Does anyone have an issue describing their dreams?

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I found this old comment via Google:

The frequency and degree to which I often remember my dreams has always surprised people.

Sometimes they're relatively mundane, other times there are supernatural elements or other strange things. Some reoccurring themes over the years.

One thing that I think is a little unusual is often people will appear in my dreams that represent a real person or fictional character without actually looking like that person. In the dream I always know who they are supposed to be.

Cars have always been odd. Until I learned to drive my dreams would involve driving an imaginary car, like a child playing pretend. Even though I'd ridden in cars and seen people drive cars my brain simply couldn't imagine what the experience was actually like. After I learned to drive, the dream driving became more realistic.

At some point I developed a reoccurring dream theme of trying to brake but the brakes would never completely stop the car. Finally a few years ago the brakes finally worked. I guess I finally felt in control of whatever the car represented.

I have a problem where I will notice events "are just like those dreams I keep having, but this time it's real!" Except no it's just the same type of dream again.

I often "nope" out of the occasional nightmare, but only scary ones. If I'm dreaming of showing up for my final exam after skipping the last month of classes I've never escaped like that.

I've had reoccurring dreams since childhood.

I had a dream last night that combined several of my recurring dream tropes. In the dream, I was at the hotel across the street from Disneyland with my parents. We were waiting for food to be delivered by DoorDash so we could eat before going to the park. The food wasn't coming and I was getting nervous I would get over-hungry and it would ruin my day. Then, the dream switched so that we were in a car in the parking lot, waiting for the hotel staff to bring us the food. So I got the car imagery in there, even though I wasn't driving. Finally, the staff approached with the food and I was relieved. Then, they mockingly ate our food right in front of us. I was like, “C'mon fellas, fun's fun, but give us our food now!” But they just went on eating it. I got out of the car and stormed off to McDonald's to get more food myself. This briefly turned into the “dream is a movie” concept: I was now supposed to be a character who had some sort of history with the McDonald's employee. This had little to do with the rest of the dream, though. I ordered a coffee with my food and dumped a packet of powdered creamer into it. The employee said this was foolish of me, as I should have checked first to see if the prankster hotel staff from earlier had tampered with the creamer. However, instead of discovering it was poisoned or some such thing, I dropped the creamer packet into the coffee. When I went to fish it out, more and more paper trash kept coming out of the coffee, until finally, I looked down at the coffee to see that it was completely full of trash and undrinkable. It was now supposed to be 4PM and I still hadn't eaten or been to Disneyland yet. I broke down, complaining that no matter how hard I try to avoid getting over-hungry, all these random things happen to me and I wind up over-hungry anyway. Of course, I woke up without ever getting to Disneyland.

What's funny is, my real-life trip to Disneyland a couple weeks ago went much more smoothly than this dream!

Most of my dreams are about buildings and architectural spaces, usually large buildings with many level and walkways, like airports, shopping malls, warehouses converted into artist studios, an empty theater, but sometimes more abstract buildings that don't have a specific apparent purpose but have lots of walkways and levels. There's always a sense that it's vaguely unpleasant, like being in a maze where you have to keep walking and walking and are not sure where the exit is. Sometimes it's the interior of houses, but usually ones with interesting structure, like a very modern one-story house with attractive planks of wood and large floor to ceiling windows. Or whole neighborhoods, often without roads but only space to walk among the houses, a bit like an encampment. Nothing happens, other than a feeling of unease in these un-user-friendly spaces that are hard to figure out.

But I also sometimes have dreams in which things happen. Sometimes I'm trying to make a phone call and I can't figure out the right buttons to press or they don't work and I keep trying but it never works.

There are people in some of my dreams too, but not always.

Not me. I dream a lot and describe them in vivid details to my family next day. I wonder if it's an experience thing. I mean if you have done a lot of traditional reading and writing, using words to describe complex issues, scenes, stories, maybe it wouldn't be hard. Or maybe it's a personality thing. I found that introverts rarely describe their dreams. I guess it's always hard to imagine being someone different. I'm expressive and always found it curious that some people would just say nothing when asked a question.

When I was a kid, my dreams were very simple and easy to describe, at least those that I still remember anything about. They were all nightmares, often ending with my death.

These days, my dreams are all over the place. They somewhat make sense while within the dream, but when I wake up I tend to be very confused about what the heck is my mind up to.

On the bright side: these days my nightmares don't tend to be about death. Usually, I simply miss the bus in them... which actually makes sense since that is a continuing fear of mine. I like my routines, and that includes getting on the right bus on time.