do the dreams spill into your thoughts

[captainslog]

Sometimes my dreams are wide awake,or at least they seem to be.I never forget them,ever since I was a kid.41 now.I Don't know,just a point of view.Lucid I believe is the word! Discuss.

[monkeyc]

Very good point ILADVOCATE, i know where you are coming from there.

Sorry I just hear so many theories on dreams that it frustrates me.

I agree completely on dream interpretation, its a well established therapy and works well, I do it as well and its very useful when things get tough as dreams are signpostsof mental state.

On meds, hey we all have opinions thats why this forum works, and what works for you works and that means it may help others, im a pessimist sometimes but thats balanced by your advocacy for new ways so it works out I think :)

[ILADVOCATE]

I have found dream interpretation to be helpful in a real world sense but yes a lot of what Freud said is extremely dated. As for dissociation, I have terrifying dissociative nightmares and often wake up in a dissociative state but since I have obtained treatment with the anti-Parkinsonian agents that is beginning to mitigate. I haven't had one good night's rest since 1998 when it began to occur. And in myself they are identifying it as tardive psychosis. I did understand on the other thread I ran into concerns when I discussed this. I agree that it makes no sense for me to try to find an unknown criteria in others that might cause them to discontinue medication. But this has been confirmed as factual in me and even if I am a statistical rarity, I do need to discuss my specific recovery from it. And please understand that once (and I would agree only at that point) it is identified as a criteria my point is to have it diagnosed and treated (as it is in me) never to be used to frighten other people. I could say its taken away a good aspect of my life but I converted it to something positive and I made deliberate efforts to ward off the anti-psychiatry crowd. But unless someone questions about it, I will indeed only discuss it as occuring in myself. Its just that I am caught between one group who up until recently said it "didn't exist" and another who misused it to tell people to stop treatment and all I wanted was recovery all along. For myself and others. But I'll stick to myself now and my specific recovery until they find out more. I think that's reasonable enough.

[jst4shanell]

I have been obsessing about my dream last night all day.  I re-enact it over and over again.  I still can't get it out of my thoughts.  I will think about it till I sleep again.  I do this almost every day.  I think about things I would have said different over and over.  Like it was real or something.  But I know it wasn't.  It's like talking to someone who puts you one the spot.  You give the answer but spend the rest of the day thinking about  a better comeback.  I hope this makes sense.

[RJ233]

As a kid I would dream over and over that I was flying in the air low to ground and couldn't go any higher.The devil was trying to catch me, but lacked reaching me by inches. That dream bothered me a lot and I still remember it.I don't dream it as an adult.I dreamed I was falling all the time as a child. One night I fell out the bed only inches from floor but I hit bottom in my dream. I woke up terrified and couldn't move and was screaming. My father picked me up. I was really scared. I still dream of falling but not often. I can tell you, I am scared of heights. I also sleep walked, down the street in the middle of the night. I would go to bed and get up with dirty feet, puzzled. One night I came back from my walk, went to the foot of my parents bed and stood there. They thought I was a burglar. My dad would have killed me, but he turned on his flash light in my face and woke me up. Don't believe I did that again after. It was weird. As an adult, I hardly ever dream and mostly can't remember them when I wake up, just that I had a dream. I had a really bad nightmare some months ago and woke up in a panic. Can't remember it now, but did right after.

[monkeyc]

Sigh.

No dreams are not unresolved issues.  That is along the lines of the freudian concept which Hobson and McCarley debunked in the 70's.

To dream you need REM sleep and REM sleep is neccesary to remain healthy and functioning, in addition research has shown that dreams may strengthen cognition and help memory.  Any animal which does not sleep will die eventually, this is simply because our bodies need sleep as much as our minds do and without it we lose control of our mind - psychosis is common in animals and humans deprived of sleep for a long enough period - this is why sleep deprivation is used as a torture.

Wakeful dream states, daydreams and vivid dreams are incredibly common in a lot of mental illnesses and Bipolar is not alone, they are a common feature to the point where Frued considered reams to be psychoses (mind you he considered a lot of things to be signs of psychoses)  Freud and Jung both argued that dreams were an interaction between the concious and unconcious mind but they were also searching for an underlying philosophical meaning to dreams so one has to take their position with some salt.

Dreams can be lucid and clear or disconnected, they may be based on subconcious desires and wishes and some studies do show a correlation between dreams and the mental state of the dreamer at sleep - agitated and hurt people tend to have more nightmare and bad dreams it seems.

There are volumes written on dreams and varying schools of thought but in the end the wakeful lucid dream is a proven phenomena and so is day dreaming - unconcious daydreaming is often common when you read a bit about BP and so is concious in that some patients use it to escape or to turn off their minds - I do it as a concious effort sometimes to slow a racing mind or control anxiety.

Its important to discuss this with a doctor as Dissasociation can also manifest this way.

[jst4shanell]

I had very vivid dreams as a child.  Always nightmares.  As I got older I had amazingly vivid dreams which were also nightmares.  I remember almost all of them.  Especially my childhood dreams.  Since I have been on medication, I have not had one nightmare.  I don't get it, but i'm grateful.  I still remember all the dreams though.  They are permanently etched into my brain.  I wonder what the psychology is behind that?

[ILADVOCATE]

It all depends on the extent but before my recovery from schizoaffective disorder I had this happen all the time. And I do believe it was part of it was part of the psychiatric disability although it may not have been psychotic but more like "unresolved issues" which is what dreams are. I would always dream that I was back in high school and things weren't working out. Then as I was waking up I would further remember I was in college. Then in waking up I would remember I had to go to work. This was not psychotic but I did have nightmares that were psychotic and disturbing (rabid dogs, etc.) that indicated my paranoia and phobias of people. The nightmares I get now correlate with my neurological disability but they are horrifying and dissociative and correlate with spasms that wakes me up so that's different (and now under treatment).
  Dreams are a communication between the frontal cortex and limbic system, that is the rational thinking mind and the emotional pathways. Without sleep a person becomes psychotic. Animals deprived of sleep long term actually die. Its a neccessary part of communication between different parts of the brain. Its really hard to tell whether its a symptom or not. The most important thing is to keep track of the dreams upon waking when you remember them and discuss them with your therapist and see what issues that you may not have come to terms with emerge. I have had horrifying nightmares but in analyzing them they helped me explain to myself in real world terms what I was feeling guilt about or repressing or secretly upset about. Then I could work on it. In real world terms. And since part of bipolar can be repressing emotional memories they can be a very valuable tool.

[monkeyc]

Discuss?

I get the same thing, day in day out.  Do not know if this is normal but my doctors say its not abnormal either.