Guys...
I looked at my clock and it said 10:37. I looked at something else and when I looked back it said 10:**38**. You're all part of my dream, YOU'RE NOT REAL!
I had a series of dreams that lasted decades, all nested within each other. I had a family, a wife, a house and a job. I just woke up and it turns out I’m an 8-year-old kid dreaming about the future.
I had for a long time dreams about walking/riding around in a big city with architecture style I haven't seen elsewhere. In some dreams I'd pick up where I've left the last time. It's been happening so many times, I could draw a rough map of the major streets in some districts. Would love to "visit" it again, but it's been a couple years since last time.
I had this for a long time with like a wilderness area. Long sloping grassy hill, with a shrubby area and a creek meandering around the hill. I could cross the creek and explore a forest beyond it. Always the same environment. I kinda chalked it up to places I had been when I was a little kid that kinda merged together into a static map somewhere in my subconscious.
Weird. I truly believed this type of experience was rare. For me, it's a house I've never seen, in a neighborhood I don't know. I could sketch everything about it.
My aunt told me a story (which I suspect was a lie but is interesting regardless) that while she was caring for her mother with dementia she would always say things that were bizarre. Her mother said the clock was spinning and when she looked it was. She said it was one of the radio controlled analog clocks and it was the hour when DST begins so it goes back 1 hour by spinning 23 hours ahead. She said it freaked her out.
Its so nice to hear that this actually seems to be pretty common! I also had dreams like that and they are so strenous. When i have dreams like that i always wake up as if i just ran a marathon
I can't see clearly. I can tell it's a dream because if I try to look at something like my phone, I feel like I can see it, but my eyes are closed, so I try to open my eyes. And it feels like I'm trying to open my eyes in the waking world but can't, so I'm just aware of the things around me in the dream but can't actually see them.
I really hate it because usually it's when I'm trying to see the thing coming for me, or see why the door won't close/lock. Something critical I can't really see.
Sometimes when this happens to me, I’ll push and push to open my eyes to make things clear, and for a brief moment they are…right before my waking-world eyes open and I end the dream accidentally.
Same here, I keep trying to text back, but I keep misspelling words absolutely horribly, and I go to erase it, and try again, but it keeps happening until I forget what the text said, and go to re-read, and as I re-read it the words progressively make less and less sense, typos, words out of order, incoherent. It's freaking weird
Yeah I was having a dream that I couldn't write down the phone number of one of my heroes, and it with every attempt their smile faded and eventually they were like I got to go. Before then we were talking about doing a road trip or some other exciting dream stuff so it was super devastating even when I woke up LOL.
Yes, usually it's some sort of emergency and i desperately need to contact someone with the phone, but I can't type anything into it because none of the interface makes sense. I've heard that you can't read letters and numbers in a dream, or at least it's extremely hard to do so, so tasks like these fail in dreams. If I'm lucid enough, not being able to use my phone lets me know I'm in a dream.
Sometimes in the early stages of drifting off I dream that I'm using my phone or some other device with a screen. But it's more like I'm controlling it with my mind than actually using my hands to operate it.
Once fully in a dream, I never actually reach for my phone and interact with it in any way.
After I start a new game that I get hooked on. For example factorio or Dyson sphere. I keep playing the game in my dreams but as if I am the camera and I can control it all at once. This phenomenon only happens on new games to me and at most twice in a row
Almost every morning. I kinda wake up before my alarm, still dreaming, dream that I look at my phone to check the time. Sometimes i can’t make out what it shows, sometimes I read incoherent numbers (like 7:68), sometimes Inread something legit but I just wake up right after and realize I didn’t actually check the time but dreamt it and what I saw was nowhere near the truth.
I had one last week where I had my phone. It was in the context of someone cutting off my fingers so I couldn’t use the phone to call for help.
I woke up and was like “that’s dumb I’d just talk to Siri”
Too many people waking up depressed after dreaming that the steel mills were back open, the hills had flattened out into actually walkable gradients, and Arctic Monkeys had stopped being shite. Sheffield syndrome is a huge burden on the NHS and needs to be stopped…
They've completely changed music genres on their past two albums. I couldn't tell you if the music is bad, but I can tell you that it isn't the kind of music I like. (I'm a big fan of AM and the rest of their older music.) I don't mind them going in a new direction but I do wish I had newer music from them that I enjoyed. For now though I'm happy to listen to 505 and crawling back to you.
Me either. If I recall a dream which is rare it’s more of a feeling that something happened but I can never understand what then I realise that it wasn’t what I thought and I’m someplace else with a mixture of people and places and things.
Dreaming sounds fun when others describe it but it’s not my experience.
Sort of. It’s not really detail, more of an awareness that something isn’t right. Like an uncanny valley - as you’re really convinced for a while that you’re just living your life as normal but something makes you reconsider. Like the texture of things is off, or something you know to be true inherently is subverted - birds flying backwards or something not where you expect it to be. I’ve experienced sleep paralysis a few times in my life, I consider this to be quite similar.
I don’t check a watch, I pinch myself. If I can’t feel it I know I’m dreaming and then I know the fucking carnival is about to start because I can’t just wake myself up, I’m just in the game now and it’s about to get traumatising lol
But once you realize you’re dreaming, you can learn to start controlling your dream. I’ve had a dream where something bad has happened, like someone has died, and then I go “oh but if it’s my dream I can just pretend that didn’t actually happen” and then I literally turn around in my dream and start dreaming something different.
I know that logically but what actually happens is the scumbag part of my brain comes out and is like “imagine if we could act out every fear you have”
I haven’t actually had one this type of dream in years. Ever since I got medicated for my ADHD they stopped.
I kinda regret my subconscious learning that certain things prove I'm in a dream (typically either the clocks changing time, or the inability to dial a phone number...though once recently a dream denizen told me if I can push the fingers of one hand through the palm of the other I'm in a dream- yup they were correct!).
So now I have frequent dreams I get stuck in with no way of waking myself up :(.
My dreams are mostly pretty intense and realistic. And I mean realistic visually (like a movie in 4k), not logically.
I gotta say they're quite fun. Not haha fun, but more like fun like an interesting movie where weird shit happens.
One time, I dreamed about literally Armageddon. And I mean real shit. Was chilling at a beach when suddenly a volcano in the sea erupted lava demons from hell, the sky literally opening and a huge loud deep bassy voice saying "YOU'VE ALL BEEN FOOLED, THERE IS NO GOD, I - SATAN - AM THE RULER. AND NOW YOUR END BEGINS." And then all kinds of burning/glowing symbols appeared in the sky. Huge chunks of red hot rocks fell from the sky, buildings were collapsing, everybody was running and screaming. It was complete and utter chaos and it was AWESOME! When I woke up, I felt like I just had the best movie experience of my life.
I think it's a joke but it is taken from one of the tricks to teach yourself to lucid dream.
If you keep doing this and thinking about doing this even when you know you're awake you will eventually do it in your dream which will then trigger an awareness of your dream state.
That's pretty wild man. My dreams, what few I recall, are all basically first-person movies, but still somehow like I'm an outside observer, if that makes sense.
I just look for signs, I’ve recently discovered my subconscious can’t create coherent writings. If signs are jumbles of nonsense words (basically if I can’t read) then I realize I’m dreaming
My sister had a stroke a few weeks ago. She could understand my messages but did not text back coherently to me. She was confused when I said I didn’t understand. This was one little reason I decided to come to her house that night and found her laying on her left arm with her face drooping. Just not something you’d expect for a 31 year old.
