Dreams: Do You Remember Them When You Wake Up?

I often have vivid dreams. They tend to be triggered by stressful situations I'm dealing with. I used to sleep walk every now and then, started when I was a child. Don't know if I still do it because my wife goes to sleep before me usually and is a deep sleeper. She used to talk in her sleep, mostly nonsensical.

I remember as a kid waking up with my dad holding me down shaking me. Said I went into the living room where my parents were and just started screaming. They would usually tell me I'm sleep walking and to go back to bed, and I usually would. This time they said he practically had to wrestle me into bed.

Usually I would just get the story of what happened the next day which was always entertaining. One of the last times I remember was in my 20's (51 now):
I was working as an EMT which did bring on a bit of PTSD because we worked 24 hour shifts. I would get anxiety about the phone ringing. One time I woke up in the morning in my full uniform, steel toe boots, etc. My partner was laughing when I woke up puzzled.

He said I got up around 3AM, turned on the light, and started getting dressed. Since he didn't hear the phone ring, asked me if we had a call. I didn't answer him, just continued getting dressed. He then yelled at me: DO WE HAVE A CALL OR NOT? I looked at him confused and said no. So he yelled at me to turn off the light. He said I turned off the light and went back to sleep in my uniform.

Another time when I was playing trumpet in band as a kid, I started playing in the middle of the night. Dad chewed me out and I went back to bed. No recollection.

The strangest memory I have was when I was napping before dinner, early teen years. My dad went into my room to get something out of my closet. Said my dog had walked up and barked in my face and I sat up. The only thing I remember is walking into the kitchen and yelling at my mom. I said, "How would you feel if you had 3 teams and only two could play!" She told me I'm sleep walking again. I went into the living room and sat down, and remembered saying it, remembered it making sense at the time, and had no idea why I said it.

Other similar stories, but those are the ones that stand out. No sleep walking that I know about recently. Though if something is bothering me, I will usually wake up around 2 - 4AM with an anxiety attack and have trouble getting back to sleep. So those incidents might have triggered sleep walking when I was younger. Now that I have trouble staying asleep, they just trigger anxiety.

I have had many vivid dreams where I realize it's a dream and change what's happening. Usually wake up at that point. I used to have dreams about my ex-wife chasing after me with weapons. Glad I haven't had that one in a while.

I have 3 sons. My 12yo sometimes has night terrors where he starts screaming. Not as much in the last few years, but it used to be more of a problem. Hard to get him to snap out of it.
 
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Interesting topic. Reminds of when a bunch of people recently realized not everyone has a constant inner monologue.

I tend to remember dreams when I wake up but forget them completely by the end of the day. My college roommate used to write them down every morning to remember them. Not something I cared to keep track of.

I also don't get nightmares anymore. However, I do get dreams that give me heavy anxiety when I wake up. The majority of those involve being back in high school or college, showing up to a class and their being a test I haven't prepared for or me knowing I need to get to a class but somehow ended up further and further away.

I've noticed some foods sometimes affect how wild a dream will get. Lucid dreaming always sounded cool but I dont have the attention span to figure that out.
 
Interesting topic. Reminds of when a bunch of people recently realized not everyone has a constant inner monologue.

I tend to remember dreams when I wake up but forget them completely by the end of the day. My college roommate used to write them down every morning to remember them. Not something I cared to keep track of.

I also don't get nightmares anymore. However, I do get dreams that give me heavy anxiety when I wake up. The majority of those involve being back in high school or college, showing up to a class and their being a test I haven't prepared for or me knowing I need to get to a class but somehow ended up further and further away.

I've noticed some foods sometimes affect how wild a dream will get. Lucid dreaming always sounded cool but I dont have the attention span to figure that out.

I have a dream fairly often that I cannot find my classes in high school. Dunno what's up about that. I had a brother-in-law whose chili would give everyone vivid dreams - I always said he put peyote in his recipe.
 
However, I do get dreams that give me heavy anxiety when I wake up. The majority of those involve being back in high school or college, showing up to a class and their being a test I haven't prepared for or me knowing I need to get to a class but somehow ended up further and further away.

I've noticed some foods sometimes affect how wild a dream will get. Lucid dreaming always sounded cool but I dont have the attention span to figure that out.

That's similar to another one I have every few months even being out of college for close to 2 decades. I realize, usually right after the withdrawal deadline, that I was enrolled in one or more classes that I had just forgotten to go to and now had no mathematical possibility of passing the course. It's particularly bothersome because though I work for a company, I work remote and I'm kindof that skunk works guy that does stuff on my own with projects that take 6+ months to execute without any formalized check points. So while I'm not generally forgetful enough to just forget I have a project for half a year, my work environment is such that if it did happen, there's very little mechanism to catch me before it's too late.
 
I never remember my standard dreams, but when I experience my out-of-body meditation related experience, those are burned into my memory forever.
 
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One general "type" of dream that I have had off and on is one where I'm guilt-ridden because I had killed someone. I know it's just a matter of time before I'm found out, and I'm dealing with not only all kinds of guilt over what I've done, but also with an obscene amount of paranoia, not being able to trust anyone for fear that they are just waiting to expose my crime. When I awaken, it always takes me a few minutes to remember that I have not, in fact, killed anyone, and that it was nothing more than a bad dream.
 
Only been out of school for 6 years now so I guess the anxiety from that is still lingering. Sometimes just wish I had the nightmares.

I never have dreams where I can harm anyone else even if I want to.

Some weirder ones are when I randomly transition from viewing the dreams through my eyes in my own body vs being out of body but watching someone else, never myself.
 
I've been falling asleep and heard my name called, or someone talking, as plain as day.

I hate those, because I stay up listening to every noise in the house for at least an hour.
 
Sounds crazy, I know. But psilocybin and the right setting and all I can say is that you’ll go places that are beyond your wildest imagination!

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I never have dreams where I can harm anyone else even if I want to.

What I meant was that in my dreams, I had apparently killed someone, like years ago, and that I drowning in both guilt and paranoia. I've never had a dream where the act of violence was visualized, or made apparent. There was only the "awareness" that something had happened. Still, it's an unnerving thing to awaken after such a dream, and for the briefest moment, question reality.
 
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What I meant was that in my dreams, I had apparently killed someone, like years ago, and that I drowning in both guilt and paranoia. I've never had a dream where the act of violence was visualized, or made apparent. There was only the "awareness" that something had happened. Still, it's an unnerving thing to awaken after such a dream, and for the briefest moment, question reality.

I once had a dream where Squatch killed me - but it was OK because he really felt guilty about it…

🙂