dream studies?

[martinss01]

so... there any doctors in the house? msn had some article about the 10 most common dreams people seem to have. i took a quick peek at it and realized ive only had two or three of those dreams types ever. and of those dreams ive had them 7... maybe 8 times that i can remember?

it got me wondering if any of the dr or other learned types on this board happen to know of anyone doing any real legitimate dream studies or analysis. i suspect not or at least very few as i would imagine dream interpretation has more to do with the individual than any specific symbolism. but in speaking to others over the years i have found my dreams to at least "seem" somewhat unusual.

throughout my childhood and well into my twenties (possibly even early thirties) i have been able to recall somewhere between 3 to 5 dreams per night assuming the last one woke me up or i concentrated on doing so immediately after waking up. during this time frame my dreams were almost exclusively what most would consider nightmares. the parts that i would consider potentially noteworthy are as follows:

virtually exclusively nightmares and all violent involving someones death. almost all of those deaths were mine. in most cases the dreams would continue after my death. so multiple different nightmares per night with most being recurring nightmares night after night. sometimes for months (two or three managed to last years) on end. i remember one specifically that i had at least weekly that i could remember for at least a year and a half. i want to say there were a handful of others but this level of recurring dream was unusual. but recurring dreams lasting weeks or months was very common. seemingly absurd level of unique and morbidly interesting ways to die. if you can think of a semi or absolutely horrific way to die, ive probably done it in a dream. freezing to death. not so bad overall. drowning... kinda sucky in realizing your going to die. the worst part imo is the panic state you hit when you know you can't free yourself in that fraction of a second where you take in your first lung full of water. burning alive is kind of a horror show. but by far the worst is being paralyzed somehow and being eaten alive.

i had a long running one where i was out hiking with friends and fell off a rock face. broke my neck in the fall. couldn't speak or move, kinda sucky to hear people searching for you but not being able to call out for help. layed in a ravene for 2 fricken days before the wolves found me. then they had to work up the courage to start the taste testing. random unexpected tidbit... im crunchier than expected.... sure, when paralyzed you can't feel the pain of it all. but its just a shit way to go hearing yourself being knawled on seeing it happen to some degree and not being able to do anything about it.

i can only remember 1 dream in which i killed someone. i know that my childhood, and the associated ungoodness of it all on many different levels are almost certainly the cause of the dreams. ive just always been curious how unusual the consistency, rather than any specific subject matter or symbol, of my dreams are/were.

i haven't been able to remember a single dream in the last 5 years. doubt that is overly meaningful as ive worked fairly hard to not do so over the years so i have no idea if they are still occurring. so yeah, just curious how much of an oddity i am and or if there is anything resembling legit medical/scientific research being done in this neighborhood these days.

 

[LostLassie]

I go for long periods without remembering dreams. But then, for many years, they've been far too boring to be worth remembering. (My daughter, on the other hand, used to have extravaganzas--she'd be dancing in a Busby Berkeley musical number with George Clooney, etc. But maybe that makes sense given she had years of dance training. So, just a more elaborate version of something she actually did.) Lately mine have been what I call "stress dreams" such as, the girl working the register at Kroger is rude to me--garbage like that.

Years ago, I'd have the classic flying dreams, where I could levitate and would go soaring over the landscape, looking down at the city. The only really unusual ones I've had in recent years were a day after a couple of us saw a UFO during the Dublin fireworks. Had two in a row where 1) my home was infested with fat grey mice who were crawling up the curtains. They were dark silhouettes on the drapes, and I said something like "They've always been here. It's just that now we can see them." 2) In the other one I was at a sort of craft fair at a warehouse where a guy sold wooden alphabet blocks. I was going around the table picking up the blocks when I realized the guy had frozen in place. I had a terrible sense of something ominous pending, and knew it meant that "they" were coming. The guy had said something to me earlier about how you could use the letters. I started to freeze too, and began screaming "Oh, no you don't! You don't do this to me!" and began to force my fingers and toes to move, then I un-froze. The message seemed to be about asserting your will by using language. Anyway, the dread I felt as I realized "they" were after me was awful. One sensation I never want to experience again.

My earliest memory is a recurring dream. The most vivid memory of it is a lucid dream when I knew I was dreaming, recognized which dream it was, and was delighted that it was happening. I would be a woman in my thirties. It would be pitch dark--like 4AM dark, and I would be on a high structure like a bridge. I would fall to my death. It wasn't something I thought about then, but now I imagine what was happening was a suicide by jumping from a bridge into a river. Anyway, I loved that dream because of where I went after I died. Much more pleasant than any place in the world I knew as a child. The air was suffused with music.

As you say, they're all very open to personal interpretation. If you give any credence to the idea of reincarnation, maybe death dreams are us working out unfinished business from past lives. If that's true, sounds like you've had some whoppers of demises. Hope you pass quietly in your sleep this time around.

 

[martinss01]

kinch likes this.

good to see you enjoy the idea of me having horrific nightmares throughout my childhood there kinch . makes it all worth it at the end of the day lol! j/k :p

lostlassie, ive always found the reincarnation crowd interesting. everyone always seems to be reincarnation of the exact same really cool people. joan of arc or cleopatra or alexander the great or sum such. no one is ever a reincarnation of little billy the unwanted neighborhood orphan killed at the age of 9 by a run away manure cart... seems problematic to me. :p

your daughters dream does make sense though. a history of dance and various things young girls would find rather interesting. theres logic there i suspect.

after a bad reaction to a nightmare as a child my mother told me that it was my dream and was taking place in my mind. which means i have full control over it. didn't stop the nightmares, but there was only one dream that i had a particularly bad response to from that point on.