by liberal japonicus
I was going through a backlog of links I had saved and finally got to listening this NPR Fresh Air interview about dreaming. I’ve had a small bit of success with lucid dreaming, but it has not been to the extent of being able to alter my dreams, I just realise I am asleep in my room and I can look around the room but am unable to move. While that doesn’t seem exciting, when I can do it, I feel that my sleep is much better and I feel much more relaxed when I wake up and perhaps others might discuss their own dreams here.
But the interview had this, which interested me.
in one condition, and in particular called REM behavior disorder, people really, they start acting out their dreams a lot. And this often occurs in men over 60. […] And it’s actually an indication of, it’s often – I mean, up to 90% of people who develop this sudden acting out of usually violent dreams, they might start punching or kicking while they’re asleep. And they dream about these aggressive or violent things. And it’s actually one of the earliest indications of someone developing neurodegeneration. So up to 90% of people who have REM behavior disorder, they will go on to develop some type of neurodegenerative disease – like Parkinson’s, I think, is the most common – within a decade of diagnosis. So it’s actually a really – it’s an early indicator that something, you know, some kind of neurodegenerative process has begun in the brain. And it’s resulting in this acting out of aggressive dreams, essentially.
This is really interesting, because I remember reading about awhile ago, how a some wives of NFL players said they would often get hit by their husbands while they were both sleeping. At the time, I wondered if it was just a cover story for some sort of domestic violence, but now, I wonder if that would be a symptom of CTE, perhaps happening at an age earlier than 60. Anyway, a thread about sleep and dreams.
I had a friend who, even as a young adult, would sometimes act out his dreams. Once, he tried to stuff his wife behind the headboard of the bed. A few years ago, in the late stages of Parkinson’s, he died after a fall.
i’ve had those kids of (RDB) dreams since my mid 30s.
Drs haven’t been interested.
Now that I have an older man’s prostate and bladder, I wake up once in the middle of the night because I have to pee. Sometimes I have trouble getting back to sleep after that, another common problem amongst the old. I have very vivid, complicated dreams, which are common side effects of the two long-term medications I take. I seem to dream more than I used to, but don’t have any of the symptoms (like waking up fatigued) that indicate excess dreaming. None of the acting-out behavior, the normal REM “paralysis” seems to be working just fine.
I’ve long been interested in what kind of nightmares people have — what makes you wake up huffing and puffing with the adrenaline pumping. The only ones that do that to me are dreams about vampires. For unknown reasons, while I know that witches and werewolves and such — everything except vampires — are just make-believe, part of me believes in vampires. I don’t know if the fear pre- or post-dates the time I finished reading Salem’s Lot in bed at 2:00 in the morning. I had to decide if I was going to walk across the room to turn the light off, knowing that I would have to walk back in the dark, or put my head under the pillow to sleep. I elected to put my head under the pillow.
None of the acting-out behavior, the normal REM “paralysis” seems to be working just fine.
A couple of times, I’ve woken and been completely paralyzed. But recovered in less than a minute.
I sometimes sleep with my eyes open and can see if there’s enough light, but don’t always know what I’m looking at until I wake up. I once dreamt of being chased by a helicopter during an afternoon nap and woke up to realize I was looking at the spinning ceiling fan.
I have been trapped asleep but unable to awake multiple times, starting at elementary school age. I have taught myself to wake myself up by moving one of my arms. It can be very difficult, frustrating, and frightening.
I quit teaching over twenty years ago, but I still have dreams related to my job. A recurrent dream concerns IEPs–the required paperwork for each student, typically about 20 pages. I did 30 to 40 a year and never was late.
My dream is that it’s May and I haven’t started. I make futile attempts to find the necessary records and forms but can’t. I seriously consider blowing the IEPs off and dumping the mess on other teachers. I’ve never done that in the dream because I always wake up first.
The other teaching dream involves being in the building on the first day, but I don’t know what subjects I will be teaching or where my room is and I have no teaching materials. I used to get frantically worried in the dream but one night I thought, “Fuck it. This isn’t my fault. I’m not going to feel bad. I am going to get mad instead.”
So now that dream has a different story arc.
I used to get frantically worried in the dream but one night I thought, “Fuck it. This isn’t my fault. I’m not going to feel bad. I am going to get mad instead.”
So now that dream has a different story arc.
I’m delighted by this!
5 mg of indica MJ at bedtime. sleep like a baby. or better than a baby, maybe.
even before they made MJ legal in MA, I slept pretty well. I enjoy my dreams, they’re often funny. And I’m often the butt of the joke.
I take it as a sign of sanity.
that said…
I had a friend, father of another friend of mine and my wife’s. He was a tank guy in WWII. Killed a number of people. Had a cool and complicated shotgun he took off a guy – a German civilian – who tried to shoot him, and who missed. But he – my friend – did not miss.
In his late 80’s and into his 90’s, he had really bad dreams where he relived his time in Europe. Unsettling, violent dreams, which would cause him to thrash and kick and punch in his sleep.
He went back to Europe in much later life to see if he could lay his ghosts to rest. He could not.
This was not the advent of mental or neurological decline, he was sharp as a tack right up until the end.
It was the legacy of what he was required to do as a young man.
Some folks think that sleep, and dreaming, is another bardo. Another form of consciousness, distinct from waking awareness. I don’t really know, one way of the other.
But my own thought is that sleep and dreaming is the time when your mind and consciousness tries to repair itself. Tries to come to terms with and resolve all the crap you don’t have the time or attention or capacity to resolve in your waking life.
It’s kind of a gift. Not always welcome, but essential nonetheless.
I try to remember and pay attention to dreams. I don’t think of them as some kind of messages from the great beyond. They just seem like messages from myself, to myself. Or maybe not even messages, just ruminations.
But helpful, and occasionally useful. Sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing. More or less your own mind, without the filters. But speaking in images, not prose.
I agree with Russel in that I think dreams are often more than just random. I think they often are a way of working out or working on issues that concern the dreamer.
That said, sometimes dreams are just fun.
As a kid, I was able to set my mind to dream of flying. I loved to fly! My dreams were very realistic, right to feeling chilly. Ot scary at all. I wish I could still make myself dream that way.
For a time after my father died I regularly had dreams where I would see him at a distance, sometimes across a large room full of people or on the street driving by. As I would get closer to him, his appearance would change and I’d realize it wasn’t him. I wouldn’t exactly remember in the dream that he had died, but it would make me feel extremely sad that it wasn’t my father that I had seen.