I’m confused! For the longest time I was unable to figure out what is wrong with me. Whenever I talk to anyone about my dreams, they insist that that’s not what dreams are like, and that I must be making things up or something. It’s so annoying but also kinda worrying
So I’ll do my best to describe what dreaming is like in my experience, and what (to my best knowledge) it is in the experience of other people I’ve talked to.
First of all, other people tell me they can’t tell when they’re dreaming, regardless of how many weird things happen right in front of them. I believe them, but that really does sound absurd to me! For me, my mind kind of sorts dreams in a separate category from real life. I can always tell if I’m in real life or daydreaming or normal dreaming. To my knowledge that’s what “lucid dreams” are? please forgive me if I’m using the term wrong (and hence posting this in the wrong subforum…) but I’m still not quite sure. Also, since I became aware that allegedly many people don’t dream this way - and since I started paying more attention to them - they have become even ‘more lucid’ (if you can say that at all???), kinda more vivid and with fewer or no memory gaps after waking up… it’s hard to describe.
But that’s not even the thing that worries me most. All that, at least my close friend believes me since she experienced that kind of dream too a few times. There’s another thing that even she finds difficult to believe. So allegedly, usually people’s dreams are detached from each other and separate, unrelated to each other. For me, that’s not at all how it works… it seems that the ending of one dream is the beginning of the next, that they all combine to make one big story. And again, same thing - the more I became aware of this, the more it was the case that they all fit together. In fact, by now my dreams have kinda become a second life of mine. One that seems to be not much more superficial than my real life.
That, according to everyone I’ve talked to, is weird.
I have lots of questions. Mostly, what in the world is wrong with me? Is what I said about others’ dreams true? Why am I different? Is this unhealthy or harmful? Should I try to change my dreams to make them normal?
Very common, you seem to need a certain amount of general awareness in the dream for the strangeness not just to be explained away. Some use meditation or even ‘lucid living’ to help raise this awareness.
It sounds like you always have a general awareness in dreams. Now are you fully AWARE and know you are dreaming while dreaming? The AWARENESS is the way you know it’s a lucid dream.
Some can have fake lucid dreams, acting like it’s a lucid dream but mainly going through the motions.
GREAT! There are levels of lucidity depending on your awareness.
Separate but not always unrelated. Sometimes the same theme or location will reappear.
We have had some members dream like this.
Not weird but just different to most dreamers.
Nothing is wrong with you.
Second question, mainly true.
You are different because you have developed your awareness. This is a good thing.
The only way you should ‘change’ your dreams is the way they have recently changed. More awareness and thought about dreams have improved your experience.
If you wish you can start a dream journal in the DJ forum to share some of your dreams.
Well, I don’t generally say or think it aloud, but I do make decisions based on that knowledge. I act differently in dreams than in real life because I know different rules apply. And sometimes I refer to ‘the dream’ or ‘my dream’. So yeah, I suppose you could say those are lucid dreams then! Nice to know.
It’s also awesome to know that I’m not insane, and that others dream this way as well!! Very uplifting. It just goes to show that whether you’re crazy depends on who you compare yourself to. So thank you!
That sounds AWESOME!
Oh wow, it’s going to change my dreams so much. I never thought joining LD4all would affect me positively so quickly!
Hmm, I have an idea. 2020 starts soon. And with it, I’ll start a brand new adventure in my dreams. YES, I’ll start a dream journal as soon as 2020 begins.
I always see my dreams like a movie and don’t interact with them, I will just be like an observer rather than a character. In many of my dreams I have no physical body and just observe what is happening to other people. I cannot access what is happening in my dreams even if I am partially lucid, I am an observer and have no body so therefore I cannot perform actions, this may be a defense mechanism that I use to prevent psychological harm. In real life when someone is verbally attacking me I just switch to third person perspective and influence what my body does without being connected to it. Thinking in third person allows me to just laugh when someone bigger than me is screaming in my face. I can’t let this happen in dreams though because in dreams it leaves me powerless, sure I can stare a demon in the face and not be intimidated but it is detrimental to my dream control. That is my theory on why it happens. How do I stop it? How do I go from powerless observer to main character without waking me up from this delicate state? I am only partially lucid until I can use a technique to increase my lucidity but I cannot do that without being able to perform an action, any advice?
I think your dreaming style sounds amazingly cool. Not unbelievable, but probably not the norm for most people. I know most of my dreams fall in a strange category where I know I’m dreaming but a part of my conscious/waking mind is still asleep and so my thought stops there without thinking about the implications of that. I don’t consider them false lucid dreams as I truly believe I’m aware of the fact it’s a dream, it’s just that I rarely have goals or quests in mind so I do nothing with them.
I suspect if my dream recall were better, I’d find that many of my dreams flow smoothly from one to the other rather than being truly separate but when it comes to recording them, bist get lost, forgotten, or even reordered so those connections are fuzzier.
I certainly wish I had your level of awareness and continuity.
@Q17:
I have a poor sense or awareness of myself in dreams and often realize in retrospect, while recording my dreams, that I either spend the dream as an invisible observer, or sliding between perspectives: sometimes in first person as myself or a character in a dream, external but still “playing” a character like in a video game, and as a completely passive observer. Sometimes it seems I inhabit more than one of those states at the same time.
Like you, my waking life self is pretty passive. That is despite (or rather, what results in) my ever constant need/search for control. I often feel like life happens to me, percieving most of it as being out of my control. While logically, I know that is an unhelpful way to live life, and despite recognizing many moments where I took control of a situation, my mind is still wired in this way.
I see a pretty directly correlation between my waking life habits and thought processes and how I dream. While it’s too early to tell if this is helping, I’m currently working on a mindfulness practice to hopefully help rewire some of the way I think, to better recognize where I have control in life and the celebrate my moments of success.
but also kinda worrying 
