im pretty sure i screwed up the rotation by not posting on my week -- my mind was on a balloon on a string in someone else's hand for a couple months. SO now that that's over, i am plagued by something that i want to change, and decided to bring it here. to you bright and beautiful people.
i have bad dreams. always, since i was a kid. i never acknowledged them as bad dreams until ... well ... this morning, bc they have been so consistent (nightly) my entire life - it seemed normal. this post is not about dream interpretation, so get that our of your head immediately. a brief outline:
- ages 3-15: running from an inevitable chaser and attempting to save children i meet on the way
- ages 15-22: running from the inevitable chaser/driving on dangerous hills/being in the ocean when a tidal wave hits (very rarely looking to save anyone but my younger sister)
- age 22: i killed the inevitable chaser by stabbing him in the forehead right before he clawed me to death (it was freddy krueger lol)
- age 22-present: fighting, mission-related war dreams -- still a lot of water-- waves, mud, team missions - always a goal and spending the whole dream trying to complete it. i never remember what the goal even was -- on a funny note, i usually wake up from these dreams having taken out most of my jewelry (necklaces, earrings, nose ring haha!!)
now, i know -- i dont need any analyzing. plenty of therapists over time have helped me understand the way the mind works, and why we have dreams such as these. running, fighting, saving, trying -- dont need help interpreting that haha.
this morning i woke from a particularly frightening one in which JayBee and I were white water rafting into the worst looking wave storm ever. i was thinking -- "jesus christ when am i going to have a 'good dream'? people DO have those, right!?" im tired of waking up exhausted. its been 26 years and i am finally ready to take control of this subconscious wandering into missions and fight scenes and dangerous roads and waters.
do you, as a group, feel that changing the dreaming process begins in the external, or the internal? i have read of people learning to dream lucidly -- i often realize i am in a dream, but am still powerless to end the mission and stop fighting the bad guy. i dont necessarily want to learn to dream lucidly -- i want to free the subconscious that embraces joy, bright colors, love, and just fucking running around and playing.
do you believe that changing the dream process begins while awake (changing actions, relationships, etc.), or actually changing mental intake and how we THINK?
please, be wordy! tell your dreams and how they have changed over time -- how you have faced them, treated them ... if they are good or bad -- how they make you feel. and most importantly, have you noticed changes, and if so, what do you attribute them to??
if you are someone who doesn't remember your dreams ... im sorry that this really doesnt apply to you, and also i suggest setting your alarm 2 hours early, getting a drink of water, and going back to sleep. you will most likely remember the dreams you have in that 2 hour period bc of the break in your REM cycle.
fire away. help me find a Good Dream.
Great post! I like this post because its not about the airy-fairy nature of dream interpretation, but more like a practical approach of how to control your dreams.
ReplyDeleteOk I think it is somewhat possible to change your dream patterns. I have definitely noticed changes in my dreaming.
Before I knew how to drive, I always had nightmares about being in a stressful life-threatening situation where I had to drive and I didn't know how. However, once I learned how to drive I never had those. Also, in highschool I would always have pregnancy dreams where I was terrified that I was about to have a baby. Somehow I don't have those dreams anymore; maybe those dreams were about consequences of sex??
So I think that if you overcome some hurdle in your waking life, then sometimes the subconscious could let go and not have to deal with that in dreams. I have never been able to lucid dream although once I fell asleep after watching travel channel and I dreamt I was swimming with turtles in crystal blue waters.
My suggestion (which I rarely do myself) is to take 20 minutes before you sleep to either meditate, emtpy your mind, and breathe into all your muscles to relax. They do this at the end of a yoga class and I think its amazing because I hate the feeling of making laundry lists before going to bed. Do not check your e-mails before going to sleep, people! That is a recipe for bad sleep.
I also noticed that people say they have horrible dreams on Nyquil. That leads me to believe that certain chemicals just force you to have bad dreams.
good response reet.