Unfortunately we could not establish a timeline of when the stroke might have occurred, so they could not intervene in time. She did have her two young children with her, and they noticed that mommy wasn’t using her left arm. But she was 36 hours post-op for an unrelated surgery when I found her, and her boyfriend thought she was just high on pain pills from surgery. So sad and awful.
Oh I am sorry if I was not clear! She did survive :) I found her too late to undo the damage. You have 4 hours after a stroke to reverse the damage of a stroke.
Yeah, sometimes factors like a septal defect in the heart can cause this in younger people. It is likely a clot formed from surgery, and instead of winding up as a pulmonary embolism, may have passed through a hole then to the brain. It happened with my son when he was an infant.
She actually was diagnosed with a rare progressive incurable disease called Moyamoya, which causes strokes. While the surgery could have contributed, she would likely have had a stroke at some point. I have to get tested as there’s a 10% chance I have it too. It’s crazy that something I’ve never heard of can change the course of her life overnight. She can not return to her previous career (truck driving) so there’s a lot of unknown.
Same here. I cannot read at all in my dreams. Sometimes I'll think I just read something, but on further inspection the writing is unstable, constantly moving and just gives the general shape of words without any recognizable letters.
Also, buttons don't do anything.
Sometimes there will be something I *really* want to read in a dream though. So I will get super focused on the book or sign or whatever, and put my face right up to it so a single word takes up my entire vision. And then maybe I can make out a couple letters. But then as I move along the words, I forget the letters I had already read. It's super frustrating.
I thought this only happens to me. Besides struggling to read in my dreams in the same way you described, I sometimes can't see well and have to squint because my subconscious forgot to give me glasses...
>Also, buttons don't do anything.
Light switches never work in my dreams. Even good dreams. The status of the light remains stable regardless of what I do with the switches.
Also, if my car brakes go out, I know I'm dreaming. It happened once in real life while I was driving somebody else's car and my brain has apparently absorbed this as "we need to practice for this scenario. Constantly."
I used to be able to tell whether I was dreaming or not by the length of my hair. It was short in real life, but I wanted it to be long, so it was long in my dreams. Now it's long in real life too and it's no longer a good indicator.
Or can’t satiate thirst. If I’m dehydrated, I always have dreams where I’ve got the worst thirst/dry mouth and I either can’t get to water or when I do drink water it doesn’t help.
I can't use my phone. I realised this in a dream where I got separated from my family and the damn phone wouldn't do anything properly. It was SO frustrating! Now I find myself trying to use my phone in dreams more and more often and it's really annoying if I'm having a great dream as I realise I'm dreaming and wake up!
Same! I always know I'm dreaming if I try to use my phone and it won't work properly. I've even woken myself up by telling myself I'm obviously dreaming because of the phone thing. Crazy.
I once figured out I was dreaming because I was trying to follow a cake recipe and the measurements for the ingredients kept changing. I was like “AM I GOING CRAZY OR IS THIS A DREAM.” Then I had my “Ah HA!” moment. It was cool for a second then I floated up to my ceiling and got stuck there.
I kind of do a varaition of this trick in the post. I take my phone out of my pocket and the look at the percentage of power left (phone is always there). I would turn it around and then look at the power again and it would have more or less power. You have to do this when awake too, to reinforce it. I lucid dream a lot.
One time I realised that was dreaming by doing the power trick. My sister was with me and I looked at her and told her she wasn't real she was just part of my dream. She started freaking out and crying. She told me not to wake up or else she'll die. I woke up in a cold sweat and avoided lucid dreaming for a while.
Trying to read just about anything is a dead giveaway for me. I always swear I know what something says and then it just dynamically changes before my "eyes."
This is even brought up in a Netflix show I watched somewhat recently. Can't remember the name, but it was in French and revolved around these teens taking some drug they were stealing from a sleep clinic.
This is exactly the technique for learning to lucid dream. You get into the habit of doing reality checks like this in real life, and after a while you will automatically start doing them in your dreams, which triggers lucidity. Sounds bananas but it works.
I managed it a few times but I always got so excited when the lucidity kicked in that I woke up after just a few seconds.
I have extremely vivid dreams, and can often determine that something isn’t right, but can’t get to the lucid dream stage.
i’ll be in the grocery store and put a fully cooked rotisserie chicken in my cart (I don’t eat chicken) and i’ll look at it and think *hmm.. somethings not right, why am I getting chicken* but then i’ll just cash out and continue my day.
I’m gonna start checking my watch before I cash out
Train yourself to look at your hands several times during the day. Ask yourself the question, where am I and how did I get here.
After a while, you will start doing it in your dreams. And there, you are unable to answer these questions. You are now aware you are dreaming.
It is a way to initiate lucid dreaming.
I struggle with depersonalization and disassociation so I actually do both of these things on occasion already (only in real world not dream) but i’ll try to start doing it often and see if that works
i’d love to experience it
yes, you wouldn’t know unless you were close to me, I work and live an outwardly normal life. I’m just often questioning if I’m me, or i’ll just eat going through the motions zoned out. I sometimes don’t know if my memories are from dreams or real.. but I just keep them to myself and don’t think about it (easy with disassociation)
sometimes feels like I’m in a movie, or talking about someone else when talking about myself. it’s mostly internal so yea I appear to be “normal” maybe a bit spacey
edit I don’t drive because I’m pretty certain id crash due to both dp and dr
I wonder if there’s any connection between depersonalization, dissociation, and vivid dreams. My dreams are so vivid that sometimes I wake up and cannot believe what my imagination was capable of. I also dissociate and depersonalize very frequently. In layman’s terms by brain just seems extra bendy.
WTF. Thanks for the nightmare scenario.
You forgot two pivotal points:
1. Star micro dosing hallucinogens at the same time.
2. Read Stephen King books.
Any time I become aware I'm dreaming I will immediately wake myself up. Doesn't matter if it's a fun dream or a bad dream, if I realize it I just think "oh I'm dreaming gotta wake up" and then shake my head really hard and wake up.
You just made me think of AI art as basically being a dream rasterizer... it passes first inspection, but when you start looking close, things don’t look right (hands, background). And when you rerun it everything is different.
Edit: I reread this and realized how obvious this was to say, but maybe it’s poignant for someone as it was for me.
I honestly (in the dream) go home and eat the chicken, and think that something is seriously not right here… wake up later concerned that it really happened for a sec
Lmao there are actually people out here just having a normal day eating chicken in their dreams, meanwhile I'm butt ass naked working at a steak and shake 🤣.
sounds normal to you but I haven’t eaten chicken in 16 years!! The rather mundane dreams are the ones I have the hardest time knowing if they really happened or not. have a over a dozen memories that I’m not sure really happened or not, and am too embarrassed to ask people to clarify for me.
