People can't read when dreaming?

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CuddleWoozle

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I had no idea that this was apparently a thing.

https://www.inverse.com/article/38510-can-you-read-in-your-dreams

I've always been able to read in my dreams, and speak aloud to people, too. Now that I'm trying to pick up studying German again, I'm starting to read simple sentences in German in my dreams, too.

I also dream in colors. Anybody else able to read in dreams/see colors/talk to people in their dreams?

(Mine last night involved me putting up a memorial paper for my old dog who died years back saying "I miss my Daisy." And a bunch of other people added notes to it about their dogs. XD Like "I loved Fred." and "RIP Rex" And one person wrote "Ich liebe mein hund." (Which is probably all my limited learning in the language would allow. LOL It's probably not correct.)
 
I have also read in occasion in dreams. I delved into this a while back when I came across an article saying it wasn't possible. It was just poorly researched and it's not common to read in dreams.
 
I mentioned it to my family and they all said they've never done it. XD Just kind of odd.

It's like I want to say "Hey, you wanna do research? I'll volunteer as a subject as long as you're not going to start trying to poke around inside my brains." Like, I'd wear some sensors and everything, but no surgery. XD
 
Well, yesterday afternoon, whilst napping, I was doing 50mph on a pedal bike; it said so on the speedometer.

Also, I've composed many poems, jokes and stories in dreams, so the idea that the language part of the brain shuts down whilst sleeping is nonsense; and what about all those who talk in their sleep (and with whom you can have lengthy, if surreal, conversations)?
 
I have only read in dreams on a few occasions. It's funny though, I often don't dream of reading, but I have read simple sentences and words in my dreams. I also dream in full colour. Another thing I have is extremely vivid dreams, where they feel so real and are often so mundane, that I wake up thinking to myself, "Did I do that?!"

Often times though I think it's preposterous to analyze or study dreams, I mean, no matter how much "data" you have, no matter how many studies you conduct and no matter what you seek to explain, no one is going to be able to see someone elses dreams projected back at them, dreams are unknowable to an extent. Dreams are also subjective, so a study that states "people can't read in dreams" sounds preposterous to me, how would you even quantify that?

Don't even get me started on dream analysis either, I often times think I just dream about whatever is on my mind, if housework is on my mind, low and behold, I dream of doing housework, if regression time is on my mind, I dream of being babied and so on and so forth. Occasionally, I'll have dreams that are so fractured and disjointed that they defy analysis or at least any analysis that could be given would be a stretch, we are talking downright Lynchian dreams here.

Still, it's an interesting topic :)
 
I find dream analysis very interesting, actually. I often dream vividly, and tend to remember a good portion of my dreams, and talking about them out loud with my mother (who is a psychologist) has helped me work through some things. I unfortunately tend to get a lot of nightmares, so those discussions usually aren't all that pleasant, but they often help me point out things that are bothering me subconsciously to work them out on a more conscious basis.

I don't remember ever having read in my dreams. I remember having dreams in languages I had just started learning, so I know what you mean there, Woozle. (By the way, "Ich liebe meinen Hund" would be the correct sentence, but kudos to you for learning German at all.)

But on the topic of dreams: Does anyone here have lucid dreams? As a kid, I tought myself how to switch a nightmare to a lucid dream to escape, because I had a lot of repetetive nightmares. Those also gave me the opportunity to plan my sleep, as in "if I have that dream again, at that point I will wake up/fly away/dream of something different" and after some time, it started working. Now I've lost that ability, though I would love to re-train myself.
 
I've only lucid dreamed twice in my life, and both to escape a recurring dream that was scaring me. One was falling off of the stairs and another one was 'knowing' that Freddy Krueger was outside the door to kill me. So I made friends with Pinhead from Hellraiser in my dream and he went through the door first and was like "Look, Fred, this kid is alright. Leave her alone." XD

Like I said, I just started picking it up so I was sure it was limited by what I've actually learned. :D I haven't gotten to the 'good bits' where you can start putting together a proper sentence. LOL Right now it's just "What is the word for water?" "What is the word for woman?"
 
