Thread: Dream....sleep...

Welcome to Dreamviews!

Oversleeping can actually make you feel tired. Try to get 8hrs of sleep and see how it goes. If you have any lucid dreaming or dreaming questions, please ask. Happy dreams

Oversleeping indeed can be a problem. Also if you are dreaming almost all night long, it is possible that you might be getting too much REM sleep and not enough of the more restful NREM sleep (during which we have fewer dreams). I recently read that when we have depression for example the amount of time spent in non-productive dreams in REM is increased, and depressed people actually have a larger percentage of dream time as compared to restful deep sleep. As someone who suffers from depression myself, that makes sense to me. When I am depressed, I obsess with issues and they spin out of control, and I am like a stuck record focusing on an issue over and over unable to resolve it, and blowing some issues out of proportion.

If this is like your issue as well, since you mention stress, even if you do not have depression I think stress is kind of like that too, anyway what is the solution? From what the article said and from my own experience as well, the solution needs to be in waking life and dream life will follow. One needs to refocus, find a balance, start thinking of less stressful stuff, reprioritizing. Another idea is if the stress or depression or issues are due to an unhealthy focus on issues, at times it is due to over analyzing things, spending too much time focused on the issues - I alas tend to do that a lot. The solution can involve for example music and TV and books and games and chatting with friends, basically occupying one's mind with other stuff so it has less time to obsess with issues. Exercise also helps a lot.

However, all that said: it is normal to dream every day, and it can even be normal to remember a lot of dreams every night (a lot of us are trying hard to achieve that!), and it can be very rewarding to have such great recall and have lucid dreams (during which one is aware one is dreaming). When I started reading your post I thought, that's normal and no problem, until I got to the waking up stressed - that is not normal, and an issue to be corrected. I wish you all the best in overcoming your stress.

Well , Thanks JoannaB. i guess ill need to keep myself engaged in works. And thank you your help. ur explanations are gonna help me a lot. There is another thing i wanna know. I dream even if i am sleeping for an hour. i can realize tht whn i start sleeping i dream. is that ok ? sleeping during nights and dreams are all ok , but normally sleeping for an hour during the day time and still dreaming is ok ? i dont get a deep sleep at all.

Gab ,
I dream daily so there is no question of having any lucid dreams. i can daily post my dreams. i can remember my dreams almost everyday.

Originally Posted by vignesh2893

Well , Thanks JoannaB. i guess ill need to keep myself engaged in works. And thank you your help. ur explanations are gonna help me a lot. There is another thing i wanna know. I dream even if i am sleeping for an hour. i can realize tht whn i start sleeping i dream. is that ok ? sleeping during nights and dreams are all ok , but normally sleeping for an hour during the day time and still dreaming is ok ? i dont get a deep sleep at all.

It is normal to have dreams even during short naps during the day, so that is not an issue.

If you really have no deep sleep or anyway too little deep sleep, that would be an issue. One way that you can try to tell is to try to estimate how much dream time you remember versus how much time you actually slept. However, even that method may not accurately show whether you are not getting any deep sleep because it is possible to have dreams which we perceive as lasting much longer than they actually did - the extreme scenario is people who perceive that an entire lifetime has passed in a dream. However, that is rare, and for most dreams perceived time passed is close to actual time passed. Usually people have a larger proportion of deep sleep earlier in the night than later toward morning after they have been asleep many hours.

However, there are some dreams that can happen during NREM. For example, I used to remember conceptual dreams, which were not visual and no action, but just brief thoughts, and from what I read that can occur during NREM sleep. While most people forget everything that happens during deep sleep and are more likely to just remember REM dreams, Tibetan monks for example through yogas of dream and sleep work on retaining awareness throughout the night, so that is possible.

Day naps actually are more likely to be a larger percentage of REM and it starts almost right away, so they are good for dreams. Sometimes I have remembered dreams even when I napped for just a few minutes. Are you saying though that you take naps in addition to sleeping close to 10 hours at night? That is too much unless you are ill - sometimes when I have the flu I will do that, but not on a routine basis.

Most accurate way to determine whether you have any issue with not enough deep sleep is to seek medical help. You might want to find out whether there are any facilities for sleep studies in your area. During a sleep study you can go to sleep in a lab setting, and they can monitor your brain activity with an EEG and also monitor your breathing. Btw, sleep apnea which causes problems with breathing at night is also a reason to not get enough rest because people who cannot breathe well at night do not get enough restful sleep and then seem to need to sleep much longer, so that may be something your doctor could check for you. You might want to start by going to just a regular doctor for general advice, but consider a sleep study to see if observing you sleep would shed any light on your issue.

Edit: Just in case my comments made you think otherwise because I noticed I once referred to in depression people spending more time in "nonproductive dream te in REM", that does not mean that all REM sleep is non-productive - quite the contrary: REM sleep with dreams is essential, and everybody does dream every night and that is normal and good, and all of us dream several dreams every night, but most people forget their dreams. Remembering dreams is good too though, and actually better than forgetting them, and this does not make one more tired. However, most dreams are productive dreams if one is healthy: these are dreams that help us mentally achieve a better balance, help us resolve issues in our lives, help us put things in perspective and draw innovative new connections between different thoughts. In the article I read, they said that usually part of dream goal is to clear one's mind to let go of issues or resolve them, but a depressed person will overanalyze issues both when awake and when asleep, and focus too much on them, and not let go. Sleep and dreams should not add to stress - that is non-productive dreaming, sleep should help one rest and dreams should help reduce issues not compound them. However, if one has too many issues in waking life, then dreams may start becoming unhelpful in adding to stress even more, and as I said, the recommendation is to resolve the waking life issues to reduce stress both while waking and sleeping.

Thanks a lot Joanna. I look to it. I dont have any medical issues or problems. Probably because of depression. Your views and comments are very useful. Thanks a Lot..!!!!!

I have just overcome depression again and this time it took only about two weeks from the moment I became aware that I was depressed (which of course was much later than the depression actually started). I think I got a tool kit together now that works for me, but if you don't have one yet, i recommend putting one together that suits you. Here are some anti-depression tools in my tool kit: music - both listening to it and singing uplifing songs while memorizing the lyrics, reading nonfiction, exercise, walks, meditation attempts, walking outside without my glasses on (I am very short sighted so this is a challenge), reviewing my day and thoughts and becoming more aware on a meta level, facing the issues more straightforwardly instead of overanalyzing them, baby step improvements, doing more chores at home - the kind that bring a sense of ackomplishment and are easy to do. I may have a few other tools in this toolkit of mine as well that I am forgetting to list here, and my tool kit may not work for you, but I suggest a toolkit approach to depression fighting.