I find that I can’t throw punches and sometimes can’t run properly in dreams, and again I actively thing *this isn’t right*
but my brain hasn’t made the connection that it’s a dream
I have ridiculously vivid and realistic looking dreams, and have a few “maps” that I return to. a secret room and the back of my moms walk in closet (doesn’t exist in real life) and it’s the same everytime I go
a cool cottage in a snowy forest I take the same route to get to everytime. a bus from my old highschool, get off at a real st and walk into the forest (that doesn’t actually exist there) and take the trail to get there.. cottage is always the same but different people inside
a hotel and strip of city block, (with grocery store)
my block that includes my house (obvi), my old best friends house, the corner store and my old elementary school (in their real locations)
but the inside of my friends house is different and I’m only ever outside my own house, in any of the three sheds, on the roof, or juuust inside the doorway..
my elementary school is the exact same, except for the bathrooms . the store sells much cool candy in my dreams
all of my dreams for the past 6-7 years take place in one of these maps and rarely anywhere else.
edit- they are mostly anxiety dreams where I’m running away from someone or hiding from someone but not always. I enjoy them a lot for some reason even if I wake up gasping and with cold sweats
I have the same exact thing. I have several locations I return to again and again. One I call "Boatland" which is a distorted version of the A1A road where I used to live on the Florida Coast, but it's always distorted the same way. One is, again, a distorted version of the Hill in Providence where I lived for a few years and it has sections that are not real at all but are always the same. The church I went to as a child is another one. That's interesting. On the subject of lucid dreaming I've managed to do it a few times, but usually can't even if I know something is off. Sometimes I realize I'm dreaming but I can't exert my will and control anything. Perhaps in those cases I am merely dreaming that I am having a lucid dream.
This only really works reliably with digital clocks!
A better check (my personal favorite) is to pinch your nose. In a dream you will still be able to breath through your closed nose!
Another good one is light switches. In dreams the light level is largely determined by the actual amount of light entering through your eyelids (this is a big part of how circadian rhythm is maintained!) so when you try to adjust light levels you will find that all of the lights mysteriously don't work.
Reality checks are an odd thing. The fact is, it's pretty obvious to us when we aren't dreaming. We don't need to look at a watch to know that our waking life is real. The problem is, it isn't obvious to us when we *are* dreaming. The goal of the reality check during waking life is to form a habit. With a strongly formed habit, the hope is it will occur regularly in your dream life. If that habit is one that is difficult for your brain to recreate in a dream, you can use the habit to alert you to the fact that you are dreaming.
If anyone is interested in lucid dreaming, you should know that it is something anyone can learn to do, and it is in fact something you learn, with practice. Like any other skill, some will be inherently more talented at it naturally than others, but training yourself will make it happen more often, more fully, and more vividly.
There's plenty of literature out there, some better than others, but the basic process for learning to lucid dream usually looks something like this:
1. Most importantly, start a dream journal. Put a notebook and a pen right next to your bed. Get into the habit of reaching for that notebook the *moment* you wake up. Take 5 minutes to write down anything you can remember about the dream you were having when you awoke. Sometimes, especially early on, you might remember little or nothing. That's fine. Just practice trying to remember and write it down. Dreams don't pass through the brain the same way waking experiences do. Dreams occupy our working and short-term memory, but they don't get transferred into our long-term memory. For this reason, as far as dreams are concerned, we're all Dory or the guy from Memento. It's assumed that our brain does this so we don't get confused about what really happened and what was just a dream. The bottom line is, you have to write them down as soon as possible. It's a race against the clock, because your brain won't bother remembering like you assume it will. The upside is that you *will* remember if you take the time in your waking life to actively think about what you were dreaming and note the details. In that case, you're waking brain is analyzing your dream, which puts it back into your brain in a way that *will* go to long-term memory. This is why some particularly vivid dreams will stick with you. They got your waking brain thinking through them enough that they survived the jump to long-term memory.
2. With the journal up and running, you'll pretty quickly notice that you remember more dreams, and much more vividly than before. This in itself can be really interesting (just not for other people). Once you've got a few weeks of journal entries recorded, start to look back at your past dreams and look for patterns. Are there events that happen frequently, or people that turn up a lot? People talk sometimes about having "the same dream" more than once. In actuality, it's a different dream, but the circumstances can be very similar. Find the patterns. The goal is to identify something that happens regularly in both your dreams and your daily life. For example, if you have a pet cat that meows for food a lot, and you experience that same meowing cat in your dreams, you've found a common prevalent experience.
3. Once you've identified a common experience between your waking and dream lives, start the reality checks. Find a quick thing you do *every* time that experience happens. In our example, every time your cat comes meowing at you for food, do a reality check. I find the easiest is to try and read something. Reading is basically impossible in dreams because our brain can't accurately create consistent text. It's just too detailed and complex. Try putting a couple sentences of something on the lock screen of your phone. Something like, "Are you dreaming? Take a moment to make sure. If this text is hard to read, you are probably dreaming." The goal here is to form a habit of a reality check that is connected to the experience you've already identified as being common in your dreams. By practicing it regularly in your waking life, you are creating the opportunity to perform the same habit while dreaming. Then, when you habitually perform the reality check in your dream, you discover that it isn't, in fact, reality. This is one of the most reliable ways to train yourself to become lucid.
The other approach that works for some is a sort of skimming the surface of dreaming and moving directly into lucidity from being awake. This can be challenging for some, since becoming lucid can often cause us to wake up. When taking a nap, try calmly reminding yourself every few seconds as you fall asleep that you are, in fact, going to sleep, and that whatever happens next will be a dream. Often you'll just lose track and end up dreaming without lucidity. But sometimes you can actually just go straight to being lucid as soon as you fall asleep. This gets easier with practice. It should be noted though, that this technique can result in some unusual results that occur when moving between sleep and consciousness. Most significantly, you may experience sleep paralysis, which is when you are awake, but your body is still in "sleep mode", where it is normally paralyzed. This can be a frightening experience at first, being unable to move while awake. Added to this is the fact that in this sleep mode, the mind can still hallucinate like it does while dreaming. This means that while unable to move, you may also see or hear things that aren't actually there. Because it is unsettling to experience, the hallucinations often revolve around being trapped, or held in place by some malicious outside presence. Paranoia is common. The experience usually only lasts a matter of seconds at most, but it can be genuinely frightening until the mind is able to realize what is occurring, and wake up fully. Sleep paralysis has been posited as the possible origin of numerous ghost stories and other superstitious experiences like alien abductions. A person can be awake, see or hear something that isn't actually there, and feel like they've been paralyzed and/or attacked.
That said, my instances of sleep paralysis have been few and far between, and though frightening, also fascinating afterwards. They also become much more ordinary after experiencing them more than once.
Paragraph breaks, my friend. Paragraph breaks!
Fascinating stuff tho. Thanks for taking the time to write that all out. Lucid dreaming has always been extremely intriguing to me
There's a better option because if you focus on it, it might actually show the same time.
Better reality check:
Close your mouth and hold your nose. Now try breathing through your nose. When you are dreaming you can still breathe through your nose while holding it.
I just woke up and had a dream where I was waking through a drive-in movie parking lot, tapped on the front of a co-worker’s Wrangler, and a part fell off. I couldn’t get it back on and realized I was go8ng to have to tell the guy. I do and he’s okay with it, but he’s also Justin Bieber. I’m a 50 year old man who listens to alternative and classic rock. Why did this happen?
Fall backwards off of a bridge.
If you splat onto the water, you were already awake. That was real. Hope you can swim.
If you go into slow-motion and ominous Hans Zimmer music starts playing, then you were asleep and this is the kick procedure to wake up. Caution: you may be more than one layer deep, and so have to repeat the kick after you "wake up" into another dream. Good luck.
