative dreams' may help you better yourself as a person, as in remove the bad things from yourself(arrogance, apathy, stuff like that), and that 'positive dreams' may help you become more sure about yourself.

I find that whenever I'm procrastinating when I have exams, I tend to have really negative dreams in which I fail all my tests and such, and that whenever I feel unloved and depressed, I tend to have dreams in which people appreciate me, or I get the girl I've been after... Stuff like that.

This excludes two other kinds of dreams though:
The normal, everyday life dream in which I dream of just going to school, visiting friends, eating dinner etc. And the psychedelic crazy fantasy dream in which I have extreme supernatural abilities, encounter mystical creatures, etc.

What can we make of those?

 

[A22]

I talk to people in my lucid dreams. They never answer me. I guess my subconscious doesn't like me.

 

[smithcommajohn]

Yeah, I worded it wrong. What I meant to say was more that 'negative dreams' may help you better yourself as a person, as in remove the bad things from yourself(arrogance, apathy, stuff like that), and that 'positive dreams' may help you become more sure about yourself.

I find that whenever I'm procrastinating when I have exams, I tend to have really negative dreams in which I fail all my tests and such, and that whenever I feel unloved and depressed, I tend to have dreams in which people appreciate me, or I get the girl I've been after... Stuff like that.

This excludes two other kinds of dreams though:
The normal, everyday life dream in which I dream of just going to school, visiting friends, eating dinner etc. And the psychedelic crazy fantasy dream in which I have extreme supernatural abilities, encounter mystical creatures, etc.

What can we make of those?

I'm not sure, but I find dreams to be of great interest and an area that should be explored further. People discount dreams as meaningless, but anything to do with the mind, awake or asleep, is worthy of examination.

 

[Reluctantly]

I talk to people in my lucid dreams. They never answer me. I guess my subconscious doesn't like me.

Sounds like a theme of interpersonal neglect or isolation.

 

[Darby]

I talk to people in my lucid dreams. They never answer me. I guess my subconscious doesn't like me.

Mine usually aren't "lucid" as much as I just have a very vivid memory of it, but I rarely am able to make conscious decisions in my dreams.

 

[Darby]

Definitely need to stop dreaming, this time I was discussing the finer notes of music with a faceless girl in black. I was talking about the importance of music while activating a very complex locking system that my artificial legs activate by pressing specific keys on something like a keyboard staircase/typewriter.

 

[smithcommajohn]

I'd like a place to discuss dreams. I think they have value, though I'm not sure exactly what.

 

[GYX_Kid]

Sounds like you were dreaming about thinking about psychoanalyzing dreams.

edit: You actually meant dreams as in goals, never mind.


I'm interested in dreams for the fun trip, the organized randomness, and figuring out what the associations were between putting it all together.

One time in a dream I did figure out how to reach a powerup in a Megaman level, that was new information.

 

[jameslikespie]

My dreams never make any sense whatsoever.