Dreams of memories that, after waking, remind you of previous dreams you forgot

[suicidal_orange]

Most of my dreams are realistic so could have happened in reality - I've dreamt of going to work and finishing something then actually gone to work and told people I've done it when I haven't on several occasions.

This morning I am totally confused as it's gone to another level.

I've just woken up from a dream in which I was remembering something and now that dreamt memory feels like it happened, even though yesterday I had no memory of it.  I have no doubts that the dream where I remembered this stuff is a dream but the memory feels real, it's something I didn't do last summer but now remember waking up after dreaming I did.

Does the subconscious mind have space for storing memories of the randomness it comes up with for dreams?  Usually if you don't write dreams down dreams quickly they disappear, but this experience suggests they are stored somehow.  In which case there must be a way to access them...

[Blaise170]

Lots more research is still required but the basic knowledge of dreams is that your subconscious takes memories that you have and recreates them. No one knows for sure what exactly the purpose of this is for your brain, but it's hypothesized that it helps your brain work out problems that you may have encountered in the prior days. That's why you may spend days working on a riddle and then wake up one morning and suddenly know the answer. Another interesting fact is that the people in your dreams are all people you have seen before, there is never someone fabricated completely by your imagination. Maybe that person you passed by on the train and saw for 2 seconds is in your dream, even if you have no idea who they are.

[suicidal_orange]

Dreams are in interesting topic, hadn't heard the people are real before though - I must have been on some good trains if the ladies in the (probably?) recycled dream/memory are real.  And no, the dream wasn't NSFW

[p_blaze]

I fell asleep during a lecture, dreamt I was taking notes, woke up, and found my notes blank. I was really confused for a while before I figured it out

[Blaise170]

Here is an interesting academic article from Boston University with the faces thing.

http://sites.bu.edu/ombs/2014/04/18/dreaming/

I fell asleep during a lecture, dreamt I was taking notes, woke up, and found my notes blank. I was really confused for a while before I figured it out

If I am extremely sleep-deprived, I actually do work while I am dreaming/sleeping. I once woke up in class and the notes I had were complete gibberish but... I took notes! I also get hypnagogic hallucinations which can be quite terrifying.

[suicidal_orange]

Ah Freud - genius, madman or both?

Wish I could remember more details of my dreams so they could be more than confusing but it never happens.  Most of my dreams (that I know about) are at the end of the night as I transition to wakefulness, can't imagine going to sleep properly after having one...

Thankfully I can't remember ever having dreamed about being where I am - that must have been extra confusing p_blaze!  I wonder if you took in everything you heard so didn't need any notes?

[p_blaze]

Ah Freud - genius, madman or both?

Wish I could remember more details of my dreams so they could be more than confusing but it never happens.  Most of my dreams (that I know about) are at the end of the night as I transition to wakefulness, can't imagine going to sleep properly after having one...

Thankfully I can't remember ever having dreamed about being where I am - that must have been extra confusing p_blaze!  I wonder if you took in everything you heard so didn't need any notes?

I think I did... It's weird. I felt familiar with the content and terminology, but not the concept. It was as if I just listened to the words but not the meaning.

[tp4tissue]

This is normal..

When you're growing up and establishing neuro circuits,  it builds a fixed storage pattern.


Most people often store information patterned after "paths/places/locales" of repeated exposure.

Dreams take place along  the walk to school or in school, or in a construct similar to your childhood home, apartment, etc.

It could also be a combination of the routes and places, so the dreamscape may resemble your house and school mashed together.


Then when new information is added later in life, it is tree-ed to similar memories / triggers along the old path.

It's a type of parity storage system, and the parity information is what's causing recollection / feeling of deja vu

[Rob27shred]

Most of my dreams are realistic so could have happened in reality - I've dreamt of going to work and finishing something then actually gone to work and told people I've done it when I haven't on several occasions.

This morning I am totally confused as it's gone to another level.