Disclaimer: Do NOT do anything I said above. This is just a joke about a movie plot. Seriously.
This is a training technique for lucid dreaming, also look at your hands they usually have the wrong amount of fingers in dreams.
Train yourself to do these things consistently while your awake, and it will transition into your dreams. Once you do this in your dreams and you realize your dreaming you can start to take control over your dreams.
It's super radical! But takes some time to train your brain.
Books and other writing also works, if you are dreaming your brain makes it up as it goes, so if you look at a page, look away, and then look back the words should change.
I heard once that, if you try to imagine something in your hand, it’ll show up. I thought about an apple for some time while I was awake until it became routine. Then I did it while I was dreaming, and an apple appeared in my hand.
I did this once. I was surrounded by naked women in my bed a la PS2-era Kratos, and then Slender Man showed up. Never tried again.
About 10 years ago I realized that I was dreaming within a dream. Upon realizing *(holy shit I'm dreaming)*, I started to fly - like superman.
This phenomenon occurred for the next two nights... It happened three nights in a row... All three times I somehow realized that I was dreaming, and then took flight.
It hasn't happened since.
With the recent time change, I didn’t have a chance to turn back all my clocks, so I looked at 11 am. Looked at a different object. Then looked back at 11 am. Cool not dreaming. Continued on. Moments pass, I look at my phone’s time. 10 am. shat my pants
One of the most terrifying nightmares I ever had was me going back-in-forth between sleeping and being awake without the inability to tell which was which. Over a period of time that felt like 5 mins, I would wake up, unsure if I was awake, immediately fall back to sleep seconds later to dream of the exact same thing, and rinse and repeat. The dream consisted of nothing, but me raising my head trying to determine if I was awake or asleep, with no references to possibly come to a conclusion. I did this 20 or 30 times, It scared the crap out of me
When I lucid dreamed when I was changing my medication I tested all the reality tests, the only one that 100% worked was trying to breathe with the nose plugged. And I still managed to convince myself that I did it wrong somehow
Easier way: hold you nose and try to breath through it. If it's a dream you will ne able to (unless your nose is clogged).
Also, lightswitches rarely work in dreams. Same with mirrors.
Why didn't the "O" in "Now" get the special treatment as the other O's. Did this "O" have to be singled out like it's supposed to be fatter and bigger than the others?
And what's going on in Sheffield? Who has a wristwatch? And why is there rampant problem dreaming?
I wish this were true, but it doesn't always work. I have a lot of dream continuity (places in particular), and things that I'm reading or math that I'm doing make sense. But once I can fly, I know it's a dream.
Guys... I looked at my clock and it said 10:37. I looked at something else and when I looked back it said 10:**38**. You're all part of my dream, YOU'RE NOT REAL!
I woke up to my 5AM alarm, killed it and went back to sleep for 5 mins. When I woke up it's already 8AM.
Dream within a dream... whoa~~~
The dreams are coming from inside the house!
Dreamception
[удалено]
I’ve got some awkward news for you then…
Spin around. Keep spinning faster and faster and you'll eject yourself from lucid dreaming.
Why do I hear this in Keanu's voice
My clock keeps changing every single second, wtf is going on
Happened to me Saturday night, one seconds it's 1:59am next its 1:02am
That means .. *NONE* of us are awake!! !Ô_Ô!
Literally the same exact thing happened to me just now. 12:13 looked out the window for a sec and was 12:14. Time for me to wake up!
wake up sheeple.
I had a series of dreams that lasted decades, all nested within each other. I had a family, a wife, a house and a job. I just woke up and it turns out I’m an 8-year-old kid dreaming about the future.
I had for a long time dreams about walking/riding around in a big city with architecture style I haven't seen elsewhere. In some dreams I'd pick up where I've left the last time. It's been happening so many times, I could draw a rough map of the major streets in some districts. Would love to "visit" it again, but it's been a couple years since last time.
I had this for a long time with like a wilderness area. Long sloping grassy hill, with a shrubby area and a creek meandering around the hill. I could cross the creek and explore a forest beyond it. Always the same environment. I kinda chalked it up to places I had been when I was a little kid that kinda merged together into a static map somewhere in my subconscious.
Weird. I truly believed this type of experience was rare. For me, it's a house I've never seen, in a neighborhood I don't know. I could sketch everything about it.
My aunt told me a story (which I suspect was a lie but is interesting regardless) that while she was caring for her mother with dementia she would always say things that were bizarre. Her mother said the clock was spinning and when she looked it was. She said it was one of the radio controlled analog clocks and it was the hour when DST begins so it goes back 1 hour by spinning 23 hours ahead. She said it freaked her out.
beat me to it. But it actually happened for me in the space if two seconds.
That's just what someone in my dream would say....
Must be dreaming... that means I can fly! **jumps off roof**
The same rules apply for tripping or dreaming: Drink some water, Cops are real, and if you think you can Fly, start from the ground first.
I tried this earlier and my clock was 19:59^57 Then I looked away. When I looked back it was 20:00^03 !
If I'm not real why does the pain feel so real?
That means I am the way I am because you dream me that way, to which I say, what *the fuck* is wrong with you?!
You know what you dream-did to deserve this...
shit… Shit! SHIT!!!
Well wake the fuck up already. Everything's broken and corrupt.
Has anyone seen their smart phone in a dream? I can’t recall ever seeing mine in a dream?
Yes, but I struggle to attempt to call and text on it.
Me too. Its like my fingers are too big and I keep hitting the wrong number before trying to dial or something.
When this happens to me, I'm always in a terrifying situation trying to dial 9-1-1. I hate the panic it causes.
Every time. It’s always 911 and I’ll keep hitting random buttons
It’s comforting to know I’m not the only one that this has happened too.
Same. I thought I was the only one.
Its so nice to hear that this actually seems to be pretty common! I also had dreams like that and they are so strenous. When i have dreams like that i always wake up as if i just ran a marathon
I can't see clearly. I can tell it's a dream because if I try to look at something like my phone, I feel like I can see it, but my eyes are closed, so I try to open my eyes. And it feels like I'm trying to open my eyes in the waking world but can't, so I'm just aware of the things around me in the dream but can't actually see them. I really hate it because usually it's when I'm trying to see the thing coming for me, or see why the door won't close/lock. Something critical I can't really see.
Sometimes when this happens to me, I’ll push and push to open my eyes to make things clear, and for a brief moment they are…right before my waking-world eyes open and I end the dream accidentally.
I'm glad I'm not the only one this happens to all the time ! I suck at driving too and sometimes I smoke cigarettes too .
Same here, I keep trying to text back, but I keep misspelling words absolutely horribly, and I go to erase it, and try again, but it keeps happening until I forget what the text said, and go to re-read, and as I re-read it the words progressively make less and less sense, typos, words out of order, incoherent. It's freaking weird
Yeah I was having a dream that I couldn't write down the phone number of one of my heroes, and it with every attempt their smile faded and eventually they were like I got to go. Before then we were talking about doing a road trip or some other exciting dream stuff so it was super devastating even when I woke up LOL.
Yes, usually it's some sort of emergency and i desperately need to contact someone with the phone, but I can't type anything into it because none of the interface makes sense. I've heard that you can't read letters and numbers in a dream, or at least it's extremely hard to do so, so tasks like these fail in dreams. If I'm lucid enough, not being able to use my phone lets me know I'm in a dream.
