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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious to know if frequency of dreaming correlates to anything. Most people I talk to "rarely have dreams" (probably meaning they just dont remember them).

For some reason in my case I have a vivid dream every night, sometimes multiple per night, and can't remember the last time my sleep was dreamless.

I've heard keeping a dream journal can help you remember/have more vivid dreams, but I only write my dreams down it it affected me very strongly so I can interpret what my psyche is saying, so this only happens maybe once every few months.

So what gives? Why do some people dream a lot more than others?

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I also thought that I don't dream much, but I started the habit of trying to remember if I dreamed something when waking up and if it's in the second half of the night I can almost always remember vivid dream content. Trying to remember dreams after being awake for a while (e.g. 5 minutes after getting up) is much harder in my experience. Most people have at least 2-4 REM sleep phases at night, to have none whatsoever would be quite unlikely unless you're regularly very sleep deprived.

This seems to be the secret: consistently training your brain by telling it “dream details are something important to remember”

Totally agree. Generally if I can't get the ball rolling remebering last nights dream before I'm really awake, I won't be able to get much detail at all.

> Most people have at least 2-4 REM sleep phases at night

One of the things I've noticed in taking a dream journal over the past few years is that when I remember a night's dreams thoroughly, they're often split into a handful of distinct sections, with each one being an almost entirely self contained story and scene. I never made the connection until now but I wonder if each 'scene' is a specific REM cycle.

I think it's that most people don't take time to reflect.

I recently became very anxious that I was "dreaming less".

Then I remembered that this couldn't be true because my cognition wasn't impaired. This indicates I'm still hitting REM

So what gives?

The answer, I'm not showering in the morning to go to an office.

No shower, no dedicated dream remembering time. Hence the perception of "fewer dreams"

Also, dreams are quickly forgotten, even if you make an effort to recall them.

Once I was writing a dream diary. I had a dream, and I was like "this reminds me of another dream I had a few weeks ago". I opened the diary, and saw that the "few weeks ago" was actually yesterday.

So, if the dream from yesterday feels like a few weeks ago, and the dreams before yesterday are either forgotten or feel like an ancient past, it is quite easy to believe that you usually don't dream, even if you actually dream every night.

I'm fairly certain this is due to the same reason it's easier for a chess player to recall 'real' chess positions rather than if you just placed pieces randomly. Causality makes it possible for us to "compress" memories into a small enough representation. Dreams usually don't follow the same kinds of rules.

I'm remembering a particularly vivid dream I had perhaps a month or two ago. I remember the settings it took place in, some of the characters, some of the story elements, though to call it a "story" is a bit of a stretch, just a rambling sequence of unconnected events. I often dream consciously, So I can remember actually wanting to pay attention to how cause and effect worked, but when I woke up, I couldn't recall how stuff managed to happen.

Without that thread running through everything, dream recall would seem to go very against how the brain normally works. Not that techniques can't help anyway.

And relatedly, what about people that claim to not have any dream at all?

> To really be sure that an individual does not dream, we would have to follow him for years and perform awakenings from REM sleep to see if he dreamed. If the individual never reported a dream after years of awakenings from REM sleep then we could reasonably conclude that either the person does not dream, that he or she lacks the ability to recall dreams, or that he or she is a liar who, for some reason, wants to conceal the fact that he does in fact dream.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/dream-catcher/2012...

I always assumed this had more to do with the different psychology of how different people wake up.

I usually have amnesia in the few minutes after I wake up, and I lose everything. Like when I used to drive my mom to work as a teenager, she would wake me up right before, and I would just put on pants and hop in the car. Halfway there, I'd sometimes admit I had no memory of how I got into the car.

But if I am focussing on writing my dream right away, usually by writing it down in detail, I can recall it later.

I'm definitely jealous of people who somehow remember it so clearly without any special time commitment. Dreams always feel like living a second life

Anecdata: I usually dont remember my dreams unless I wake up early or at least not all the details of it. However, some times, before I sleep I imagine myself in some situation I always wanted to be. For example, a soccer player in a cup final, an activist making people aware about how politicians are dividing them and such things. And then I have vivid dreams and next day I remember most details. Not sure if others also experience this but at least it makes me very happy next day. That's why I so much hate days when I have night or early morning meetings at my job.

Some anecdata... but I do have aphantasia so my dream experience is probably a bit different from most.

In the past i never much noticed or remembered dreaming, only when waking up agitated from a nightmare (hasn't happened in years)

But i've been a double espresso drinker for years. Since i started cutting out the dinner espresso (e.g. having my last coffee at lunch) i dream almost every night (sometimes 2 distinct storylines) and can remember them for a few minutes after waking but they fade quickly after.

I can modulate how much I dream based on how dark my sleeping environment is.

Blinds open even slightly: no dreams.

LEDs on electronics uncovered: no dreams.

Full blackout: auditory hallucinations before I’m even fully asleep.

Some people have mostly bad dreams. If I become aware that I am dreaming I stop everything in the dream and "go back to sleep" in the dream. It results in better rest. Everything I've learned in a dream would only be helpful in a world where we wear watermelons for shoes and the trunk of our cars open into hidden ballrooms. It is a really dumb place to spend too much time

My take on dreams is that they're not literal. The mind is structured on a network of symbols and relationships between them, so the language of dreams are metaphors, double entendres, similar-sounds, etc.

Why it is important is because it tells a story about what's going on in your emotional state that you're otherwise unaware of or repressing in conscious experience. It can also provide solutions. It can be a powerful tool for maintaining mental health and wellbeing.

This isn't to say you should be reading "dream interpretation" guides or speaking to interpreters. The point is we already speak the languages of our own dreams because it's our own mind. What seems like nonsense on the surface quickly reveals itself to have a surprisingly clear meaning on introspection from a slightly different angle. Follow your intuition, listen to your psyche, you wont regret it.

> This isn't to say you should be reading "dream interpretation" guides or speaking to interpreters.

The problem with using guides and interpreters is that you don't know whether they explain your unconscious associations, or just substitute their own.

If you interpret your own dreams, you can be sure that all associations were generated by your own brain. Maybe during the dream, maybe during the interpretation. Who cares; either way, it's about your brain.

My simple interpretation method is to write an outline of the dream, and to some words add an arrow and write what it reminds me of. Usually at least three things in the dream remind me of the same topic -- that is the core message of the dream.

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