I've just woken up from a dream in which I was remembering something and now that dreamt memory feels like it happened, even though yesterday I had no memory of it.  I have no doubts that the dream where I remembered this stuff is a dream but the memory feels real, it's something I didn't do last summer but now remember waking up after dreaming I did.

Does the subconscious mind have space for storing memories of the randomness it comes up with for dreams?  Usually if you don't write dreams down dreams quickly they disappear, but this experience suggests they are stored somehow.  In which case there must be a way to access them...

I believe that we do store our dreams somewhere in our brain's filing system as I have had similar experiences of not remembering a dream until I had a similar dream. Although 99% of the dreams I actually remember are pretty off the wall non-realistic stuff, you know the kind you actually have to take a min to digest after waking. That might just be me though as I did partake in copious amounts of psychedelics when I was a teenager so....

[suicidal_orange]

That's why I'm sure the dream-memory is from a previous dream rather than reality - it was set on a beach (that's as much as I can remember now ), a ... Carribean looking? one.  I've never been to a beach like that and I've only been to a beach once in the last 5 years and probably same in the 5 previous years, and maybe a couple of times a year as a child.

I could have collected the imagery from TV I suppose, and the dream could have been triggered by my less-awkward-than-usual conversation with the young lady who cut my hair last week who happens to be a surfer...

[tp4tissue]

That's why I'm sure the dream-memory is from a previous dream rather than reality - it was set on a beach (that's as much as I can remember now ), a ... Carribean looking? one.  I've never been to a beach like that and I've only been to a beach once in the last 5 years and probably same in the 5 previous years, and maybe a couple of times a year as a child.

I could have collected the imagery from TV I suppose, and the dream could have been triggered by my less-awkward-than-usual conversation with the young lady who cut my hair last week who happens to be a surfer...

Young lady who surfs, that  --Cut -- your hair..

Well that's certainly an interesting new euphemism for the subject..

[Rob27shred]

That's why I'm sure the dream-memory is from a previous dream rather than reality - it was set on a beach (that's as much as I can remember now ), a ... Carribean looking? one.  I've never been to a beach like that and I've only been to a beach once in the last 5 years and probably same in the 5 previous years, and maybe a couple of times a year as a child.

I could have collected the imagery from TV I suppose, and the dream could have been triggered by my less-awkward-than-usual conversation with the young lady who cut my hair last week who happens to be a surfer...

It is tough to discern where you may have picked up the imagery with all the info & entertainment we have at our fingertips nowadays. TV, internet, etc., we're constantly flooding our brains with imagery of people, places, & things we have not experienced first hand. Although I still have to believe we store all our dreams somewhere in our subconscious. I've had a few ongoing dreams where I would pick up right where I left off the last time I had it & to me, us retaining some form of memory of our previous dreams is the only reasonable explanation for that.

[tp4tissue]

It is tough to discern where you may have picked up the imagery with all the info & entertainment we have at our fingertips nowadays. TV, internet, etc., we're constantly flooding our brains with imagery of people, places, & things we have not experienced first hand. Although I still have to believe we store all our dreams somewhere in our subconscious. I've had a few ongoing dreams where I would pick up right where I left off the last time I had it & to me, us retaining some form of memory of our previous dreams is the only reasonable explanation for that.

Dreams are not necessarily fixed old/new memories

The current explanation is that it is a PROCESS of information organization.

[Rob27shred]

It is tough to discern where you may have picked up the imagery with all the info & entertainment we have at our fingertips nowadays. TV, internet, etc., we're constantly flooding our brains with imagery of people, places, & things we have not experienced first hand. Although I still have to believe we store all our dreams somewhere in our subconscious. I've had a few ongoing dreams where I would pick up right where I left off the last time I had it & to me, us retaining some form of memory of our previous dreams is the only reasonable explanation for that.

Dreams are not necessarily fixed old/new memories

The current explanation is that it is a PROCESS of information organization.