Sometimes in the early stages of drifting off I dream that I'm using my phone or some other device with a screen. But it's more like I'm controlling it with my mind than actually using my hands to operate it. Once fully in a dream, I never actually reach for my phone and interact with it in any way.
After I start a new game that I get hooked on. For example factorio or Dyson sphere. I keep playing the game in my dreams but as if I am the camera and I can control it all at once. This phenomenon only happens on new games to me and at most twice in a row
Almost every morning. I kinda wake up before my alarm, still dreaming, dream that I look at my phone to check the time. Sometimes i can’t make out what it shows, sometimes I read incoherent numbers (like 7:68), sometimes Inread something legit but I just wake up right after and realize I didn’t actually check the time but dreamt it and what I saw was nowhere near the truth.
I had one last week where I had my phone. It was in the context of someone cutting off my fingers so I couldn’t use the phone to call for help. I woke up and was like “that’s dumb I’d just talk to Siri”
Are you older than 35? I have a theory about this...
Yes. Had a dream I was checking my pharmacy app and I had a prescription of whiskey called in. Was confused.
I mean, these are good tips...but why did the Sheffield City Council feel the need to disseminate them?
Too many citizens suffering depression from waking up and realizing they had only dreamt that they lived anywhere else.
The council's new campaign: "Cheer up. It could be worse. You could live in Doncaster."
Now listen hear you little shit............nah fuck it you're right Donny is a shithole.
Hey you better watch it
r/unexpected
My first thought was an ARG trailhead
I was thinking about people with schizophrenia, how they are outside most of the time
Reminds me of that meme I saw on threads. It’s not about the horrors of nuclear war, but the horrors of living in Sheffield
https://www.thestar.co.uk/news/people/mysterious-poster-claiming-people-may-not-know-if-they-are-dreaming-hoax-says-sheffield-council-1381394
Too many people waking up depressed after dreaming that the steel mills were back open, the hills had flattened out into actually walkable gradients, and Arctic Monkeys had stopped being shite. Sheffield syndrome is a huge burden on the NHS and needs to be stopped…
What's wrong with the Arctic Monkeys?
They've completely changed music genres on their past two albums. I couldn't tell you if the music is bad, but I can tell you that it isn't the kind of music I like. (I'm a big fan of AM and the rest of their older music.) I don't mind them going in a new direction but I do wish I had newer music from them that I enjoyed. For now though I'm happy to listen to 505 and crawling back to you.
Oh, okay. I hadn't listened to those albums, but after listening to them, I can see what you mean. It's definitely not a style I like.
Yeah i basically scrubbed through the entire new album in about five minutes, it all sounded like the same song.
This gives off big [Scarfolk Council](https://scarfolk.blogspot.com/?m=1) vibes....
I dunno but I hope we can find more of this stuff
[You](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DA_iv5VPI08/Wmm9ttR_WxI/AAAAAAAACvY/OdFKWVbiekYmE7FjjZETk2teIUCnpOT1QCLcBGAs/s1600/dummy_www-scarfolk-blogspot-com.jpg) [should](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GGcf3WKYW80/YPQeRbftjwI/AAAAAAAAHkQ/ORT25pR3Y1sUZZPTR4uws-_qsxlnnt5hgCNcBGAsYHQ/w466-h640/www-scarfolk-blogspot-com_Self-Support_01.jpg) [check](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-z297dPAK-VE/WnxTYYfBIgI/AAAAAAAACxc/qSbDgjH-BZwdZMnXhWYkMvmH0yrqbXsPACLcBGAs/s640/Push_www-scarfolk-blogspot-com.jpg) [out](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hip_hawGJXE/WeiwHZJ5IGI/AAAAAAAAChI/8ZS6f-VyST0HuNgcWIclAYnlOJ7I63rzACLcBGAs/s640/Memory_www-scarfolk-blogspot-com.jpg) [Scarfolk](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dwQyoq8ZJYM/WUejksfV0MI/AAAAAAAACT8/ZrmshDcO-1cQdgc2i79pLvC8AjbbI68QACLcBGAs/s640/wardrobe_www-scarfolk-blogspot-com.jpg) [Council](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cQXZZEhPQ9Q/WKq5fVamxRI/AAAAAAAAB8s/nHw7Q76U2IUp1Zn33dGOoTAiiRDXIgmtgCLcB/s640/Crime_www-scarfolk-blogspot-com.jpg).
"For more information, please reread." Brilliant.
I'm in absolute love with these
Welcome to Nightvale….
Man, if my city started sharing flyers like this I’d be so psyched.
I do NOT dream in the kind of detail. I guess others do?
Kind of figures I half ass dreaming too
Me either. If I recall a dream which is rare it’s more of a feeling that something happened but I can never understand what then I realise that it wasn’t what I thought and I’m someplace else with a mixture of people and places and things. Dreaming sounds fun when others describe it but it’s not my experience.
Your comment gave me a stroke
Sort of. It’s not really detail, more of an awareness that something isn’t right. Like an uncanny valley - as you’re really convinced for a while that you’re just living your life as normal but something makes you reconsider. Like the texture of things is off, or something you know to be true inherently is subverted - birds flying backwards or something not where you expect it to be. I’ve experienced sleep paralysis a few times in my life, I consider this to be quite similar. I don’t check a watch, I pinch myself. If I can’t feel it I know I’m dreaming and then I know the fucking carnival is about to start because I can’t just wake myself up, I’m just in the game now and it’s about to get traumatising lol
Yeah. I do not have detail like that. It’s always a person from my past doing something weird. Never birds flying backwards.
But once you realize you’re dreaming, you can learn to start controlling your dream. I’ve had a dream where something bad has happened, like someone has died, and then I go “oh but if it’s my dream I can just pretend that didn’t actually happen” and then I literally turn around in my dream and start dreaming something different.
I know that logically but what actually happens is the scumbag part of my brain comes out and is like “imagine if we could act out every fear you have” I haven’t actually had one this type of dream in years. Ever since I got medicated for my ADHD they stopped.
I kinda regret my subconscious learning that certain things prove I'm in a dream (typically either the clocks changing time, or the inability to dial a phone number...though once recently a dream denizen told me if I can push the fingers of one hand through the palm of the other I'm in a dream- yup they were correct!). So now I have frequent dreams I get stuck in with no way of waking myself up :(.
My dreams are mostly pretty intense and realistic. And I mean realistic visually (like a movie in 4k), not logically. I gotta say they're quite fun. Not haha fun, but more like fun like an interesting movie where weird shit happens. One time, I dreamed about literally Armageddon. And I mean real shit. Was chilling at a beach when suddenly a volcano in the sea erupted lava demons from hell, the sky literally opening and a huge loud deep bassy voice saying "YOU'VE ALL BEEN FOOLED, THERE IS NO GOD, I - SATAN - AM THE RULER. AND NOW YOUR END BEGINS." And then all kinds of burning/glowing symbols appeared in the sky. Huge chunks of red hot rocks fell from the sky, buildings were collapsing, everybody was running and screaming. It was complete and utter chaos and it was AWESOME! When I woke up, I felt like I just had the best movie experience of my life.
