When you have a dream are you "yourself" in the dream?

I’m not certain I’ve ever actually seen myself in my dreams. I think it’s always a first person view… looking out of my own eyes. Other people sometimes look different, though, for sure. Like, I’ll know “that man over there” is my husband, but he’s not always my actual husband, Mark. Same for my surroundings. Like, I’ll know I’m in my house, but the dream house looks nothing at all like my actual house. Dreams are weird.

@augustlan that’s interesting, another friend said the same about not really seeing “himself” in the dreams. I hadn’t thought of that possibility.

I have movie-like dreams often and have done since I remember. No, I am often someone else or a very different version of myself. In psychology class, we were discussing dreams and how they were interpreted by different classical styles of psychologists. We were all sort of laughing and talking about the classics, like falling or showing up at school naked or still wearing pajamas. Enboldened by this loose chatter, I put my hand up and asked if anyone else dreamt they were the opposite sex. Everyone just shut up and stared at me. I shrunk down in my chair and turned red.

I had a dream this morning and in it I could see my reflection in the windows as I was walking towards it. I looked like how I perceive myself, so In answer to your question yes I am.

If I’m a character in my dream, I’m usually myself, though my gender in the dream may change from time to time (sometimes within the dream itself. Those are fun!). I’m taller when I’m a boy.

Holycrap, @cazzie, I just read what you said. I swear we’re soul friends

If I’m not a character in the dream, it’s usually something like a live-action Theater of the Absurd. The Sumo Wrestlers are trying to escape from the dairy aisle of the supermarket but it’s raining fire from the ceiling and Superman can’t help because he’s drunk and hitting on the Green Lantern. <—excerpt from actual Seek_Kolinahr dream sequence

I am always myself in dreams and looking at the world through my eyes, not outside looking in. Most of my dreams are about the personal losses I have sustained and how to resolve them.

Usually I am in my dreams, but I am experiencing the dream for the inside out so I don’t see myself.

This is really interesting. I’ve never been anyone else in my dreams. I wonder if that makes me really narcissistic? :P I do occasionally dream as myself “outside” of myself; like, I can control myself but I’m watching myself instead of BEING myself.

I’ve never dreamed as though I were another person. That would be fascinating!

I’ve been a werewolf and a vampire, and also heavily muscular (which I’m not lol).
I’ve also experienced myself subjectively, as if looking in the mirror, though my mind was not in the body, it was like controling an avatar. It was very odd, and I didn’t notice it in the dream, only when I woke up an thought, ‘crikey, that was weird!?’

I often wonder whether the other people in my dreams are me?

My dreams are in the first person, so I don’t see myself, but I generally “know” that I am me. Every now and then I have a dream where I am somebody else.

I am always myself in my dreams. The only difference is if I am speaking in Spanish I seem to be more fluent. LOL. Until this question I never knew people have dreams where they are someone or something else.

Most dreams I remember are actually bad dreams or nightmares. Once in a while I have a good dream.

OK kids, I will admit to why I get so annoyed with “dream interpretation” questions (which this is not). EVERYTHING in your dream is you—that is the point of dreams. It is up to you to decipher the chair-you in the dream, the blank-wall you in your dream, the boss-you in your dream, the large wolf-you in your dream. It is YOUR dream and everything in it is your subconscious telling you about the various you-parts of you that are riled up. It is up to you to figure out why they are riled up.

I can’t possibly know (though magical internet waves) what the chair-you means to you. Why that chair? Why is it a different color than it is in real life? Why is the chair-you on the rubbish heap? Why do you want to re-upolster the over-stuffed chair-you?

I don’t know you and apparently neither do you which is the point of the dream in the first place! It is to help YOU learn about the YOU that lurks beneath

I’m always myself, but I don’t know if I’ve ever ‘seen’ myself. There was the dream where, when I woke up, I realized I dream in color. I was wearing a lovely flame colored chiffon dress and floating above a gorgeous buffet table of appetizers at a party.

@Kayak8 So the man chasing me, shooting me, stabbing me, is me? I interpret him as a doctor. Sure it has to do with my anxiety related to doctors and what they do to me and how I deal with it, but I don’t see how the bad man is me?

I think @Kayak8 means that the things that manifest in our dreams come from our own minds, so it is your anxiety creating that character, not an actual being.
Thanks for clarifying that this isn’t a dream interpretation thing. I actually like to think that I’m pretty good at dissecting and understanding my own dreams, and what they mean to me, and where they stem from. I am pretty surprised at the variety of answers here, it says a lot about people, the different ways that we dream and perceive things.
I have severe body image issues, which always made me assume that it was behind me not looking like “me” in my dreams – and when I do look like me, I am an ugly version of myself. It made me wonder how others see themselves. I hadn’t ever expected so many people to say that they really don’t even see themselves in dreams. Interesting stuff.

