This morning I was lying in bed casually thinking about the day ahead when out of the blue a dream memory flashed in my mind. It was very brief and very ordinary. I recalled being in the left-most lane of a petrol station and my Dad was the driver. That was it. I have no memory of what went on before or after this flashback (meaning I don’t remember anything other about the actual dream), but I do recall it as a dream memory and not a waking life memory.
I’ve also had occasions where I start to tell someone in waking life something and then realised I’ve already told them. They deny this and so I tell them ‘again’ - only to remember later that I told them in a dream!
Does this happen to anyone else? I sometimes wonder if it’s because I’m so into dreaming that I find memories can easily get confused because I deem dreaming memories just as ‘valid’ as waking life memories, if that makes sense.
Would love to hear anyone else’s views, whether they are spiritually-based, scientifically-based or even (and especially) experientially-based.
The dream memories I’ve had lying in bed out of no where, but I’ve also had appear randomly throughout the day. They can be very loose memories like your example (or even just a feeling that I dreamed about a car, for example), or they can be one single thing that brings a long dream sequence back into my awareness. I remember I was once in the subway and randomly saw my reflection in the window. I looked at my elbow and BAM I remembered the feeling of getting an injection on my elbow from a dream that night, which brought up a few more dream memories.
The other thing you mention I’ve also had, but only with small things. I don’t really mix up waking/dreaming memories if they are important, so no worries for me. It’s usually (the few times it’s happened) just like you said, thinking I told someone something when it happened in a dream. I probably just don’t pay that much attention when I tell people things, or I don’t keep track of who I told what. I think it’s a “risk” by simply remembering your dreams. I too consider dream memories valid memories! As long as you don’t mix up big stuff, though I don’t think that’s likely (unless you have some kind of metal disorder, I guess).
I’ve heard about people calling someone in a dream and telling them something important. Then they believe they already called when they wake up, because they didn’t recall it in the morning, but later when the information was relevant they faintly recall the call that actually happened in a dream. People who actively try to recall dreams should be less likely to have this problem.
I have personal experience with this from my childhood. I had a dream where I watched tv with my dad. In the show a doctor left his wife and daughter. It was night and raining. He got trapped in a fantasy world and eventually got imprisoned in a dungeon of a flying castle. The castle was attacked by massive wasps. A guard ran down to the the doctors cell, released him and gave him a sword. A wasp had followed the guard and the doctor fought it in the cell. Several years later I asked my dad about this tv show, because I wanted to watch it again. He told me hadn’t seen anything like that. I have tried to google it several times and I’ve found nothing. It’s scary how vivid and real the memory felt.
Only time I got this confusion was when I was a child and woke up after a dream of having a fight with my sister. Took me quite a lot of thought to decide if it had really happened or not!
I forgot to mention that my dream memory on Monday of the petrol station was from months, possibly years, ago.
Like you said, mattias, I also get them randomly throughout the day. It’s odd that they can be really mundane dreams. I sometimes wonder if they are dream environments that I’ve visited many times (there are a handful of dream environments that I recognise as having visited previously in a dream).