I have incredibly bizarre dreams. In one, I went sasquatch hunting with Vincent Price and David Bowie. We found a crashed UFO with nothing in it, but no sasquatch. Shrugging and calling it a wash, we went back to base and changed into roller disco outfits. Vincent IMMEDIATELY declared David Bowie's outfit "not spangly enough" (exact words), and he goes to change. The thing my brain decides to register as bizarre? I asked them if we were wearing roller blades or regular skates, because I'm bad at roller blading.

I didn't even bother breaking out the tarot cards to try and analyze the dream. I just let it stand as awesome.

In a dream that turned to a nightmare fast, I managed to kick myself out of it with a lucid dream trick. A tidal wave was coming and this evil kid was laughing. Then he showed off his stolen shiny Swablu. I noticed something: it was the wrong color. It was green. Not gold.

This is a dream, I thought.

I turn around, and PAUSE the tidal wave. My mouth isn't working but I mentally shout: WAKE UP!

And then I'm awake. It's 4:37 AM, and everything is fine.
 
I dreamed just last night that I was looking at a road sign that said Vernon St. I also dream in color, sometimes vivid colors.
 
Maybe we're all wired special. ;)

It was just something I read over and thought "That seems a strange thing." Glad to know I'm not actually freaky! :laugh:
 
CuddleWoozle said:
I've only lucid dreamed twice in my life, and both to escape a recurring dream that was scaring me. One was falling off of the stairs and another one was 'knowing' that Freddy Krueger was outside the door to kill me. So I made friends with Pinhead from Hellraiser in my dream and he went through the door first and was like "Look, Fred, this kid is alright. Leave her alone." XD

Like I said, I just started picking it up so I was sure it was limited by what I've actually learned. :D I haven't gotten to the 'good bits' where you can start putting together a proper sentence. LOL Right now it's just "What is the word for water?" "What is the word for woman?"

I do a little dream interpretation. Not on the level of Daniel. But most of it is easy. What's harder is interpreting your own dreams. When you are dreaming of a restaurant that seems familiar, but you don't know it, that's your parents. Because they feed you. When you dream of being pursued, it's your own soul trying to tell you
your self something. you just resolve to turn to your shade and listen. One symptom is you decide to take a weapon to your dream, but you can't use it, it disappears or breaks, same with intercession. A weapon you turn to yourself. Your counter monster was you. You talking to you.

for not being able to visit somebody but you can't, can't find your way home, it's because that person or place is Not Available, so far in the past and distance and sadly people you will never see again in this life.
 
My dreams have color. I can talk and read when relevant to the dream.

I've only had one or two dreams where i could control a lot of what happened, but they still weren't totally lucid. I've had a bunch of dreams where I could occasionally make a small choice here or there.

I'd really like to be good at lucid dreaming, but I haven't had a lot of luck with it beyond that.
 
LittleSissieJolie said:
One symptom is you decide to take a weapon to your dream, but you can't use it, it disappears or breaks, same with intercession.

perhaps you could give me an interpretation on one particular dream that i just can't forget?

i was standing on a parking lot during a dark foggy night. i felt nothing but anger and hate inside of me and suddenly i realized there's someone standing in the fog. i didn't see him, he didn't make a sound, but i somehow knew who he was. it was a guy i know in real life who gave me every reason to hate him. that's when i knew why i felt all this hate and anger. i looked down and saw a gun in my right hand. i hesitated for a while but then fired two shots into the fog and heard him collapse on the ground. i felt no remorse for his death but then all my hate and anger instantly turned into pure fear when i realized the cops will soon come after me and i ran away
 
I dreamed last night that I was getting ice cream with my mom and reading the flavors. We ended up getting a cream-cheese flavor and I can pretty much taste what it tasted like - bad! Don't know if ''parcel'' was cardboard-box flavored.

I also had a nightmare last night. Sometimes I can wake myself up from bad dreams by telling myself to do so, but this one had to run its course I guess. My house had become some sort of donation drop-off point for diapers, and I snagged myself a Pampers size 7. It was laying wet on my bedroom floor when my dad decided to come in, and I pretty much knew he'd noticed it. So he kept trying to get back in to search my stuff. When he finally did, I don't think he found any diapers, but instructed my mom to keep looking, even going through my computer to see if I was talking to boys. I tried calling 911 but couldn't dial the phone right. Afterwards he started leaving for work (I think a police officer had arrived at this point to escort him out,) and I shouted something like ''You want to know something that'll really make you mad? I'M GAY!''