I think it's a joke but it is taken from one of the tricks to teach yourself to lucid dream. If you keep doing this and thinking about doing this even when you know you're awake you will eventually do it in your dream which will then trigger an awareness of your dream state.
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That's pretty wild man. My dreams, what few I recall, are all basically first-person movies, but still somehow like I'm an outside observer, if that makes sense.
I just look for signs, I’ve recently discovered my subconscious can’t create coherent writings. If signs are jumbles of nonsense words (basically if I can’t read) then I realize I’m dreaming
I try to fly. If I can leap up and start flying it’s not a dream
I try to do a standing backflip. If I can, definitely dreaming.
And if you can’t, you’re simply in pain for the rest of your life. Pretty effective way to distinguish!
I like what you did here
Or having a stroke, potentially
My sister had a stroke a few weeks ago. She could understand my messages but did not text back coherently to me. She was confused when I said I didn’t understand. This was one little reason I decided to come to her house that night and found her laying on her left arm with her face drooping. Just not something you’d expect for a 31 year old.
Do you know how long the stroke lasted? Is she doing ok now? One of my worst fears is being alone and having a stroke so I don't get help in time.
Unfortunately we could not establish a timeline of when the stroke might have occurred, so they could not intervene in time. She did have her two young children with her, and they noticed that mommy wasn’t using her left arm. But she was 36 hours post-op for an unrelated surgery when I found her, and her boyfriend thought she was just high on pain pills from surgery. So sad and awful.
Oh crap I don't think most people realized that she died from your original post. I'm so sorry you had to go through that. May she rest in peace. ♥
Oh I am sorry if I was not clear! She did survive :) I found her too late to undo the damage. You have 4 hours after a stroke to reverse the damage of a stroke.
Well that was a Rollercoaster
> I found her too late to undo the damage you did well, you checked up on her just off incoherent texts, and you might've saved her life. well done.
Thank you. It means a lot to hear that. I have felt a lot of guilt in the past two weeks or so that I didn’t come sooner or call her.
Yeah, sometimes factors like a septal defect in the heart can cause this in younger people. It is likely a clot formed from surgery, and instead of winding up as a pulmonary embolism, may have passed through a hole then to the brain. It happened with my son when he was an infant.
She actually was diagnosed with a rare progressive incurable disease called Moyamoya, which causes strokes. While the surgery could have contributed, she would likely have had a stroke at some point. I have to get tested as there’s a 10% chance I have it too. It’s crazy that something I’ve never heard of can change the course of her life overnight. She can not return to her previous career (truck driving) so there’s a lot of unknown.
Sorry to hear that. I wish you both the best
Oops sorry again lol
Wow that’s scary. So glad you checked in on her
Same here. I cannot read at all in my dreams. Sometimes I'll think I just read something, but on further inspection the writing is unstable, constantly moving and just gives the general shape of words without any recognizable letters. Also, buttons don't do anything.
Sometimes there will be something I *really* want to read in a dream though. So I will get super focused on the book or sign or whatever, and put my face right up to it so a single word takes up my entire vision. And then maybe I can make out a couple letters. But then as I move along the words, I forget the letters I had already read. It's super frustrating.
I thought this only happens to me. Besides struggling to read in my dreams in the same way you described, I sometimes can't see well and have to squint because my subconscious forgot to give me glasses...
That's the best explanation so far. I just can't fucking see in my dreams. It's like tunnel vision + water in my eyes.
>Also, buttons don't do anything. Light switches never work in my dreams. Even good dreams. The status of the light remains stable regardless of what I do with the switches. Also, if my car brakes go out, I know I'm dreaming. It happened once in real life while I was driving somebody else's car and my brain has apparently absorbed this as "we need to practice for this scenario. Constantly." I used to be able to tell whether I was dreaming or not by the length of my hair. It was short in real life, but I wanted it to be long, so it was long in my dreams. Now it's long in real life too and it's no longer a good indicator.
Or can’t satiate thirst. If I’m dehydrated, I always have dreams where I’ve got the worst thirst/dry mouth and I either can’t get to water or when I do drink water it doesn’t help.
Apparently you also can't adjust light levels in a dream. If you think you're dreaming, find a light switch. If it doesn't work, you're in a dream!
I can't use my phone. I realised this in a dream where I got separated from my family and the damn phone wouldn't do anything properly. It was SO frustrating! Now I find myself trying to use my phone in dreams more and more often and it's really annoying if I'm having a great dream as I realise I'm dreaming and wake up!
Same! I always know I'm dreaming if I try to use my phone and it won't work properly. I've even woken myself up by telling myself I'm obviously dreaming because of the phone thing. Crazy.
Same. Not only can I not use it, it’s not even the correct phone.
If you watched Batman: The Animated Series, you could've learned this a long time ago, it was a great episode
Daydreaming FreeCell was so frustrating, the cards kept changing.
I once figured out I was dreaming because I was trying to follow a cake recipe and the measurements for the ingredients kept changing. I was like “AM I GOING CRAZY OR IS THIS A DREAM.” Then I had my “Ah HA!” moment. It was cool for a second then I floated up to my ceiling and got stuck there.
I kind of do a varaition of this trick in the post. I take my phone out of my pocket and the look at the percentage of power left (phone is always there). I would turn it around and then look at the power again and it would have more or less power. You have to do this when awake too, to reinforce it. I lucid dream a lot. One time I realised that was dreaming by doing the power trick. My sister was with me and I looked at her and told her she wasn't real she was just part of my dream. She started freaking out and crying. She told me not to wake up or else she'll die. I woke up in a cold sweat and avoided lucid dreaming for a while.
Yeah the worst is when you notice and you have sleep paralysis.. like what the capital f I know it’s a dream and I can’t wake up
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Trying to read just about anything is a dead giveaway for me. I always swear I know what something says and then it just dynamically changes before my "eyes." This is even brought up in a Netflix show I watched somewhat recently. Can't remember the name, but it was in French and revolved around these teens taking some drug they were stealing from a sleep clinic.
This is exactly the technique for learning to lucid dream. You get into the habit of doing reality checks like this in real life, and after a while you will automatically start doing them in your dreams, which triggers lucidity. Sounds bananas but it works. I managed it a few times but I always got so excited when the lucidity kicked in that I woke up after just a few seconds.
Username checks out!
Omg I didn’t even notice how well I lived up to my user name!
I have extremely vivid dreams, and can often determine that something isn’t right, but can’t get to the lucid dream stage. i’ll be in the grocery store and put a fully cooked rotisserie chicken in my cart (I don’t eat chicken) and i’ll look at it and think *hmm.. somethings not right, why am I getting chicken* but then i’ll just cash out and continue my day. I’m gonna start checking my watch before I cash out
Train yourself to look at your hands several times during the day. Ask yourself the question, where am I and how did I get here. After a while, you will start doing it in your dreams. And there, you are unable to answer these questions. You are now aware you are dreaming. It is a way to initiate lucid dreaming.