This does make a lot of sense when I consider how off the wall some of my dreams can get. My brain trying to process a bunch of different info mashed up into one experience makes for a very good explanation of the more nonsensical dreams I've had.

[suicidal_orange]

Perhaps when your mind decides to reorganise a box it's already organised you can resume a dream where you left off?  Or in mine looking at another dream as a memory could be integrating previously dissociated thought streams...

Young lady who surfs, that  --Cut -- your hair..

Well that's certainly an interesting new euphemism for the subject..

) no euphemism, I'm hopeless at reading body language and the like but they are basically paid to flirt so it wouldn't be surprising if my unconscious ran with it.  She did lack a ring which is rare, so maybe it could have gone somewhere...

[Rob27shred]

Perhaps when your mind decides to reorganise a box it's already organised you can resume a dream where you left off?  Or in mine looking at another dream as a memory could be integrating previously dissociated thought streams...

Sound theory on it, makes sense to me.

[Findecanor]

This morning I dreamt about college/high school again. To graduate, I had to take that class, and that class... and I had an exam for which I had not prepared for. And I am lost in the hallways: they go on and on and don't know where I am. The hallway dream sometimes also merges into/from a dream about endless hallways in a hospital or hallways from video games.

It is like the places in my dreams get a life on their own. They are no longer connected to real-world places but each time I dream about it it expands upon the last dream and becomes more and more fleshed out as its own thing.
Near where I grew up, there are islands and there is a river, and there is a museum on a hill - that reoccur in my dreams at night but which don't exist in real life.

[Blaise170]

What is truly odd is that there are a few dreams I've had that had such a profound impact that I still remember them even years later. I had a dream back in 1999 that I still remember almost every detail of.

[tp4tissue]

What is truly odd is that there are a few dreams I've had that had such a profound impact that I still remember them even years later. I had a dream back in 1999 that I still remember almost every detail of.

That wasn't a dream..

The CIA only publicly admitted to/ apologized for Secret chemical experiments on civilians post 2000s during Clinton..

But the thing about Black Ops is, it never ends...  No one watches the watchers.

[suicidal_orange]

My weirdest dream was being abducted by the people I lived with at uni.  They drove me through some beautiful mountains in the back of a van (I was in the van but the dream was watching from outside) and we went to a crazy high red bridge which had 3 lanes of traffic each side and a convenient hole in the middle for bungee jumping.  I was forced to jump and that cured me of real life acrophobia (fear of heights)

I've tried many times to draw the view as we rounded a mountain and first saw the bridge as I still remember it vividly, but I can't get it out.

[tp4tissue]

My weirdest dream was being abducted by the people I lived with at uni.  They drove me through some beautiful mountains in the back of a van (I was in the van but the dream was watching from outside) and we went to a crazy high red bridge which had 3 lanes of traffic each side and a convenient hole in the middle for bungee jumping.  I was forced to jump and that cured me of real life acrophobia (fear of heights)

I've tried many times to draw the view as we rounded a mountain and first saw the bridge as I still remember it vividly, but I can't get it out.

Not a dream..

You were kidnapped and trained by MI5 to be a sleeper agent as their attempt to mimic CIA's project Ultra..

If we figure out your code word,  you instantly become activated , turning into a killing machine.

[Blaise170]

My weirdest dream was being abducted by the people I lived with at uni.  They drove me through some beautiful mountains in the back of a van (I was in the van but the dream was watching from outside) and we went to a crazy high red bridge which had 3 lanes of traffic each side and a convenient hole in the middle for bungee jumping.  I was forced to jump and that cured me of real life acrophobia (fear of heights)

I've tried many times to draw the view as we rounded a mountain and first saw the bridge as I still remember it vividly, but I can't get it out.

Not a dream..

You were kidnapped and trained by MI5 to be a sleeper agent as their attempt to mimic CIA's project Ultra..

If we figure out your code word,  you instantly become activated , turning into a killing machine.

What is truly odd is that there are a few dreams I've had that had such a profound impact that I still remember them even years later. I had a dream back in 1999 that I still remember almost every detail of.

