Avery Sun Week #14 Remembering Dreams
Avery Sun
Week 14
Remembering Dreams
I think I can say with confidence that I dream a lot. Or, maybe I don’t. Maybe I dream the same amount as anyone else, I can just recall them better. I still remember my first ever nightmare where all the furniture in my house turned into huge spiders. In fact, one of my first memories was a dream, but I’ll get to that later. Often, I wake up with the feeling that I had just gone through an otherworldly experience (my dreams are quite wild), but I can’t remember exactly what. However, this has happened to me so many times, that I’ve learned that if I don’t brood on it and wait patiently, the contents of my dream will come back to me during the evening, and its usually worth the wait.
People of different characteristics also tend to remember their dreams more. For example, studies have shown that women remember their dreams more than men, especially during the adolescent years.
and anxious people also tend to remember their dreams because they will be more restless in their sleep. Finally, people who “fall asleep too fast, sleep too soundly and wake up with their alarm clock” don’t remember their dreams as changing from unconsciousness to wakefulness too quickly makes it more difficult for dreams to be encoded. As a depressed teenage girl who can take up to 2 hours to fall asleep, I guess its not surprising that I remember my dreams often.
Just for fun, here is the story of one of my oldest memories:
So I was probably 2 years old judging from the fact that I usually take on my current form in my dreams, unless the dream is set in some form of media universe. I didn’t know how to move and I didn’t know how to talk. It just felt like I was existing and the only sense I had access to was sight. I was sitting in the middle of an empty highway, and my dad descended from the bypass like an angel while my mom was standing behind me.
The dream itself is pretty boring I guess, but the experience and the fact that I still remember it is pretty amazing. If any of you taking psychology wish to psychoanalyze my dream, go for it, as I have no idea what it means.
I don't really tend to remember my dreams, despite being a fairly light sleeper for a lot of my life. My dad has recently determined that to be a result of my lack of sleep and terrible sleep schedule, which to be fair likely is a massive contributor to my lack of dreams. While I don't typically sleep for long enough or restfully enough to extensively dream or remember them, I do very much like occasionally watching an ultra-realistic depiction of movie-like events and plotlines. I've found myself waking up in the morning at a good point and desperately wanting to fall back asleep and resume it, all in vain. While a lot of my dreams are nonsensical sensory chaos, I've also wanted to see what its like to lucid dream, and be completely in control of everything that's happening.
ReplyDeleteHello Avery! I simply cannot fully recall a dream. The last dream I can reasonably remember was one I had when I was much younger. Now, I just sleep and wake up completely blank. There was a period of months where I would dream and actually feel remnants of the dream after I woke up, but that period of time passed months ago. Now, when I am especially tired, my head just hits the pillow and it is like 8 hours have passed in a blink. Literally. I fall asleep and suddenly wake up. While your blog is quite interesting, it sadly does not apply to me and my (current) lack of dreams.
ReplyDeleteHello Avery, I think that is cool that you can remember a dream, you dream a lot, and the nature of your dream is very fiction. I am the complete opposite because I can never remember my dreams, I do not dream a lot, and when I do dream, the dreams are very realistic and relate to scenarios I have already experienced. For example, I lost something very valuable that my grandma gave me, so I had a dream where I had found the item. I woke up very disappointed.
ReplyDeleteHi Avery, I was really intrigued by your blog topic because I have always wondered why some people can remember their dreams very vividly while others can not. Personally, I usually wake up with the knowledge that I had a dream, and I start to think about it, but seconds later, I completely forget about what happened in my dream. However, there are some dreams that I vividly remember, both from my childhood and even more recent ones. Interestingly enough, I feel like most of the dreams that I remember vividly are more startling nightmares. In any case, I definitely wish that I would dream more often and remember more of my dreams, but with my current sleep schedule that does not seem very plausible.
ReplyDeleteHi Avery, what you said in your blog post makes a lot of sense to me. I tend to only remember handfuls of my dream as soon as I wake up, but in 2 hours, I can't recall anything. But I am definitely a deep sleeper and rarely wake up to any sound or light. So this explains why I have a harder time remembering my dreams. But there are a couple of dreams that I clearly remember to this day. Most of them are nightmares unfortunately, but there are some happy dreams that I remember as well. Weirdly, I have not been really dreaming for the past few weeks but that might be due to the amount of sleep i'm getting along with the stress I have. Anyways, looking forward to your next blog post!
ReplyDeleteHi Avery! Surprisingly, in my case, I haven’t dreamed in almost a year to my last recollection. This could possibly be due to the fact that my irregular sleep schedule of usually sleeping at 1 or 2 AM everyday could have contributed to this mishap. Although my doctor insists that I need to sleep for 8 hours at a minimum to have a sufficient amount of sleep for my age, this lack of sleep of mine has eliminated any possible thought of me getting a dream of any type. In complete honesty, I miss those times in my elementary school years when I was able to envision myself accomplishing or fulfilling some of my life goals, but unfortunately in recent years I haven’t been able to. Dreams have always intrigued me to want to know more about myself because I am able to see myself in the shoes of a person who I wish to be like. I want to learn more about myself and possible actions I would take in certain situations. Thank you for your blog!
ReplyDeleteHi Avery! I've personally had a frustrating experience with remembering my dreams. Sure there may be some dreams that I have no recollection of. But the ones I do remember often only remain in my memory immediately after waking up, and seem to gradually drift away from me as the day passes. I also found your point about REM sleep to be accurate when explaining memories of dreams, as when I tend to only sleep around the REM range of a few hours, I find that I do have more vivid recollections of my dreams. I'm curious to see if people's health practices also affect their dreams though. I've heard about people attributing mindful practices like meditation to having a clearer state of mind and better memories of their dreams.
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