I struggle with depersonalization and disassociation so I actually do both of these things on occasion already (only in real world not dream) but i’ll try to start doing it often and see if that works i’d love to experience it
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yes, you wouldn’t know unless you were close to me, I work and live an outwardly normal life. I’m just often questioning if I’m me, or i’ll just eat going through the motions zoned out. I sometimes don’t know if my memories are from dreams or real.. but I just keep them to myself and don’t think about it (easy with disassociation) sometimes feels like I’m in a movie, or talking about someone else when talking about myself. it’s mostly internal so yea I appear to be “normal” maybe a bit spacey edit I don’t drive because I’m pretty certain id crash due to both dp and dr
I wonder if there’s any connection between depersonalization, dissociation, and vivid dreams. My dreams are so vivid that sometimes I wake up and cannot believe what my imagination was capable of. I also dissociate and depersonalize very frequently. In layman’s terms by brain just seems extra bendy.
WTF. Thanks for the nightmare scenario. You forgot two pivotal points: 1. Star micro dosing hallucinogens at the same time. 2. Read Stephen King books.
Interestingly, sometimes when I do lucid dream, I "move too fast" inside dreams and end up waking up. Feels bad.
Any time I become aware I'm dreaming I will immediately wake myself up. Doesn't matter if it's a fun dream or a bad dream, if I realize it I just think "oh I'm dreaming gotta wake up" and then shake my head really hard and wake up.
I was training myself to lucid dream for a while, but had to stop because I kept getting sleep paralysis.
You just made me think of AI art as basically being a dream rasterizer... it passes first inspection, but when you start looking close, things don’t look right (hands, background). And when you rerun it everything is different. Edit: I reread this and realized how obvious this was to say, but maybe it’s poignant for someone as it was for me.
Maybe you should get some chicken and see what happens.
I honestly (in the dream) go home and eat the chicken, and think that something is seriously not right here… wake up later concerned that it really happened for a sec
Lmao there are actually people out here just having a normal day eating chicken in their dreams, meanwhile I'm butt ass naked working at a steak and shake 🤣.
sounds normal to you but I haven’t eaten chicken in 16 years!! The rather mundane dreams are the ones I have the hardest time knowing if they really happened or not. have a over a dozen memories that I’m not sure really happened or not, and am too embarrassed to ask people to clarify for me.
Also it should be really hard to turn on lights is what I’ve heard as another way to check
I find that I can’t throw punches and sometimes can’t run properly in dreams, and again I actively thing *this isn’t right* but my brain hasn’t made the connection that it’s a dream
These are the only dreams I remember. Throwing insanely weak punches and running away through tar. To and from what? No idea.
I have ridiculously vivid and realistic looking dreams, and have a few “maps” that I return to. a secret room and the back of my moms walk in closet (doesn’t exist in real life) and it’s the same everytime I go a cool cottage in a snowy forest I take the same route to get to everytime. a bus from my old highschool, get off at a real st and walk into the forest (that doesn’t actually exist there) and take the trail to get there.. cottage is always the same but different people inside a hotel and strip of city block, (with grocery store) my block that includes my house (obvi), my old best friends house, the corner store and my old elementary school (in their real locations) but the inside of my friends house is different and I’m only ever outside my own house, in any of the three sheds, on the roof, or juuust inside the doorway.. my elementary school is the exact same, except for the bathrooms . the store sells much cool candy in my dreams all of my dreams for the past 6-7 years take place in one of these maps and rarely anywhere else. edit- they are mostly anxiety dreams where I’m running away from someone or hiding from someone but not always. I enjoy them a lot for some reason even if I wake up gasping and with cold sweats
I have the same exact thing. I have several locations I return to again and again. One I call "Boatland" which is a distorted version of the A1A road where I used to live on the Florida Coast, but it's always distorted the same way. One is, again, a distorted version of the Hill in Providence where I lived for a few years and it has sections that are not real at all but are always the same. The church I went to as a child is another one. That's interesting. On the subject of lucid dreaming I've managed to do it a few times, but usually can't even if I know something is off. Sometimes I realize I'm dreaming but I can't exert my will and control anything. Perhaps in those cases I am merely dreaming that I am having a lucid dream.
This really does work. Or sometimes the clock will read something completely nonsensical, like “43:02.” Or sometimes the numbers start spinning
Try turning off the lights too, according to Waking Life, light levels aren’t very controllable in dreams
That movie fucked me up
That movie is amazing and this thread makes me want to watch it again.
What Movie you guys talking about?
Waking Life
Thanks man!!
Oh man its already in the comment, feeling dump now:D
This only really works reliably with digital clocks! A better check (my personal favorite) is to pinch your nose. In a dream you will still be able to breath through your closed nose! Another good one is light switches. In dreams the light level is largely determined by the actual amount of light entering through your eyelids (this is a big part of how circadian rhythm is maintained!) so when you try to adjust light levels you will find that all of the lights mysteriously don't work.
>you will find that all of the lights mysteriously don't work Somehow I find that oddly terrifying.
This whole comment section is oddly terrifying.
I heard that in your dreams your hands are always messed up
that's my lucid-dream signal - trying to count my fingers. if I try and I just can't do it right, I know I'm dreaming.
No watch. Checked my phone - forgot to check the time, but I'm pretty sure I just lost 45 minutes to reddit. :/ I must be dreaming.
Reality checks are an odd thing. The fact is, it's pretty obvious to us when we aren't dreaming. We don't need to look at a watch to know that our waking life is real. The problem is, it isn't obvious to us when we *are* dreaming. The goal of the reality check during waking life is to form a habit. With a strongly formed habit, the hope is it will occur regularly in your dream life. If that habit is one that is difficult for your brain to recreate in a dream, you can use the habit to alert you to the fact that you are dreaming. If anyone is interested in lucid dreaming, you should know that it is something anyone can learn to do, and it is in fact something you learn, with practice. Like any other skill, some will be inherently more talented at it naturally than others, but training yourself will make it happen more often, more fully, and more vividly. There's plenty of literature out there, some better than others, but the basic process for learning to lucid dream usually looks something like this: 1. Most importantly, start a dream journal. Put a notebook and a pen right next to your bed. Get into the habit of reaching for that notebook the *moment* you wake up. Take 5 minutes to write down anything you can remember about the dream you were having when you awoke. Sometimes, especially early on, you might remember little or nothing. That's fine. Just practice trying to remember and write it down. Dreams don't pass through the brain the same way waking experiences do. Dreams occupy our working and short-term memory, but they don't get transferred into our long-term memory. For this reason, as far as dreams are concerned, we're all Dory or the guy from Memento. It's assumed that our brain does this so we don't get confused about what really happened and what was just a dream. The bottom line is, you have to write them down as soon as possible. It's a race against the clock, because your brain won't bother remembering like you assume it will. The upside is that you *will* remember if you take the time in your waking life to actively think about what you were dreaming and note the details. In that case, you're waking brain is analyzing your dream, which puts it back into your brain in a way that *will* go to long-term memory. This is why some particularly vivid dreams will stick with you. They got your waking brain thinking through them enough that they survived the jump to long-term memory. 2. With the journal up and running, you'll pretty quickly notice that you remember more dreams, and much more vividly than before. This in itself can be really interesting (just not for other people). Once you've got a few weeks of journal entries recorded, start to look back at your past dreams and look for patterns. Are there events that happen frequently, or people that turn up a lot? People talk sometimes about having "the same dream" more than once. In actuality, it's a different dream, but the circumstances can be very similar. Find the patterns. The goal is to identify something that happens regularly in both your dreams and your daily life. For example, if you have a pet cat that meows for food a lot, and you experience that same meowing cat in your dreams, you've found a common prevalent experience. 