Are your dreams 'social'?

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Do you think that's also true in waking life?


Of course it is also true in waking life. Although my coworkers ususally try to hide the fact that they believe in me the truth occasionally slips out in their conversations. Although in waking life I am probably oblivious to some of the less obvious social cues nevertheless in a dream state I am very intuitive.

I have a lot of stress-related dreams. The most common ones involve either being late to a test for a class that I've never attended or some sort of impending natural disaster, like a tidal wave. I can see it building off in the distance, but I can't do anything to prevent it. Nobody around me seems to notice or care. I've had a few haunted house dreams before too. They are interesting, though sometimes a little scary.

I also dream a lot about transportation and public places. My most common dreams involve amusement parks, train/subway stations, and ski resorts. Usually I have some place that I need to go.

The other class of dreams are like stories, similar to as if I were watching a movie. The emotions can be pretty intense in general and they seem very cool or dramatic at the time, but when I wake up, they never make much sense.

My dreams are often sexual fantasies (for lack of the real thing in real life) but as is the case in real life I am often only an observer in the dream (whether the dream is a sexual fantasy or not). Thus they do tend to be social in nature. I also have a lot of stress related dreams and dreams involving never-ending processes (like falling off a cliff and you just keep on falling, falling, falling until you wake up etc) and others that are just plain weird. My mom always remarks about my strange dreams.

In one of my most memorable and wackiest dreams on March 5, 1992 I dreamed about a spunky woman coworker of mine who was known to be rather loose with her body although she was married. She became frustrated with a pack of unruly elephants rampaging through the streets of my small hometown. She decided that this must stop at all costs so she chased down the bull elephant of the pack, walked underneath him, raised both hands overhead and proceeded to give him a vigorous hand job in order to calm him down a bit. When it was done she did that criss-cross clapping / wiping motion with her hands like some macho construction worker knocking the dirt off his hands as if to say "that is ONE elephant that will not cause any more problems today". Meanwhile I stood on a nearby hill watching it all happen from a distance. I could post the entire entry of that dream as I described it in my dream log at the time, but it might be a bit too far over the edge.

I usually remember my dreams well because I often wake up from sleep fully after each dream cycle. Lately I've been having some pretty bad sleep problems though and have been missing out on my array of unusual dreams. It didn't really occur to me until I read your post.

People usually clutter my dreams, but I do have dreams that are object oriented. For instance, one of my dreams I had many years ago involved a desert and a mirror that reached the sky and was probably 30 feet wide. I remember the sky was red and had a weird marble like effect to it almost as if it wasn't sky at all but a ceiling, but the sun was there too. Anyway I walked up to the mirror and stared at myself, then I heard this cracking, looked up, and millions of pieces of glass shards came raining down. I began to scream but then the shards entered my mouth and I began frantically trying to spit them out only to wake up and discover my pillow covered in spit. *shrugs*

Most of the dreams I remember involve me leading some sort of important "mission", and being the guy who is the hero. Almost always involves a mix of people I know and strangers. And as the story progresses, it always ends up with me completing this "mission" by myself. Can't explain it, maybe because nothing like that ever happens IRL, because I know I'm not the type of person who ever takes charge.

Moog, I'm glad you started this thread. 3/4 of my dreams are social, the rest are usually of my special interest or a very stressful situation made worse. My stressful dreams involve either me being back in high school at my current age, trying to remember my locker combination or my class schedule. Maybe you can say they are recurring, because I dream about this over and over, but the environment and situations are different every time, but it's the same theme. I also dream about moving back home from college, usually the stress is not making it home, or not packing everything and being rushed. And getting home is always an adventure. Other stressful dreams involve my step mother messing with me or my stuff, or my stuff getting damaged, destroyed, removed, or missing.

My social dreams are of social situations, usually of things I'd never do in real life. I remember, years ago, having a dream about me in a theater, and all these people, who are my fans for whatever I did, would follow me like they'd follow a famous person. When I was dreaming, I had *ZERO* anxiety and was waving at my fans and smiling at them. The dream sticks out, even to this day, because the lack of anxiety I'd have for something that would cause me to curl up into the fetal position in real life because I'm so overcome with anxiety.

I can tell you this, most nightmares I have... I may have unease or slight fear when there's no people in them and it's just me alone in a creepy empty office building graveyard, but it generally doesn't go past that. Because once the people enter, that's when the primal full-on terror starts.

But my happy dreams tend to have people too even if most of them are either family members (when I'm not dreaming about my family all being really really angry at me) or friends. But the happiest ones have objects or animals that are sentient. There's also... other types of dreams where there... were people... and then there weren't. I never know quite what to make of them, they're very enjoyable dreams while happening, but even in my dreams my moral center keeps saying "OK, no, I'm not on board with this." but I'm having such fun and I know won't stop until they catch me. Until I wake up and have no idea what the heck I should feel about those dreams.

Throughout my whole life I do not ever remember being all alone in a dream without other people there. Even if it did seem like quite a lonely dream, there is still always someone floating about in my dream.

In my dreams I'm always mostly talking and listening. If I'm getting nervous about something in real life, I have angry moments in my dreams, like screaming and crying and panicking.

Because of my anxiety and mild Agoraphobia (which I think it's what I've got), I often have dreams about ''breaking the hidden social rules'', and that's when I wake up feeling really relieved. But sometimes, though, I often have dreams where my NT cousin has brought a lot of her mates with her to mine (obnoxious teenage girls) and I'm runing away or hiding because I don't want to interact with them. Yet when I do interact in my dreams, I do it normally without any difficulties, even though I have my same personality in my dreams.

Dreams can be very complicated.

When I remember a dream, I am never very social. I often start in a group & go off on my own. Just like in RL.