Ricardo

Hi. My first time on and I have two questions.
Firstly if you are having a dream when you are experiencing tension and stress does that affect you in the way that it would do if you were awake?
Secondly I am regularly having dreams when I connect those in it with previous dreams. That is I recognise my dream as a "serial" say at part 4 and I can whilst asleep remember the earlier "episodes" 1 ,2 and three. However when I awake I can no longer recall those earlier parts only the most recent one. Last night I pictured two people who I had met whilst dreaming of a holiday that I had never actually taken. I could remember nothing of what happened ,only that I had met them on holiday somewhere. On awaking and even now some 8 hours later I can still remember both persons vividly despite never having seen them before. Therefore am I recalling old dreams that were never made known to me at the time?
Has anyone else experienced this ?

I do not know how much effect stress in dreams has on one's waking body in terms of blood pressure etc. However, emotionally/mentally you are more likely to be in a bad mood and feel stressed if you have stressful dreams, and if you have a stressful waking life you are more likely to have stressful dreams as well. It's all related mentally/emotionally because it's all happening in your mind.

Memory in dreams is a bit weird: it may be possible to recall something correctly in a dream that one does not recall in waking life - a subconscious suppressed memory that is not available to conscious waking self for example.

However, much more likely is the false memory in dreams scenario: that happens all the time in dreams, well often anyway. For example, in a recent dream I could not find a hotel I was staying at even though I "remembered" it in the dream, and it should have been right there, but actually in waking life I had never seen such a hotel. In another dream I remembered my mother having kidnapped a child who was my adoptive brother, and that memory was so vivid while I was asleep. Upon waking up I realized that my mother had never kidnapped anyone, I do not have a brother adoptive or otherwise, and the boy in my dream is actually my son in waking life. That was some false memory!

Oh, and dream series do happen a lot. I often see several of my dreams connected in some way in theme. And it is possible to forget some dreams and then remember them again and then forget again. So that is also a possibility, as is the false memory explanation alternative.