How detailed are you dreams?

Almost too vivid sometimes. I often try to go back to sleep so they can continue…

I can rarely remember my dreams at all. I’ve always been jealous of a friend who has incredibly vivid, imaginative dreams.

My dreams are usually so detailed that it’s impossible to tell someone about them. But my worry is why I feel certain things in my dream. For example… I’m sure most of us have had dreams with weird noises in them only to find out it was because your alarm clock was ringing and it was in your dream. But what about times in a dream when, say, I can’t breathe? Did I stop breathing in real life? Very frightening.

@trudacia, I am lucky I guess. I can wake up, let the dogs outside, lie back down and pick up where I was. Sometimes I want to sleep all day to finish.

stevenb, I wish I could do that!! I love to dream. Perhaps this says something about my life… Kidding, dreams are great but I doubt I’d actually want most of them to be reality.

But that is a true gift my friend.

My dreams are often extremely vivid. I never even remember the ones that aren’t. For example, In third grade when I was reading the third Harry Potter book [HP and the Prizoners of Azkaban] I had a nightmare about a dementor. They looked just like the dementors in the movie, though the movie hadn’t even come out yet. I could feel the wind and the sucking, and the tattered cloak against my legs. I could feel the hard, rough, cold cement that I was laying on, and I could hear a storm brewing. I could even feel the wetness of the air. It was crazy. [I know, I know…but hey, I was eight!! It was still an amazingly vivid nightmare…]

Or a curse! I need to get up some mornings and I just keeeeeep dreaming instead!

I can have very vivid dreams. Recently, I had one that had feelings of motion, colors, sounds, much as you describe. It seemed very lengthy too in that there was a lot of detailed content.

I have had some intense dreams. Most of my realistic dreams are of me getting killed or having supernatural ablities. The most vivid was in the 1940’s as a mobster getting gun down(I will never forget that dream). I could smell the dust and mold from the bricks in the alley way, and hear water going down the drains from rain, running with an acute sense of fear like something horrible was about to happen to me. I was shot to death by a group of guys that chased me into an alley with their old Thompsons(with the 50 bullet drums on them). I remember after I got shot I was lying there with a shirt-tie combo, and I was just starring at my body, mangled with bullets. I could actually feel the holes in my chest and stomach. There was blood everywhere, mainly on my hands and on the ground trailing from me. And as real as the humidity in the air, I really thought I was quite literally taking my last couple of breaths for the rest of life. When I woke up I was completly covered in sweat, so was the queen size matress, sheets, and the pillow I was lying on. I’m not the paranoid type, or even the fearful. I really don’t know where that dream came from, but I had it.

Sorry its such relished response.

Very! If I remember my dreams, I remember colours, scenes, sounds, words being said, music being played, clothes the people wear…..yes, very detailed – when I remember them

Yes, my dreams are in vivid, living color. I can feel the breeze, feel the weeds slapping against my ankles as I walk by a river. I remember floating down a river in a boat, and dragging my fingers through the water as we went. Something even weirder-I used to faint easily as a teen. I remember waking up after fainting, and thinking that everything that had happened that day up to that point was a dream. I was expecting to open my eyes and be in my bed. What a weird feeling to wake up and still be in your dream! After that experience, I am not altogether certain that dreams are fake. I think on some level you really are there!

I am glad that I’m not the only one having vivid dreams. I am a big fan of flying dreams. But, where do I get such vivid, detailed images of rooftops and landscapes seen from 500 ft up?

@ steelmarket, google earth! LOL

I find that if I stop to remember my dreams, or recount them as soon as I awaken, then I am more likely to remember more detail. That is the value of a dream journal. Whether you want to remember your dreams for their psychological meaning, psychic meaning, or anything else, if you keep a dream journal, you can write down details when you wake up, and also can notice patterns in types of dreams or dream subject.

I used to have flying dreams as a kid and seeing the rooftops, etc., and that was before google earth, Also, I had never flown in a plane. That is weird.

I’ve had dreams that have been so realistic and detailed that I have woken up feeling as though I haven’t slept at all and I was actually engaging in whatever story or activity was going on in my dream.

I’ve managed to take advantage of the fact that my dreams are incredibly vivid, as well as lucid, detailed, and recurring: I managed to map out the locations of my dreams based on the positions of recurring landmarks (which haven’t changed relative to each other in my dreamscape). The result has been very interesting.

My dreams are extremely vivid, and i love every minute of them, but when i wake up slowly, i often forget them, its a lot better to wake up really fast, then my brain is still processing things that went on in the dream, so yeah, my dreams are pretty cool and descriptive

I have dreams so real that sometimes when I wake up, I feel like I’m being ripped away from another life and back into this one. If I am startled awake, I remember the dream, as CsC said. My most frustrating dreams are when I spend hours shopping, picking out clothes, finding the right size in the right color, and then WAKE UP and don’t get to take my purchases with me. BUMMER! Also, once when I was pregnant, I dreamt of going to a church supper. Again I spent a lot of time going down the tables and filling my plate, picking out my salads, desserts, etc. and then when my plate was full and I was ready to go eat, I woke up! Grrrrrr!!!

My dreams are sometimes extremely detailed, sometimes not so much. I find that if I go through the details in my mind shortly after I wake up, I can sometimes recall more details that I did not remember at first.

I held a dream diary for a while but stopped because of the insane amount of ridiculous storyline I was gathering up. I had a dream last night about this girl I used to know and I had changed and I wanted to impress her so I went to her birthday party but she was at my birthday party??? Apparently I remembered we have the same birthday. The dream kept jumping back and forth from “damn she’s hot” to “so far away” with an occaisonal “how am I even seeing her?”. And then I woke up.

There isn’t a lot of fine detail in my dreams but they can be very vivid, more vivid than real life in fact. For example I dreamed I was climbing a large sand dune with the blue waters of a bay spread out to my left. The colours in the dream were intense as was the feeling of warmth in the air and the powerful sense of being somewhere different and remote. I don’t remember being aware of fine detail in my surroundings.

When I describe a dream the words come easily and with little effort as if it is already mapped out as a kind of story in my mind. Real life, or something deliberately imagined is a lot harder for me to describe.

The weird ones are very detailed, the ones I actually want to remember I can never remember.

Some of mine so detailed that I’m not sure whether they actually were dreams. There are still a few people and incidents in my life I’m not sure I dreamed or actually remember.

My dreams can be very detailed but there is usually an strong emotion that colours them.
I have dreamt music that I remember on waking.
I once dreamt I was singing ‘Cloudbusting with Kate Bush in a video and that felt exhilarating but also felt like crying.
I had a very vivid dream of being a Native American entering a silent woodland glade covered in great drifts of snow. I walked over to the deepest drift and started digging and under my hands a great white bear burst upward and a voice in my head said, “You shall be called Light Upon Snow.” and it felt as if my heart was breaking.
I know your brain is just sorting through things but it’s interesting that we get a proper story when you think about it and not just a flicking through of images and feelings.
When I was an adolescent I used to occasionally have a dream of being awake and someone/something getting into bed behind me. It’s arms would go around my waist and it’s face would be in my neck. The wasn’t a nice dream because I always could’t wake up for a while and I was frightened and revolted, This thinking your awake but really being asleep I think is the worst kind of dream I think. Perhaps it’s when your asleep but not really tired. I once had a dream where I was walking down the stairs and opening the door at the bottom that led to the kitchen but found myself in bed again and I did this several times before I woke.
I do have happy dreams too. Fantastical flying dreams and erotic dreams but they haven’t stayed with me the way the frightening and sad ones have.