I'm no neuroscientist, or doctor. Though I thank you for the compliment.
So, Dr. LG, what's happening with my dreams, I know you said talk to the shrink and I will. But any ideas what is wrong with me?
I'm afraid you have an incurable case of humanity.
To be honest, with how stressed you are, I would have been surprised if your dreams weren't either violent or terrifying.
Being educated as a neuroscientist, I can promise you that dreams mean diddly. And your brain tries very hard to "erase" the ones you do remember... you've probably noticed that details become strangely difficult to remember further on in the day even if you remembered them very well when waking up.
And as someone with an overactive REM stage, I can tell you that intense dreaming sucks! They can get really exhausting. Frequent sleep paralysis is another crappy part to the whole REM thing. Although in the past year I've actually started having a few lucid dreams... which have been interesting, but not as easy to control as I had thought they'd be - and putting too much effort into doing so only serves to wake you up and ruin the opportunity.
Yeah, I've done the whole intense dreaming thing. I've never had sleep paralysis unless I was sleeping on my back though.
I can lucid dream about 60% of the time if I want to take the time to do some meditation before I go to sleep. After you've done it for a while though, the novelty wears off. When you lucid dream you also know it isn't real, so it's not actually that much more fun then watching a movie.
Melatonin fecks me up. Haven't taken it in years. I'd have the most intense dreams, felt like I'd been asleep for ten years, wake up and see that ten minutes had passed.
I still take it once in a while, if I have trouble sleeping for several nights in a row.
The Doc is probably thinking and getting ready to write a response. I have found him to be more than he appears here on this thread. Not that he appears wrongly. Meant it as a compliment. LG is quite deep.
BobbiLynn. I think, and have nothing to back this up. The more stress a person is under, the more you brain has to think about during the day. The more wild dreams become at night.
I never really went to college but had a few years of mind soaking education. Seemed during those years I dreamed vividly every night. I don't know what they meant and usually can only recall moments of them if at all. More like a feeling you wake up with, remember parts but they quickly disappear.
OKay true rambling going on on my part. I'm good or another 30-40 minutes worth if you're interested.
Thank you Dan.
Again, not a neuroscientist or doctor.
I was actually sleeping. As far as I can tell, what my brain is doing while I'm dreaming is data organization. It's collating, compressing, moving to long term storage, and deleting irrelevant data.
When you are under stress, that tends to manifest in your dreams. The data you are handling is emotionally charged with fight/flight responses. That tends to be mirrored in your dreams.
I love dreams where I realize I am dreaming, then I get to do whatever I want. Once I dove to the bottom of the ocean, knew I would not drown, but then got swept up by a rogue wave and ended up in the big pool at Sea World in Orlando, Florida. What does that mean?
That you should have another beer of course.
I think my self given 40 minutes are about up. And I'm going to get sappy.
This place is my primary social network. I work with two other guys and our jobs are behind secured doors. I don't have much contact with people that I see.
I find comfort in the good people here on HBT.
Someday I'll have a life and probably won't be posting so much. That's a dream and curse.
Goodnight HBT.
A life? What's that? Maybe I should see if I can get one when I don't have to work 50 hour weeks.
Where'd everyone go? I scared you away?
Very little scares me anymore BL. Good luck on your job hunt.
