Theory...

I have a theory on dreaming. I've been studying my dreams, and how they work. Possibly the same with most people. After a few days, I've realized something. I think you only dream about what you see in the day or night before sleep, but only if you think nothing of it. If you are watching a movie and you think "I want to have a dream about this movie." more than likely you won't because you thought of dreaming. But, if you are watching a movie and you don't think of dreaming, you have a pretty good chance at dreaming about it. Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but it just might be. I don't know if dreams work differently for different people, maybe they do, maybe they don't. But I think this is a good theory I have.


Does anybody have the same thoughts on this? Please post a comment or opinion. :)

Well, certain people on this forum choose what they want to dream about on a regular basis. They call it dream incubation.

But beyond that, I don't see why simply wanting to dream about something would prevent you from dreaming about it. If anything, I would think that would give you a higher chance of dreaming about it. And also, how would this theory explain the recurring dreams that some people have? No doubt these people associate those memories with dreams, yet they still continue to dream about them, perhaps every night in some cases.

I do believe it's true that we often tend to dream about things that we've seen or experienced recently. However, I don't believe that thinking about dreaming while seeing or experiencing these things will prevent us from dreaming about them.

I agree with you on both counts Dream Child. Most of my dreams are in some way related to random events of the past few days. When I first realized that a few years ago, I started making predictions like "I will dream about aliens tonight because I just watched Alien. These predictions were always wrong, so I reached the same conclusion that you did. For me, thinking that I will dream about an event or a topic means that I almost certainly will not dream about it. The only exceptions to this rule are when some event so hugely important happens that I think of nothing else all day. An example of this: for the past two presidential elections I have gone to bed not knowing for sure who won, but knowing that I will have horrible nightmares all night about it. But anyway, what you were saying always holds true for me with regards to minor events.

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Well, certain people on this forum choose what they want to dream about on a regular basis. They call it dream incubation.

But beyond that, I don't see why simply wanting to dream about something would prevent you from dreaming about it. If anything, I would think that would give you a higher chance of dreaming about it. And also, how would this theory explain the recurring dreams that some people have? No doubt these people associate those memories with dreams, yet they still continue to dream about them, perhaps every night in some cases.

I do believe it's true that we often tend to dream about things that we've seen or experienced recently. However, I don't believe that thinking about dreaming while seeing or experiencing these things will prevent us from dreaming about them.[/b]

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Good point. I think what I am trying to say though is, maybe when you want to dream of something and you get stressed out about it, you have less of a chance to dream about it.


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I agree with you on both counts Dream Child. Most of my dreams are in some way related to random events of the past few days. When I first realized that a few years ago, I started making predictions like "I will dream about aliens tonight because I just watched Alien. These predictions were always wrong, so I reached the same conclusion that you did. For me, thinking that I will dream about an event or a topic means that I almost certainly will not dream about it. The only exceptions to this rule are when some event so hugely important happens that I think of nothing else all day. An example of this: for the past two presidential elections I have gone to bed not knowing for sure who won, but knowing that I will have horrible nightmares all night about it. But anyway, what you were saying always holds true for me with regards to minor events.

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Sometimes I have a really strong feeling like "I KNOW I am going to have a Freddy Dream tonight." If my feeling is strong enough, then I actually do have a that dream. But when I watch a movie and I'm like "This is gonna give me nightmares." I don't remember my dreams. Whenever I think of dreaming, recently, I haven't remembered my dreams. It's weird.