Do you think that a dream can change your personality?

A couple nights ago I had a dream that I found very empowering:
I dreamed that I was back in junior high school as a 14-year-old (about 18 years ago) and hung out with my school friends during recess, and we acted like guys that age typically do - very casual and talkative, slightly sarcastic towards each other in a playful way and lots of spontaneous behaviour (for example, I remember yelling "Yes! I am invincible!" whenever I was happy about something that I had done back then, just because I was a huge fan of the movie "GoldenEye").
And this dream was very significant because it made me "reconnect" with my old self, so that I sort of got a new feel for my old personality.
This has been very hard for me to do ever since I quit junior high school since I lost contact with a lot of people from back then, and at my current university I didn't really know anyone in the beginning and was apparently too slow to make contact with my classmates, and even though they approached me several times I didn't really feel comfortable with it and became kind of a loner.
But now, after I had this dream, I have actually noticed that I have started acting a lot more bold around people.
Instead of avoiding eye contact and saying some careful "...hi" to the classmates that I meet, I now instead look them directly in their eyes and go "hello!", and I also feel that I smile a lot more often and gaze forward instead of slightly down.
The best thing about all of this is that I actually notice that other people at my campus have started to act more comfortable around me as well, which gives me even more confidence and kind of creates a positive snowball effect.

Have you ever heard of anything like this before?
I really did feel like I started to change right after I had had this dream.

My experience of the effect you describe involves a different cause than the one you describe.

In my case, the effect you describe came to me at a phase of good sleep and a (general!) understanding of how people behave at a basic level (in regards to push/pull, conceding points, etc). To me, good sleep also resulted in greater confidence which generally allowed me to retain that state of personality, so to speak. I have since lost that good sleep and state of confidence, but I have retained my experience of understanding how interactions worked differently during that period, which still has an influence on how I behave now, though not at all as much as back then.

Perhaps it's not of particular relevance, but was your dream vivid or anything, I wonder? I'm assuming it was a non-lucid dream, too.

Why not?? If events in your life can alter your personality why wouldn't events during the sleeping hours have similar potential??

Yes, totally. Just as waking experiences can affect your personality. Dreams can too. However, we aren't fully conscious in most dreams so actualization might get a bit fragmented.

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Originally Posted by lucidbunnie

Yes, totally. Just as waking experiences can affect your personality. Dreams can too. However, we aren't fully conscious in most dreams so actualization might get a bit fragmented.

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Yes and No. I think only dreams with strong emotions can do it. It's all about hormones, that can affect your brain chemicals and make you act on them.