Dream quality expressed in one word or a symbol for dream journal purposes

Ev · 12-22-2011 06:04 AM

Hi,

I'm trying to understand if a dream and it's quality may be represented by a single word or a symbol, to help with easy dream journaling on a mobile phone.

Some examples:
A dream of calm exploration - flashlight
A dream of confusion and unrelated episodes - shattered mirror
A dream of passionate love - the love symbol
A dream of action and fighting - ?
A dream of anxiety and fleeing - ?
A dark, creepy dream with black and themes of decay may use a zombie symbol.

I think if a certain set of hieroglyphs can be developed, examining dream journals would be a lot simpler. I feel like a lot of my dreams have a lot of imagery, but the underlying quality of some dreams are similar. When thinking about one kind of a dream, it is easier to recall similar dreams.

I expect that if dreams like that are plotted as a history, they would be easier to understand.

What do you guys think?

**Kitties** · 12-22-2011 07:22 AM

I like the idea, but it seems to me you'd need to make too many symbols to represent specific kinds like that. Symbols could be used for broader themes like happy, sad, love and so on, maybe? Single words would work though - I tend to tag my DJ entries with words like, say, journey, mission, adventure, battle, or scary, creepy, freaky, etc. of which many sound very similar, but each represents a specific overall feeling to me. Looking at it that way, you can definitely see recurring qualities. It would be interesting to see a history of those integrated into a dream journal, though it would be best once you had a lot of entries in there.

Ev · 12-22-2011 05:26 PM

Originally Posted by Kitties

I like the idea, but it seems to me you'd need to make too many symbols to represent specific kinds like that. Symbols could be used for broader themes like happy, sad, love and so on, maybe? Single words would work though - I tend to tag my DJ entries with words like, say, journey, mission, adventure, battle, or scary, creepy, freaky, etc. of which many sound very similar, but each represents a specific overall feeling to me. Looking at it that way, you can definitely see recurring qualities. It would be interesting to see a history of those integrated into a dream journal, though it would be best once you had a lot of entries in there.

journey, mission, adventure, battle, or scary, creepy, freaky - these are exactly the kinds of words that I'm looking for. I also feel that there are certain qualities present within an overall dream fragment. Some of these qualities are so elusive that I can barely recall dreams like that at the baseline. Maybe tagging dreams with such symbols would shed some light on the sleep stage that they have occured in or how food/supplements affected dreaming.