ReplyDeletenot having internet or cable at home DEFINITELY helps with the sleep, i have noticed that. i have also noticed that certain sleep medications DO affect my dreaming -- usually the missions are just extremely detailed and intense -- same type of dream but almost like they are on steroids haha.
since writing that post i have begun to take steps that mimic exactly what you are suggesting. i spend 5-10 minutes really focusing on sleep, and actually TELLING myself that i will dream well.
last night i thought of a place i would like to be, and concentrated on it. i did notice that certain aspects of my dream last night resembled the place i had envisioned -- although i did find my nose ring and right earring missing in the morning haha ;)
ive also started listening to a hypnosis cd that, although it frightens me, i think may actually be helping (when i can allow myself to really fall into it and not fight it).
thoughts on hypnosis!?
After having heard Rita reference Radiolab, in both post and person, I have checked it out and heard something that related to this post that I think you should check out. Below is my summary of the episode but I highly suggest listening to the show (link posted below, available online).
ReplyDeleteThis guy, Steve Volk, has a recurring dream for over 20 years. A man's face outside the window who later breaks in the house, Steve waking up up with tensed fists from the fight that was taking place in the dream. Steve eventually began researching science fringe theories and he stumbles upon the concept of lucid dreaming. Not only does he find information for his fringe book he was writing, he found something that he could apply to his own life. He finds past research that found communication between a person deep in sleep to the world of the awake through eye movement signalling. From this stemmed techniques on how to control your dreams (which Steve practiced). They are:
- You have to be aware that you are dreaming in your sleep. You do this by being hyper aware of details in your waking life that you will notice are different in your dream world. Then you ask yourself repeatedly throughout the day if you are awake or asleep. The thought behind that is if you ask yourself that constantly throughout the day you will continue the habit in your sleep.
- In waking life- imagine the dream as it happened, step by step, and identify the moment that you want to find lucidity. For this guy it was when the face first appears in the window (Face awareness).
After learning these concepts, Volk has the dream again and this time he is able to enter the dream as if he is really there. He feels the details of touch and sound and the floor beneath him, while being aware that he is in control because he is only dreaming. The dream carries on as promised from the past 20 years of experience. The stalker intruder in the dream changes as he finds out he is no longer terrorizing this man. He pulls out a gun which creates an internal battle inside of Steve. Steve knows that this is a dream and does not exist in the external world while still having the reaction of fear when seeing his tormentor take it to a new level not yet visited. The villain points the gun waiting for Steve to return to his usual routine. The intruder fires the gun and Steve's first reaction is to look down at himself. He is taking bullets but is not bleeding, hurting, or anything. He becomes aware of his resistance to the incident. The shooter realizes, smiles, and drops the gun, as if he was trying to teach him for the past 20 years that he was in fact nothing to be scared of at all.
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/jan/23/wake-up-dream/
From my own sleep experience, I have 2 scenarios I use to either fall into sleep or to remember what I was just dreaming. On nights I use this method in order to get into the dream I "follow the line"- meaning I literally follow a rope or a thread that pulls me into a room or through a doorway into the world I will now be dreaming in. To remember the dream after I have woken up I simply pick up the last remaining details that are still dancing on my brain, and follow them back via the exiting mental thread. When I want to remember a dream that is fleeting quickly from my memory, I have to envision myself picking up the rope and pulling myself back into the depths of my subconscious in order to retrieve and recall. I think that by recognizing the thread's presence inside my dreams, perhaps running against the wall or at my feet, would be the signal to begin a lucid dream as described above.
wow that is really great insight. i love the suggestion to repeatedly tell yourself that you are not dreaming while you are awake -- definitely going to try that -- seems super logical!
ReplyDeletesince starting this dream post, i have been thinking and concentrating so much on sleep and dreams, DEMANDING answers from my own brain; i think my body and mind are actually responding.
i woke at 4 am last night and it came into my mind "you are fighting to find your childhood."
if this sudden revelation is true, the next step is to figure out how to use that information to "overcome" or "fix" whatever continues to bring the nightmind to that place.
if we figure this shit out, we could write a best seller. we could title it "so, you suck at dreaming." :)