Thread: Are you always "you" in your dreams?

Lately I've had mostly dreams where I am not the "me" that I am in waking life. I'm not sure who I am, I told myself yesterday that the next time this happens I will look in a mirror to see who I am. Hopefully I'll remember this in my dream (lucid dreaming would help but I'm not very practiced at it yet). In these dreams, I never interact with people/places/things that I know and own in waking life. It's always places and people I've never seen in waking life, though I will recognize dream characters and places from the previous dreams I've had in that dream space. I will even remember events which happened previously in that same dream space, and react to them in a subsequent dream.

One dream space, for instance, is a futuristic looking mall and I'm always on the ground floor getting coffee. Haha. Typical of the waking life "me", but I don't feel like me. Does that make sense? There's another dream space where it's a city I've never seen, except in my dream, and I will interact with different areas of town in each subsequent dream. One time, I remembered in my dream that I was to meet someone later that day. Once I woke up, I realized that the memory of meeting up with someone was from a dream I had had MONTHS ago in waking life time.

This is really hard for me to articulate so I hope I've explained it well enough. Does anyone have experiences like this?

p.s. These aren't recurring dreams. The events are never the same. Sometimes similar, as in the one where I'm hanging at the coffee shop, but they are not the same dream by any means.

I am often not myself in dreams. At times I am a different age, different gender, different personality. I once dreamed I was a Sherlock Holmes like fellow, and another time I was a male youth who was a gang member (in real life I am female and middle aged and definitely not in a gang), another time I was a high priestess of sort, another time I was male and connected to some sort of electric web on what seemed like a different world, oh and one time I dreamed I was a giant goose sitting in the middle of a golf field.

oh and one time I dreamed I was a giant goose sitting in the middle of a golf field.

lol! Dreams are fun.

Do you re-visit unique dream spaces in a later dream, too?

Originally Posted by Hishtar

Do you re-visit unique dream spaces in a later dream, too?

No, I do not really revisit same dream space in other dreams, but I do have dream series. For example right now one of my ongoing dream series is about fight of young versus old or new vs old. I used to have a home search dream series, where I was looking for a new home in different dreams. I have not had really fully repetitive dreams since I was a teenager: as a teen I used to have skiing out of control dream that would repeat, and a hiking with a leg in a cast dream that would repeat. Nowadays it is more variations on a theme but I need to be looking for the theme to truly recognize it because the dreams are not repetitive enough. In the dreams where I have not been myself though, I don't think I have ever been the same non-self twice.

Me too. I'm not myself in some of them. In most recent non-lucids, i've been a woman (i'm a man, by the way) and a sports guy (i was this character from young boy to old man). Sometimes i'm other people that we know, like a famous actor.
In a recent lucid dream, i was an alien.

Thanks for reminding me. I just remembered that I was Wonder Woman in a dream a week ago. I remember not trying to give away my identity as I was fighting through an area congested with people. Everyone wanted to take the subway, but it was down, so people were just in my way. I kinda wanted to just run super fast and leave.

Lol. Curiously, i was a super hero too. I looked like Aeon Flux.

Nope. I've been men, women, animals, ghosts, etc. Most commonly, I'm myself, but I often take the perspective of other people in my dreams. I've even experienced dual perspectives; switching from person to person, within the same dream.

I've experienced dual perspectives also... it feels strange whizzing from one person to the next. Sometimes I am just a bodiless being hovering above the dream characters. I have been male and female, (I have also had sex in my dreams as both a male and a female - in waking life I am a female) and various ages, although I can't recall ever dreaming from a baby's perspective. Also, I have never been an animal. How did you know you were a goose, JoannaB? I wonder what that feels like.

I have never become lucid when I was 'not me', though, so I have not been able to consciously look and see my 'not me' selves in the mirror, although last night I was a woman in America and I had long brown wavy hair, and looked nothing like I do in waking life, although I can't remember how I knew what I looked like, as I didn't look in a mirror.

I also have places in my dreams (that are not present in waking life) that I re-visit in dreams months apart. There is a shopping mall, with one shop in particular that I seem to like to visit (although I hate both malls and shopping in waking life), although I am not my 'self' when I am in that dream, but someone else.

How do I know I was a goose? I remember a dream in which I rather thought I was a goose, one that was too fat to fly or even waddle. Of course, I could have been a fat duck that thought she was a goose. I have absolutely no expectation that this dream was in any way a realistic representation of what being a goose actually feels like. This is actually a dream that happened to me years ago, and I no longer remember details. However, I am rather sure that the reason why I had this dream was because my mind in a rather blunt way wanted to tell me that I was a "silly goose" metaphorically speaking.

Edit: Oh and the reason for the location was that most geese I had encountered by that point in my life were on golf fields. My dad used to live close to a golf field in California when I was a college student, and we would go for walks on the golf field, and the geese were mean. If you came close to them they would attack. Right now in the area were I live in the geese are much more civil I suspect though I have not tried coming close to them just in case. They are wild geese and tend to land close to roads and highways here seasonally.

Hishtar in my dreams i find myself in certain locations that i have never seen or been to in my waking life, there is a hotel , a small dingy house and in general a whole city that i keep finding myself in it in my dreams , the people that i interact with in these locations i don't know them in my waking life but in the dream life they don't seem like strangers, i have thought about this a lot and i really dont have an answer for it but i think maybe its about my past life or lives or maybe my subconscious gathers bits from all over and puts them together and creates these locations and people , i don't know but i wish one day i can find an explanation for it .