That wasn't a dream..

The CIA only publicly admitted to/ apologized for Secret chemical experiments on civilians post 2000s during Clinton..

But the thing about Black Ops is, it never ends...  No one watches the watchers.

Lol too many video games TP4!

[Rob27shred]

My weirdest dream was being abducted by the people I lived with at uni.  They drove me through some beautiful mountains in the back of a van (I was in the van but the dream was watching from outside) and we went to a crazy high red bridge which had 3 lanes of traffic each side and a convenient hole in the middle for bungee jumping.  I was forced to jump and that cured me of real life acrophobia (fear of heights)

I've tried many times to draw the view as we rounded a mountain and first saw the bridge as I still remember it vividly, but I can't get it out.

That is crazy that it helped you get over your real life fear of heights! I had a similar experience yrs. ago when I first got into the carpentry business. We were doing a roofing job where we had to set up our ladders in a very tight alley, cars only had about 12" to fit in between our ladders & the adjacent garage. I was never particularly afraid of heights but this job had me shook after a car bumped the one ladders while I was on the stage. The next night I had a dream (nightmare really) where the car actually hit the ladders hard & we all went down. The following day I was dreading getting up on that sketchy ass setup, but funnily enough once I got back up on the stage I was much less nervous about something happening. Kinda weird but I guess the fact i went through it in a dream made it less scary IRL.

[tp4tissue]

Lol too many video games TP4!

Oh, and I suppose those skool sh00tn's happened because kids jus go on a rampage for no reasons..

The CIA human compliance/programming experiments have NOTHING to do with...

This is the same agency which purposefully laced an entire town's bread supply with LSD..

--1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning--

/// Conspiracy Mode, Activated. !!!

[Blaise170]

Just pulling your leg TP. I'm aware of all the crazy **** that goes on behind closed doors but I try not to think about it too much.

[tp4tissue]

Just pulling your leg TP. I'm aware of all the crazy **** that goes on behind closed doors but I try not to think about it too much.

The good thing is,  CIA hit-squad will never come knocking unless people actually started believing the crazy things you say..

So, crazy is its own best protection.. hahahahahahaha

[Kavik]

I've not had a memory in a dream that seemed real upon waking before, but I've definitely had dreams that remind me of other dreams that I never remembered in the first place (literally dreams I had years ago and never remembered until the current dream jogged my memory).

[tp4tissue]

I've not had a memory in a dream that seemed real upon waking before, but I've definitely had dreams that remind me of other dreams that I never remembered in the first place (literally dreams I had years ago and never remembered until the current dream jogged my memory).

Yea..   I have memories of ENTIRE MOVIES that doesn't exist in real life..

I dream watch entire 3-4 hour long films with completed arcs.. and sometimes they're in chinese japanese and english, WITH subtitles.

I have watched over 4000 movies at this point (In real life).. so this type of thing happening isn't so far-fetched.

[Blaise170]

Just imagine how dramatically the world will change once we are able to record our dreams and watch them like a movie!

[tp4tissue]

Just imagine how dramatically the world will change once we are able to record our dreams and watch them like a movie!

Hahahahhahahaa.. then comes movie night,  and george is like, yea guys, sry, i tried recording last night, all i got is pr0n.. so.. let's watch jerry's instead.

[xtrafrood]

Yeah, I saw one irl tornado (from a car from a distance of a few miles) during the time Twister (the movie) was popular.  And for whatever reason that single moment  has morphed into plenty of dreams over the years (recently too). Previous Dream + tornado^x is how it seems to work. Sometimes every other year a dream, sometimes once every several years, sometimes once every year for a few years. I don't know why. Luckily that's the only previous dream subject that creeps up on me when I least expect it.

