Thread: People in your dream?

Hi, welcome to Dreamviews!

People in dreams, I've noticed, tend to be more realistic and not so dream-like. You can reach out and touch them and they'll feel the same way, and they'll usually have the same voices and speech patterns. I've never experienced a disfigured person in my dreams, not even strangers.

Most people in my dreams are those I've seen before, but there are strangers. I most often see my family and friends, and every once in a while a character from a novel or film (I'm a movie critic).

In dreams, anything is possible. Your mind can make anything happen. My method of summoning a person is to expect them to be behind you (not directly behind if that would creep you out), and then you turn around, fully knowing they'll be there. Dreams become more familiar once you spend some time in them, so it's normal to be a little scared.

If you're in a lucid dream and you're scared of someone because they're stalking or threatening you, you can use the same "expectations" rule and fully expect them to suddenly stop and say, "sorry". The dream will automatically interpret this as the person backing off, so once you turn around and back again, they might be walking away or even have vanished. If this doesn't work, you can always say something like "if you don't stop, you'll never be allowed in my dreams again" with conviction and they'll react.

I had one of my most disturbing dreams tonight and I hit Google the moment I woke up. I am 30 years old but from my earliest memories of dreams i have never met anyone familiar in my dreams. It has always been strangers, people whom I have never met. I can justify the people as being peripheral and all that but I cannot justify the places I am at. I have never been to the places I see in my dreams but while in my dream i know very well where I am at and the general lay of the land. So yesterday night I was at one of those side streets which have a one or two story shops. I remember walking in and going to the fridge in the shop and pick up some sausages. I remember paying the bill and walking out. I remember going up two floors in a rickety lift, dropping my groceries in my room and walking out. I remember going down the same lift and since its rickety promise myself to use the stairs next time around. For some reason there is this plastic packet of things that I have to pick up from downstairs and when i get to the packet i see a comatose old lady lying near it. At first i think she is dead and am scared to touch the bag, as someone might think I am stealing from the dead but thankfully the lady wakes up and shuffles away. Then i remember a young woman walk up to me and ask me to not leave my things lying around. I fumble an apology and carry the packet. I walk a couple shops down and turn into a shop under renovation. The owner obviously recognizes me and sarcastically comments that next time he should put a notice for employees not to do stupid things. Instead of confronting him i mumble an apology but the owner walks away dismissively before I can finish. The next thing i remember is walking down an old neighborhood where an old man is trying to cook eggs in front of a shack from where a cop is trying to evict him. I know (as the person in the dream) that this is a futile exercise as the old man knows he does not own the shack and has not paid for it, but will come back to the same place after the cop leaves because that's all he has as home.

All this happens in an unknown city in India. I have no idea who I am in my dreams, but I am never myself. Its like i am in the middle of an act and i am playing out a role, i know all the dialogues and the lay of the land but always wake up with "what was that all about?" I have been to places in my dreams that I don't recognize. I have spoken with people i don't know in real life and said things that seem to be the right answers in my dreams but i don't know how or why i make them up in my dreams. I once was in a group of college youngsters (whom i don't know) talking about someone (i don't know in real life) when one of the girls suddenly collapses on the floor. I wake up with a start because I am convinced that the girl has died. At other times I have seen myself walk down streets and ask directions for places i know about, but they are like thousands of miles away from where i live.

Am I depressive? Do i need help?

You bring up a good point about people in your dreams. Obviously not everyone in your dreams is someone you know in life, and no one really knows if all of strangers in your dreams are people you've met before or will even meet in the future. I think that's impossible for us to know for sure.

One thing I can tell you is that I usually give credence to certain people in my dreams. For some reason if I see my sister or my friend in a dream it's more than likely that the dream I am having will be a dream premonitions. Sometimes these dreams are lucid, sometimes they are not. So I do pay attention the people in my dreams as some people I know in real life have come to signify something in my dream, and therefore I am able to know more about what the dream is about, and if it is a lucid dream, then I know more on what direction I should take the dream. For me lucid dreaming is about finding answers or something unique that I can use in real life.

Hope this helps.

Originally Posted by shagnikbangali

Am I depressive? Do i need help?

No one here can responsibly answer that, but I can say that you're not alone. Check out my aging thread, Finding Yourself In Other People's Dreams for more chat on this strange subject...

Originally Posted by helloolleh

Hi I'm new to this forum and I have few questions on LD.
1. Are people in your dream vivid, even strangers? Are they disformed?
2. Is it true that people in your dream are people who you have met or seen before?
3. How hard is it to imagine things and making it pop up, because when I'm scared, I start to imagine ghost and I don't want that to happen.
Thanks! Looking forward for my first LD!

1. Usually vivid, almost always strangers, rarely disformed, though occasionally underconstructed (i.e., not enough color, hands aren't perfect, bodies slightly out of proportion).

2. It's given to be true, but my own experience makes me question accepted psychology.

3. It's stupid easy, once you're truly lucid, to imagine things and make them pop up. The fun part of lucidity is that when you imagine that ghost and it pops up (which can happen, expectations are a tw0-edged sword), you can easily and confidently make it go away, or make it your friend, or whatever else you want, all without fear and with complete confidence that that ghost is in your control.

Good luck on having that first LD...

Usually when I try too hard to do something, lets say I think ''I want to meet my brother now, it better be him and nobody else'' It would be someone else.

It needs to be simple without any second thoughts, its inevitable that you will have second thoughts.