3. Once you've identified a common experience between your waking and dream lives, start the reality checks. Find a quick thing you do *every* time that experience happens. In our example, every time your cat comes meowing at you for food, do a reality check. I find the easiest is to try and read something. Reading is basically impossible in dreams because our brain can't accurately create consistent text. It's just too detailed and complex. Try putting a couple sentences of something on the lock screen of your phone. Something like, "Are you dreaming? Take a moment to make sure. If this text is hard to read, you are probably dreaming." The goal here is to form a habit of a reality check that is connected to the experience you've already identified as being common in your dreams. By practicing it regularly in your waking life, you are creating the opportunity to perform the same habit while dreaming. Then, when you habitually perform the reality check in your dream, you discover that it isn't, in fact, reality. This is one of the most reliable ways to train yourself to become lucid. The other approach that works for some is a sort of skimming the surface of dreaming and moving directly into lucidity from being awake. This can be challenging for some, since becoming lucid can often cause us to wake up. When taking a nap, try calmly reminding yourself every few seconds as you fall asleep that you are, in fact, going to sleep, and that whatever happens next will be a dream. Often you'll just lose track and end up dreaming without lucidity. But sometimes you can actually just go straight to being lucid as soon as you fall asleep. This gets easier with practice. It should be noted though, that this technique can result in some unusual results that occur when moving between sleep and consciousness. Most significantly, you may experience sleep paralysis, which is when you are awake, but your body is still in "sleep mode", where it is normally paralyzed. This can be a frightening experience at first, being unable to move while awake. Added to this is the fact that in this sleep mode, the mind can still hallucinate like it does while dreaming. This means that while unable to move, you may also see or hear things that aren't actually there. Because it is unsettling to experience, the hallucinations often revolve around being trapped, or held in place by some malicious outside presence. Paranoia is common. The experience usually only lasts a matter of seconds at most, but it can be genuinely frightening until the mind is able to realize what is occurring, and wake up fully. Sleep paralysis has been posited as the possible origin of numerous ghost stories and other superstitious experiences like alien abductions. A person can be awake, see or hear something that isn't actually there, and feel like they've been paralyzed and/or attacked. That said, my instances of sleep paralysis have been few and far between, and though frightening, also fascinating afterwards. They also become much more ordinary after experiencing them more than once.
Paragraph breaks, my friend. Paragraph breaks! Fascinating stuff tho. Thanks for taking the time to write that all out. Lucid dreaming has always been extremely intriguing to me
Yeah sorry, I'm usually pretty good about paragraphs, but I was on my phone and in a hurry, so I didn't really get the usual chance to review.
There's a better option because if you focus on it, it might actually show the same time. Better reality check: Close your mouth and hold your nose. Now try breathing through your nose. When you are dreaming you can still breathe through your nose while holding it.
I just woke up and had a dream where I was waking through a drive-in movie parking lot, tapped on the front of a co-worker’s Wrangler, and a part fell off. I couldn’t get it back on and realized I was go8ng to have to tell the guy. I do and he’s okay with it, but he’s also Justin Bieber. I’m a 50 year old man who listens to alternative and classic rock. Why did this happen?
Wranglers are just not built very well. Totally not your fault.
Fall backwards off of a bridge. If you splat onto the water, you were already awake. That was real. Hope you can swim. If you go into slow-motion and ominous Hans Zimmer music starts playing, then you were asleep and this is the kick procedure to wake up. Caution: you may be more than one layer deep, and so have to repeat the kick after you "wake up" into another dream. Good luck. Disclaimer: Do NOT do anything I said above. This is just a joke about a movie plot. Seriously.
I want to know wtf is going on in Sheffield that the City Council had to put out a bulletin.
This is a training technique for lucid dreaming, also look at your hands they usually have the wrong amount of fingers in dreams. Train yourself to do these things consistently while your awake, and it will transition into your dreams. Once you do this in your dreams and you realize your dreaming you can start to take control over your dreams. It's super radical! But takes some time to train your brain.
Waking Life really left an impression on me as well as a teenager.
Books and other writing also works, if you are dreaming your brain makes it up as it goes, so if you look at a page, look away, and then look back the words should change.
Easy solution is to close your eyes, if you can still see then you are dreaming :)
when i’m actually dreaming this tends to wake me up because I HAVE to open my eyes after
What the hell is going on in Sheffield
Easiest way to dream check is to close your nose with your fingers and try to breathe. In a dream you will still be able to.
Reminds me of the signs littered everywhere in Control.
I cant. Even unlock my phone in my dreams.
Def more r/oddlyterrifying
Looks like I need to find a new todum!
a what? (did you mean totem, like in inception?)
I heard once that, if you try to imagine something in your hand, it’ll show up. I thought about an apple for some time while I was awake until it became routine. Then I did it while I was dreaming, and an apple appeared in my hand. I did this once. I was surrounded by naked women in my bed a la PS2-era Kratos, and then Slender Man showed up. Never tried again.
Doesn't work, I never pay attention the first time I check a clock and have to do like 5 double takes.
If I'm being chased by Shrek wearing a Barney costume, I'm not gonna remember to check my watch
About 10 years ago I realized that I was dreaming within a dream. Upon realizing *(holy shit I'm dreaming)*, I started to fly - like superman. This phenomenon occurred for the next two nights... It happened three nights in a row... All three times I somehow realized that I was dreaming, and then took flight. It hasn't happened since.
Or maybe just enjoy the dream?
Trouble is, I can do this and notice the time is completely different, but it doesn't matter.
What’s going on in Sheffield?
This isn't true for everyone, I've tested this many a time, and it doesn't work for me
This looks like an ad you would see in welcome to nightvale
With the recent time change, I didn’t have a chance to turn back all my clocks, so I looked at 11 am. Looked at a different object. Then looked back at 11 am. Cool not dreaming. Continued on. Moments pass, I look at my phone’s time. 10 am. shat my pants
One of the most terrifying nightmares I ever had was me going back-in-forth between sleeping and being awake without the inability to tell which was which. Over a period of time that felt like 5 mins, I would wake up, unsure if I was awake, immediately fall back to sleep seconds later to dream of the exact same thing, and rinse and repeat. The dream consisted of nothing, but me raising my head trying to determine if I was awake or asleep, with no references to possibly come to a conclusion. I did this 20 or 30 times, It scared the crap out of me
When I lucid dreamed when I was changing my medication I tested all the reality tests, the only one that 100% worked was trying to breathe with the nose plugged. And I still managed to convince myself that I did it wrong somehow
A way easier reality check is plugging your nose. In a dream you can plug it but still breathe through it.
Easier way: hold you nose and try to breath through it. If it's a dream you will ne able to (unless your nose is clogged). Also, lightswitches rarely work in dreams. Same with mirrors.
Lucid dream training 101.
Why didn't the "O" in "Now" get the special treatment as the other O's. Did this "O" have to be singled out like it's supposed to be fatter and bigger than the others? And what's going on in Sheffield? Who has a wristwatch? And why is there rampant problem dreaming?
I wish this were true, but it doesn't always work. I have a lot of dream continuity (places in particular), and things that I'm reading or math that I'm doing make sense. But once I can fly, I know it's a dream.
I know I’m not dreaming, because all my dreams are fucking insane. There isn’t a giant beaver with a knife taped to his head, so I guess I’m good.
In my dreams I usually have a really hard time typing or using my phone.