[tp4tissue]

Yeah, I saw one irl tornado (from a car from a distance of a few miles) during the time Twister (the movie) was popular.  And for whatever reason that single moment  has morphed into plenty of dreams over the years (recently too). Previous Dream + tornado^x is how it seems to work. Sometimes every other year a dream, sometimes once every several years, sometimes once every year for a few years. I don't know why. Luckily that's the only previous dream subject that creeps up on me when I least expect it.

The more "New, and emotionally charged" information you're exposed to each day, the More often and more vivid your dreams become.

If you're in a very routine way of living, you may find that dreams become far more sparse. This isn't a matter of good or bad, that's just how it works.

[Findecanor]

Yea..   I have memories of ENTIRE MOVIES that doesn't exist in real life..

I have dreamed several times that I was watching an early draft of Star Wars that was completely different from the actual film -- and I was of course also drawn into it.

[Carcharocles]

I write. I game. Both things have come up in dreams and either given me ideas or solutions.

I figured out that throwing a Flash Grenade at the Bella Sisters in Resident Evil 4 made killing them relatively easy (they one-hit kill Leon if they get too close). I realized this in a dream that depicted the wooden boarded-off areas of that map as a bar with an open wall overlooking it--some guy in a bar just told me to try throwing a flash grenade. This was how I advanced past this area during my first attempt at the game.

I also have dreams of myself directing or watching movie adaptations of my stories. Some of these dreams have led to some of my best ideas.

I also have dreams with recurring themes or ideas... A common theme is that I'm my current age but I either have to go back to High School because they goofed and gave me diploma when they shouldn't, or I'm still attending despite not actually being required to be there. When I wake, I remember these dreams very well (I take Geodon for a mental illness called Schizoaffective Disorder--both the illness and the medication are known for very vivid dreams, although the ones caused by the disorder lean further toward disturbing.) When I have a subsequent dream, I'll often remember prior dreams in that theme and my behavior in the dream will act on it.

It's not exactly rare for me to have lucid dreams. These are fun, because I can twist whatever I'm dreaming into whatever I want. I just had one last night, in fact.

[suicidal_orange]

Proper lucid dreaming and a creative mind to go along with it - nice combo! (I'm assuming the meds make your daily life OK else you wouldn't be here talking about it, not to be confused with not caring or belittling your situation)

If I did have lucid dreams I don't think I'd think of doing anything that defies the laws of physics or the society I grew up in, and there's no point living out another dull day while sleeping.  There are enough of those while I'm awake!

In the past I have been able to fly like superman many times though, so maybe I could make the most of it...

[tp4tissue]

Proper lucid dreaming and a creative mind to go along with it - nice combo! (I'm assuming the meds make your daily life OK else you wouldn't be here talking about it, not to be confused with not caring or belittling your situation)

If I did have lucid dreams I don't think I'd think of doing anything that defies the laws of physics or the society I grew up in, and there's no point living out another dull day while sleeping.  There are enough of those while I'm awake!

In the past I have been able to fly like superman many times though, so maybe I could make the most of it...

Eventually advanced pharmacon will make it like in  Inception.. with that opium den scene, where people prefer the dream world, and they're addicted to it, staying in it forever..

[Blaise170]

I lucid dream quite often but I usually wake myself up because I panic. A few times I realized I was in a dream but couldn't quite gain control.

[xtrafrood]

Try as I might to lucid dream it never happens. Only one time that I can recall with vivid detail; no control but it was fun nonetheless.

[tp4tissue]

Try as I might to lucid dream it never happens. Only one time that I can recall with vivid detail; no control but it was fun nonetheless.

In the Lucid Dream community..

The primary technique is WBTB,  wake back to bed.

So you wake yourself for a good 30seconds to 1 minute..   Then go back to sleep..


This typically initiates the process of lucid dreaming, because it does an incomplete shutdown and reboot of the brain..


I honestly can't say this is a GOOD thing to be doing.. 

But WBTB is the the primary technique..

[Blaise170]

Eating before bed is usually the primary factor in my case. It seems that the occurrence of my dreams is proportional to how active my metabolism is.