Poll: Do you dream when sleeping?

[Inconspicuous Trenchcoat]

I haven't remembered more than half a second or a vague image from one of my dreams in... years. I wish I could remember them. But I have terrible sleeping habits, and I often wonder if I have obstructive sleep apnea. I almost never feel refreshed when I wake up. I used to feel more awake when I pulled all-nighters in High School, than when I get 7-9 hours of sleep these days. It's really frustrating. Something's gotta be wrong with me? But I don't know if or what.

 

[ninjapenguin1414]

I almost always forget my dreams but when i do they are the weirdest and strangest dreams ever and makes me wonder what causes them.

Captcha: Bowties are cool, mabye watching too much doctor who caused it lol.

 

[MintberryCrunch]

I'm trying to get more control over my dreams (Lucid Dreaming), but the dreams I do remember are usually so messed up and random, they make me question my sanity.

A good thing to do is (I've heard, I quite frequently lucid dream without trying) to count your fingers a lot, just randomly during the day look down and count your fingers. Do this over a long period of time, and at some point in your dreams you'll notice your hands are strange, realise you're in a dream and you'll be able to control it.

OT: I dream quite a lot and a fair amount of time it's a lucid dream. I don't really do anything drastic, though. It's much more fun to roll with whatever weird stuff my mind's making up.

 

[bulbasaur765]

Sometimes. Whenever I dream its usually only about my regular anxieties though, so it might not be random dreaming.

 

[DkLnBr]

No, I almost never dream (the last dream I can remember was a year ago, and the previous one was a decade or so before that). It seems that I just power down for the night. Though its likely that I just dont remember my dreams as I sleep like a fish out of water (ie. flopping around), so maybe I have these really intense, action-packed dreams that I forget instantly (much like a Michael Bay movie!!!)

 

[Screamarie]

I rarely remember my dreams oreven knew that I was dreaming. Mostly it's just falling to sleep without noticing and then just waking up and wondering just how long I've been out this time.

When I do remember my dreams it's usually cause they're somewhat horrifying. I've dreamt of a woman being tortured and a man getting electrocuted and other such stuff. I really don't remember what was going on otherwise in these dreams, just that I remember waking up and feeling very scared and disturbed by the memories of them and unable to sleep afterwards.

 

[Xdeser2]

I'd say about half the nights I sleep I dream, but usually its random nonsense. Once in a while they have storylines (if it would even count) but usually its a random jumbling of shit that once in a while has something that's happened to me or something I've had my mind on for a good deal of time thrown into the mix.

 

[Fijiman]

I have dreams most nights, but I usually have already forgotten half of the dream by the time I wake up and have usually forgotten the rest of it by noon.

 

[Stryc9]

Sure I do, more or less frequently depending on who knows what reason. Sometimes it's just random shit that floats to the surface of my mind while I'm asleep, sometimes things from whatever podcast happens to be playing will find their way in there which is always kind of weird, sometimes my dreams will be about a game I'm playing if I'm really into it. I've had dreams about doing things in X3 for several nights in a row before when that was a thing I was playing way more than I should have been.

 

[Hasido]

normally no, but the past few weeks have been horrible, nightmares every night. I blame the stress I've been having.

 

[thesilentman]

I remember most of my dreams. It helps that I'm an avid lucid dreamer, which may be harming my sleep. Dang it's hard getting into the right mindset.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Yes. Everyone does. Not everyone remembers it however. Your long term memory doesn't work while asleep and your short term memory will only remember anything if you were woken up while in a the middle of a dream (thus why a dream you remember always ends with an interruption). I usually don't remember my dreams. It's kind of sad actually since I dream in the from of a classic epic (don't ask why I don't understand the psychology of the unconscious) so I usually get the end of some really cool story when I wake when I do remember.

 

[Xarathox]

I don't always remember mine. Most of the ones I do remember are usually just mundane and pointless. Some, however, can be weird/creepy/horrifying/awesome.

One of my favorites that I still remember, involves me just walking through the woods behind my house and coming across a Succubus lying in a small clearing, wounded by gun shot with an Elmer Fudd looking hunter lying dead about 10 feet away. Without missing a beat, I picked her up, carried her back home and nursed her back to health. We fall in love, get married (lolwtf) and eventually move to a small cabin on top of a mountain and live happily ever after. To this day, I can still remember in exact detail what the Succubus looked like.

If I was an artist, I'd paint that shit.

 

[Remus]

I dream maybe 75% of the time that I sleep. It's almost always something in relation to what I was doing the day before. Playing MMOs a lot, that puts lots of dreams in the fantasy realm. One day I'll have one that's like a fully 3D open-world Chrono Trigger - best idea ever btw, the next will be a continuation of the previous night's raiding, complete with raid wipes and changes in strategy. This sometimes might bring new ideas to the table when my raids actually wipe. Of course having dreams about things that I actually enjoy puts me in the mindset to try and continue that dream if I randomly wake up in the middle of the night.

 

[username sucks]

I dream almost every night, about 20% of the time its a recurring nightmare I have about a guy wearing a red coat. The rest of the time I end up with a bunch of characters from books or games and we work together to stop a completly random threat.

Just last night a hobo named "Sloppy Sam", Clem from the Walking Dead game, the Deaf-mute from The Stand (I forget his name), and I all worked together to find out why a train track mysteriously was built through the library. Lots of fighting with mercenaries while standing on top of a speeding train (which drove through buildings and formed the tracks ahead of itself) ensued.

In the end it turned out to be a dream, which I then woke up from, got out of bed then got attacked by the redcoat, who was able to effortlessly restrain me with one hand as he carried me around so I would witness him slaughtering everyone I care about.

Then I woke up again and I am now (I think) in the real world.

 

[Innegativeion]

Fun science fact: Everyone dreams, but not everyone always remembers their...

Everyone dreams when they sleep.

Whether you remember them when you wake up is a different matter

...god damn it, Daystar.

 

[Nightmare-Child]

You always dream, you just don't always remember it. As for my part, my dreams are always increasingly surreal and bazaar. Further more, my dream is usually about three, or four layers deep. So, I have several false awakenings before I am actually awake.

 

[Altefforr]

Everyone dreams when they sleep.

Whether you remember them when you wake up is a different matter

Quite. Its based on what point in the sleep cycle you wake up.

There is discrepancy here. Last time I was reading up on the subject, I believe, that dreams are only present in REM Sleep, or they're not dependent on any phase of sleep and rather a state of consciousness. (Is imagination dependent on creativity?)

Either way, the gist of it is; you always dream - but sometimes your brain/ego/conscious-mind will protect itself from itself by forgetting subject-matter or dreams entirely. Some things aren't meant for lesser men, or men of doubt/disbelief. I have this hypothesis, because I find the same thing can happen to people with psychoactive substances. If the subject matter is too much for their ego/conscious to handle dealing with intellectually or emotionally, you'll black out and forget everything during that period of time.

But, going on with that same hypothesis, even dreams which you do 'remember' are never in their full caliber of what they actually were; and are generally just conscious renditions of what you actually dreamed about. For example, you had some crazy dream you went back in time; committed a bunch of crimes and got convicted and placed in a cage to die. Yet, you may only remember being convicted and left to die in a cage; thus having a different opinion on the dreams subject matter when you're awake and recall the dream.

 

[NightmareExpress]

I can say for a fact that I dream every time I sleep.
Unfortunately, I cannot recall a majority of them lest they be truly awesome or relevant.
Kind of like quickly clearing the history of a browser while keeping the favorites...