Can any of you who have 'dream locations' (i.e. locations that exist only in the DW [dream world], that you repeatedly visit) use these locations as cues to become lucid? If so, how? (do you do a RC every time you are in a WL [waking life] location that is parallel [e.g. coffee shop], or is just the presence of the location enough to trigger lucidity?)

p.s. the shopping centre I spoke if earlier, I dreamed about 2 nights ago, but that was the first time I dreamt about visiting a place outside the mall, only I can't remember if it was in the same dream or just a dream closely following that one. The place I visited was the house of the American woman with brown hair, and there was an earthquake. I met the woman's sister and neighbour. Strange dream, it felt quite real, but like I was watching it on a t.v. show through the woman,s eyes.

I am almost always myself or watching an avatar of myself from a third person view. Sometimes I will be someone else, but only on rare occasions. I'm not sure why this is.

Originally Posted by TranquilityTrip

I am almost always myself or watching an avatar of myself from a third person view. Sometimes I will be someone else, but only on rare occasions. I'm not sure why this is.

*facepalm* I would have a dream about being a female soldier a few days after I made this post

Originally Posted by TranquilityTrip

watching an avatar of myself from a third person view.

That happens to me often, if I'm not myself or in a different body (In one of my recent dreams, I was this female guardian fighting against five other people on a dragon (or horse, or both). But now that I think about it, I am in my own body most of the time, even though I usually find myself in ridiculous/impossible situations.

I have had many dreams where im totally different person. I think it comes from trying too much see from other person perspective. I have been totally drugaddict, killer not bad one, pudhist monk, fighter, and little me (I mean my personality is totally different) . Even in lucid dreams im not myself always its really annoying because i cant do what i wanted.

I've also experienced being other people and even animals in my dreams, but though these dreams have been very vivid at times I've never become lucid during one. These range from once dreaming that I was a fly to dreaming that I was myself in someone else's body, to dreaming of being another person altogether (for example: a guy I don't know in real life dying in a bathtub while all his family watch him, one of three sisters in a fairytale world, etc.)

I find it really interesting to dream about being someone or something else. It would surely be even more interesting to become lucid while this happens, but I've sadly always lacked the awareness.

I am usually myself in my dreams, but I've also been someone else, including an old man, a little girl, and even a bird once. It was fun being a bird.

Although I am usually myself, my personality does seem to vary often between dreams.

This is all good, except for one thing: you are always yourself in dreams. Yes, you may be experiencing things from the "eyes" of a DC who does not represent the physical "you" to which you are accustomed in waking life, but the mind doing the experience is still yours.

Don't get me wrong; you can certainly find yourself in a completely foreign dream body, or in a place where you're sure you've never been ... I even once started a thread called Finding Yourself in Other People's dreams.But strange as your body or setting might be, it's still "you" in there doing the experiencing. It has to be, or else you'd never know it happened. For that matter, you also would never realize that it wasn't you in the dream, since, as someone else, your alien identity would make sense. In other words, you had to be "You" in the dream, no matter who's DC body you were occupying, in order to know that you were in the wrong body or place.

I know I'm a little late here, and this may be just a technicality, but I thought it worth mentioning.

Originally Posted by Sageous

This is all good, except for one thing: you are always yourself in dreams. Yes, you may be experiencing things from the "eyes" of a DC who does not represent the physical "you" to which you are accustomed in waking life, but the mind doing the experience is still yours.

Don't get me wrong; you can certainly find yourself in a completely foreign dream body, or in a place where you're sure you've never been ... I even once started a thread called Finding Yourself in Other People's dreams.But strange as your body or setting might be, it's still "you" in there doing the experiencing. It has to be, or else you'd never know it happened. For that matter, you also would never realize that it wasn't you in the dream, since, as someone else, your alien identity would make sense. In other words, you had to be "You" in the dream, no matter who's DC body you were occupying, in order to know that you were in the wrong body or place.

I know I'm a little late here, and this may be just a technicality, but I thought it worth mentioning.

While correct, I think most (if not all of us) understand that this is the case. This thread is, for obvious reasons, more about the appearance of our avatars in our dreams than the mind controlling said avatars.

Bear with me as this may at first appear off topic but it isn't:

One of my most memorable lucid dreams 20 years ago, and I know it was one of the most memorable because I still remember it, the way I became lucid involved my going through my house in my dream, and suddenly remembering that my waking life home was nothing like that. Just a moment earlier I was in a non-lucid and convinced I was in my own home with fake dream memories assuring me that this was indeed home. And then suddenly, bam, I snapped out of it, and realized that this is not my home. It was a gorgeous mansion with a beautiful wooden staircase and tall stained glass windows.

While I have never become lucid while I was being someone else, but I would imagine that it could be done, and if it happened it would be much like the experience above. In a sense my dream above actually could be interpretted as becoming lucid while not myself if one said that my knowledge of my home is part of who I am. I am not one who lives in a gorgeous mansion, that's not who I am. However, once I became lucid in this dream I knew who I was and recognized the memory as a false memory. This was actually one of my highest awareness and highest control and highest vividness lucids ever (it ended with a wonderful flight into outer space). Could a person become lucid in a dream where they were not themselves and remained not themselves even after they became lucid? Obviously that would be a low awareness lucid, but I think it could take place. Has anyone ever experienced this? It might be kind of cool though it would be low awareness.

My perspective tends to switch alot in some non-lucids, mostly in ones where i am observing some storyline, at one point i may be observer, then main character of dream plot, then his enemy, then main character again, then observer now looking at everything as if it was video game, then someone else, haha, those dreams end up confusing to recall due to that sometimes.

^^ Like I said; just a technicality.

I figured the same as you stated but, given the tone of the OP and a few of the posts, it seemed a thing worth mentioning.

Actually, come to think of it, I rarely recall my appearance in a manner that's recognizable. I usually "know" it's me via intuition more than anything even when I'm "someone else."