Which that dream is pretty easy to figure out, because my dad doesn't know anything about my diapers, or my sexuality. :/

So I can read and speak in my dreams, and I'm pretty sure they're in color; one of the tags for the ice-cream flavors in my first dream was purple I think.
 
Alexia said:
perhaps you could give me an interpretation on one particular dream that i just can't forget?

i was standing on a parking lot during a dark foggy night. i felt nothing but anger and hate inside of me and suddenly i realized there's someone standing in the fog. i didn't see him, he didn't make a sound, but i somehow knew who he was. it was a guy i know in real life who gave me every reason to hate him. that's when i knew why i felt all this hate and anger. i looked down and saw a gun in my right hand. i hesitated for a while but then fired two shots into the fog and heard him collapse on the ground. i felt no remorse for his death but then all my hate and anger instantly turned into pure fear when i realized the cops will soon come after me and i ran away

ambiguous relationship with the person, plus the police are your own conscience, and you (in the form of the {i hesitate to say it this way because it's a copyrighted song name} Dream Police ) prevent you from violence, and a conflict of hate and possibly admiration. You DID mention that something he either said or did something that hurt your soul. When one can touch your soul that person is usually somebody was somebody you wanted as a friend or possibly a lover, but in any case you wanted his approval.

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I have a dream sometimes that I'm working a crossword or something similar, where I'm writing the answer to the clue and it doesn't fit, or I can't find the line in which I'm supposed to write it, and when I look at the clue, it's gone.

Autism scrambles your messages from one neural cluster to another. It was explained to me with the metaphor based on household electric wiring. It's like you turn on a light and your neighbor's refrigerator explodes. The source is easy to read, but I'm going to go it one further, have an eeg rigged to my puter, and cameras to show what position is my head and neck when certain signals get 'goofy' like which parts are pressing against the pillow and which are oriented to the air. Do it several times to get an average first in a sensory rich environment, no buffers, and take such a neural 'picture' with sensory deprivation mode. I just feel a connection to a lot of disorders being confirmed.
 
Well.... this is obviously just anecdotal and even a one time occurence at that, but I ONCE had a dream where I frantically tried to read something and the letters just made no sense at all, even got blurred and flew into one another. Was quite distressing. Wouldn't consider this "proof" though, at all.
 
When I was a child the only issue doing anything compared to being awake was running, but when I hit 16 it suddenly stopped. I always dream as if I was awake quality, so no issues doing anything like reading, writing, running, jumping, swimming, ect. A decent amount of the time when I realize I'm dreaming, I can literally do anything afterwards. Also when I'm sleeping when my body has gotten the perfect amount of sleep before going into "waking up in zombie mode" when you get too much sleep, my brain plays the chime sound from our doorbell to wake me up. Then I proceed to check the door to see who it is only to find no one. lol
 
Indeed; I can read in my dreams too, but not for sustained periods of time. The reason is that reading is an operation of the other hemisphere of your brain than dreaming is, and when they two are activated together, your brain starts to wake up from sleep.

The trick is to learn how to speed read; reading large quantities in just fractions of seconds by reading ahead of the word you're actually focusing on. This will trick your brain into remaining asleep longer. I'm a semi-expert on Lucid Dreaming haha. XD

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My dreams are pretty much a virtual reality video game at this point. Pretty good at directing the flow of my dreams and even creating new dreamspaces when the current dreamspace is getting too chaotic or uncomfortable.
 
I've read in dreams before, not a lot, just titles and a few sentences, my thinking as to why it's uncommon for people though is the way the brain reacts when it is in resting mode isn't giving sparks to those impulses normally.
 
I've had it come up a few times just since I posted in this thread. Last night, it was very clear and unambiguous. I don't remember ever reading a lot in a dream. In this case it was two tabs on a touchscreen an email address, and a name and part of a credit card number (only part because of security). These were integral to the story and I read them plain as anything. I think it must just be difficult and probably longer passages become harder but reading in dreams is obviously possible.
 
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