Anyone have trouble distinguishing dreams from memories?

Post Reply New Topic

When i was a child my dreams were extremely vivid. Back then I never shared them with others and would often contemplate them alone throughout the day. I began to write my dreams down in my early teens and still do. When i read them its like watching a movie. The same happens when i reread literature i read in school. I still have memories of dreams i have never written down... The majority seem as though they could not have happened in reality but still some that often make me wonder. Only now, twenty something years later, am i inquiring about past events that others have long forgot. Its a little annoying. So, I was wondering... does this ever happen to any of you?

yeah on the odd occasion. if i dream and it is "plausible"

sometimes i dream ive doen a task, wake up and not be sure if i did or didnt.

Yeah, I'll ask my mom "did ________ really happen or was it a dream?" constantly

Olden days, several times I dreamed a visit to abookstore - found a book in my area, leafed through it.

Vivid enough sometimes I had to go to the store - real store - to see is the bookj really there. It never was.

Well, Dreams are made with pieces of our memory arranged by our imagination, maybe with time our memory fades enough to allow the confusion?

I get this too, but never seriously talked about it with anyone. I have no idea whether it may be specifically an "aspie thing" though..

I don't know if this is the same, but sometimes I get a feeling of deja vu over some incredibly unremarkable event and I can't really know if it really happened before or if it was just a dream.

I have memories of some of my dreams. But I know I am dreaming when I dream. In fact I can often control my dreams consciously (even though asleep). This is called Lucid Dreaming.

In some societies and cultures there is no bright line drawn between the awake state and the dream state. I think that is true for the Australian Aboriginals

ruveyn

if it's long enough ago, I think I may have. But only if the dream felt like RL.

I get this many times a week. I have very vivid dreams and often think they were real

I don't usually have much difficulty at all in distinguishing dreams from real life (once I've woken up of course). But sometimes after a dream, I get a strong feeling that some aspect or other of the dream has actually happened, and I have to make quite an effort to get myself to understand that it didn't. Typical instances are damage to my home, romantic encounters, and owning cool stuff.

I think that's normal though. If you do a Google search for the exact phrase "or did I dream it?" you get a lot of hits, which suggests that a lot of people feel are not sure that they can always fully differentiate between a dream and reality. Unless they're all being sarcastic.

sometimes before i fall asleep, when i first close my eyes i see images that aren't memories and if i don't try to push them they flow like a movie. If i try to say, view one object more closely like i can normally do in a dream or with a memory.. the images vanish. I know that I'm not sleeping and i don't think they are hallucinations because it only happens sometimes and only when I'm really relaxed with my eyes closed but not sleeping.

I expect they're "hypnagogic hallucinations":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogic
Sights
Among the more commonly reported, and more thoroughly researched, sensory features of hypnagogia are phosphenes which can manifest as seemingly random speckles, lines or geometrical patterns, including form constants, or as figurative (representational) images. They may be monochromatic or richly colored, still or moving, flat or three-dimensional (offering an impression of perspective). Imagery representing movement through tunnels of light is also reported. Individual images are typically fleeting and given to very rapid changes. They are said to differ from dreams proper in that hypnagogic imagery is usually static and lacking in narrative content, although others understand the state rather as a gradual transition from hypnagogia to fragmentary dreams, i.e. from simple "eigenlicht" to whole imagined scenes. Hypnagogia can be induced with a Dreamachine, which uses light pulsing at a frequency close to that of alpha waves to create this effect. Descriptions of exceptionally vivid and elaborate hypnagogic visuals can be found in the work of Marie-Jean-Léon, Marquis d'Hervey de Saint Denys.

I've sometimes seen vivid moving pictures directly after rapidly waking from a dream, which are called hypnapompic hallucinations. They're in full colour with no sound or narrative, and I'm not "in" the picture as I would usually be in a dream. They are purely pictures......they stop if I open my eyes, and I had some evidence that they would be more vivid if I opened my eyes briefly on waking and then closed them again. I was often amazed at the beauty of the images, and at the creative talent embodied in them - I would have had a hard time creating anything as artistically pleasing during my normal waking life (others have referred to the heightened creativity of dreams) They would typically last for about 15 seconds. The first one I got scared me, but after that I came to enjoy and look forward to them.

Examples were:
1. A two-dimensional view of a number of aeroplanes flying about......it was a view from above the planes, and each one was of a different design with respect to shape, colours etc.

2. A dark-ish room full of junk, in which a thin man in a tail-coat is dancing around, leaping on and off table tops and other surfaces.

3. Smoke coming out of a greenhouse in the garden behind my garden, against a vivid blue sky. The "camera" moves downwards to show two figures (possibly alien astronauts) standing at the bottom of my garden. The "camera" zooms in and I see that the figures are made entirely out of bits of coloured paper with nothing visible to connect them together.