My dreams are full of my own personal delusions of grandeur. I’m usually saving the day in one way or another. Usually, I dream about rescuing new people I just met. The peril is different depending on the previous days experiences.

Is it weird to say that my favourite dreams are erotic ones, because they’re so damn strange, like Hollywood-budget sci-fi porn. Honestly, I should keep a dream diary and start writing scripts.

@Seek_Kolinahr you really should. I’ve gotten lots of creative ideas from dreams that turned out really well.

I wonder if David Tennant would appear in my Doctor-Who themed dream-porn.

* ponders *

I am in my dreams, and I am the me I know.

I’m always myself, yes.

One time I was a male vampire haha

I am never able to see myself in my dream. I do see others, though. I had a dream not long ago that my girlfriend was a trailer park hussy who wore a yellow tank top and she had a beer belly. No idea what that was all about.

Edited to add: Yes, what Auggie said: first person view… looking out of my own eyes..

I am always myself. The rare times that I have been someone else, I was just “pretending” to be someone else, and no one else in the dream was convinced. They still knew it was me.

Sometimes, other times I can be a space hopper or even a slightly constipated giraffe.

When you are dreaming, do you look/feel/sound like yourself? Usually, but not always. Most take place in the first person, where I cannot see myself. There are others where I can see my body parts, and sometimes they are not what I look like, e.g., really long hair or a different color, or skinny or fat.

On a few occasions, the person in the dream is me, yet is someone else, like a 12 year-old boy, or a young woman who is not me. In these dreams, I see them from a few feet away. Sometimes, I move into their body and see what is happening from their perspective.

Do other people look like who they are interpreted to be in your dream? Yes.

I’m usually some kind of creature in my dreams.
Sometimes I am myself in my dreams, but I always seem to suddenly change into someone or something else.
Other people I know who appear in my dreams aren’t like themselves, they’re always trying to kill me or something although I get along with them quite well in real life.

Sometimes, I am myself but actually I may be in a dream and interact with others in my dream, but I will not see myself. Sometimes I will see myself as someone else but its more about conveying a feeling or situation than an actual look.
For example. An older person as myself may have something wise to say, or feel fragile.
If I am homeless, than it may convey that I feel helpless, or sometimes, the homeless me may say something unexpected but it fits their situation and can convey a solution in the dream.

I always dream in first person, but in the dream I remember, which are rare, I don’t feel like myself. I find that I say things, want things, that I normally would not. Its quite unnerving actually.

I am always myself and in my current skin and age.
There is always at least someone else I really do know in it, and most times the are people in it that I have no reference to in real life.
Sometimes I wonder why certain people close to me are not in my dreams, but they are just dreams.
I just awoke from a doozie of one and can’t get back to sleep due to the outcome.

Mostly I am myself, but I this other night I was a guy from a movie participating in gay sex. I could never do that in “real” life for sure.

@JLeslie – reminded me of something odd I encounter in my dreams very occasionally.
The one instance I remember best was the instance that prompted another ‘crikey, that was weird!?’.

In my dream I was in a building that somehow became a prison, or my perception of the building was such that I was under the impression that it was a prison even though when I first walked into it, it served some other function, though this function was not known to me.

Whilst in the building I noticed that there was a song playing in the background and I was trying to sing along to it, but couldn’t remember all the words, the thing that surprised me on waking up, was that in the dream the song played in its entirety, as if it where playing on the radio or a cd player in the waking world, the song was Bon Jovi’s ‘keep the faith’.

On waking I thought ‘WOW’...... my mind was replaying a song and I couldn’t sing all the words, but all the words in the song where crystal clear to me suggesting that on some level, certain things we experience are recorded in their entirety.

I often sit and ponder on the workings of the universe whilst I try and design mechanical devices at my desk in work, whenever I come to an opinion of these ponderings, I write the conclusion or resultant question down as a sort of reminder of what I was thinking about.

A few weeks ago I wrote these two:
Can the mind conjure up an image of something it has no memory of? &
Does the mind record every detail of everything we experience?

It would seem to me, that the answer to second question is yes, or at least in part based on my own experiences.

I think the first question could open a can of worms and a massive determinism/free will debate.

I’ve always been male in my dreams, even before I started transitioning. It’s one of the things that convinced me that I should have been born a boy. My psych told me that it’s fairly common amongst trans people.

Yes I am almost always myself.