nostalgebraist:

Really curious if I’ll have a Twin Peaks nightmare after this episode, the way I did after both of the last two episodes

TBH I’m kinda enjoying this, it’s like David Lynch is hijacking my dreams to air Bonus Content

Update: no Twin Peaks nightmare

(In its place, yet another “enrolled as an undergrad again” dream.  This one focused on arriving at the start of the school year, and having awkward interactions with friends in later cohorts, who were clearly happy to see me but tried to dance around the subject of why I was there in the first place)

aprilwitching:

shellcollector:

nostalgebraist:

It’s pretty weird how we can remain so detached from the experiences of our dreaming selves.  I was just saying, half-jokingly, that I was enjoying having a series of nightmares, but I know if I was experiencing the same kind of nightmare emotions in waking life I’d be horrified and intent on stopping it however possible.

Sometimes, if I’m having a week of really bad or intense dreams, I’ll feel apprehensive about going to sleep.  Other than that, though, I’m pretty callous toward the suffering of my dreaming self – that is, I’m indifferent to it in a way that would be callous if I showed it toward another person, much less myself.  I’ll have experiences in a dream that would leave me shaken for months IRL, wake up, remember them, and nonetheless cheerfully go about my day as if nothing traumatic has happened.

We’re able to distance ourselves from what happened to us in dreams, even if we remember them.  The sense that “that didn’t really happen to me” is powerful, even though you have a memory of it happening to you (as far as you could tell), and just how bad it was.  It’s interesting that this can happen neurologically, I guess?

So maybe we are so indifferent to our dream selves for retrospective reasons – we have this natural tendency not to care about things that happen to them/us after those things have happened.  But what about the prospective effects of this indifference?  Is there something cruel about my casual willingness to give myself nightmares?  I don’t care about them now, and I won’t care afterwards, but the guy in them sure cares.  And that guy is me, or at least I will later remember being him.

Wait, what? I totally don’t have this – the emotional response to dreams can linger for ages for me; there are terrifying dreams I still shudder to remember; and I perpetually get these shuddering jolts of strangeness when I remind myself that various dreams didn’t actually happen, I never really went to that place because it never existed, et cetera. Sometimes I even have dreams where I’m someone else - in one I was a pregnant teenager and definitely not me - and when I think back to those it’s like I inhabited someone else’s skin for a bit. I’ve had dreams that marked me and changed me just because they were not only in someone else’s POV but also took place over the whole of that person’s lifetime, and so there’s a part of me that feels like I lived a whole life once, in a single night. I think at least part of the OCD Horrors I sometimes get about having somehow killed people are a result of having had dreams where I murdered, and then having woken up to a situation where I needed to reconcile my revulsion with the fact that I remembered doing that, in a kinda Will-Grahamish way. 

I’m interested in the distribution of this – I can see from the post notes that I’m not the only person who often finds that the “that didn’t really happen to me” tag hasn’t been correctly applied. How common is this vs the other thing? And how does it relate to other aspects of neurology, psychology etc?

this is really interesting to me because it implies, like, not knowing you’re dreaming when you’re dreaming, and also that you think the things that happened to you when you were awake “actually happened” to you. i mean, i am for the most part aware that some things “actually happen” and some “don’t actually happen”. but…what is “actually happening”? a lot of the time the way i react to things that “actually happen” and the way i react to, say, fiction i find especially absorbing are very very similar, by which i suppose i mean both that i probably have a more intense imaginative/emotional connection with certain books/movies/stories etc. than the average person, and that while obviously i can be affected by and to some extent concerned about things that “really happen”, there’s a detachment similar to what rob describes with dreams. the sudden, solid shock– and for me, it is a shock– of feeling that one specific moment is occurring, and it’s happening to me, and i am wholly inside it, and it will have some meaningful consequence, and i see it in clear and finite terms– is rare. like, really rare. usually sort of unpleasant. i can’t figure out if these moments constitute some kind of weird adrenaline-rush hyperawareness on my part, or if that’s just how most other people go about their lives all the time, and it’s overwhelming and bizarre to me only because i am not used to it.

 i suppose sometimes i get really sad about stuff, and other times i don’t much care, but that doesn’t seem tied to the (perceived or “actual”) “reality” of the stuff so much as, i don’t know, my tiredness or hormone levels or the turning of the seasons or what mind/emotion-altering substances i have or haven’t ingested lately.

in the dreams i remember, i’m usually either a version of myself– i mean, sure, maybe a substantially altered version of myself, but i’m not a developed, wholly distinct person or character with no memory of who i normally am and a detailed sense of a personal history unique to that dream– or, probably even more often, i’m kind of an invisible, characterless, non-interfering, disembodied observer (whereas i only FEEL like a disembodied observer when i’m awake). so i can’t speak to the thing you two describe, where “you” experience “being” a person with a totally different history and life experience and outlook/personality than the waking-world you (which seems like it enforces a comfortable, clear dream/waking split in rob’s case, while making dreaming a much more confusing, stressful, and emotionally draining experience in shell’s :( ).

anyway, there’s a feeling/realization i would describe as “oh, that’s right. i’m DREAMING,” that i almost always get at some point during a dream. it doesn’t mean i don’t care about what happens in the dream, and it doesn’t usually mean i can really direct the course of the dream a la true lucid dreaming, but it does mean i stop getting all worked up about it, because it’s not really a big deal if a giant rat gnaws off both my legs or something. i’m going to wake up eventually. the funny thing is, this happens to me when i’m–i think–awake, too. i suppose then it’s less “oh, that’s right. i’m DREAMING” and more “oh, that’s right. this is just the subjectively interpreted experience of a bunch of cells and processes that are under the sweet and transient delusion that they are somebody, that they think and feel and are substantially distinct from an inert corpse”. and then i stop getting all worked up because it’s not really a big deal if something hurts me. it’s like watching tv. i’m going to die eventually.

i can relate to rob’s nightmare enjoyment, but for me that can apply to “real life” as well, i think? both in that i have a self-destructive streak and in that i’m more attuned than i think some people to…well, you know. to love someone else is to set oneself up for inevitable sorrow and emotional trauma, and fear and confusion and guilt and regret. but i still believe it’s one of the more worthwhile aspects of human existence, you know? i still keep doing it. i can’t delude myself about what i’m getting into, but here i go anyway. this drink will sting my tongue. this movie will give me terrible dreams and make me jumpy all weekend. something bad is going to happen if i follow you, and i don’t mind. (do i?)

…man, you know what’s kind of funny and annoying, though? (does this ever happen to you?) when you dream about arguing with someone, or, like, they do something really shitty in your dream, and you wake up and you KNOW that the waking life Susie Q. you encounter is entirely innocent of whatever the Susie Q. in your dream said or did, but you can’t help being slightly mad at her for a minute anyway, or kinda wanting to continue the dream argument because ooooooh you thought of SUCH a good comeback just after you woke up…

That does happen to me sometimes.  Once, in college, I dreamed about arguing with my friend @dagny-hashtaggart​ and feeling really indignant about how unfair he was being, and after I woke up, that “you’re wrong and I’m gonna show you dammit” energy stuck with me for much of the day.  It was nicely invigorating, actually.  But I wasn’t angry-invigorated at Joe anymore, I was just angry-invigorated without an object.

I also once had a dream where some guy I didn’t know (but had seen around campus) turned out to be a horrible/evil person, and sometimes afterwards if I saw him on campus I’d have to remind myself the dream wasn’t true.

Multiple people have reblogged the OP to say their experience is not like mine (very much so in @shedoesnotcomprehend’s case), which is interesting.  I had no idea!

About “dream selves” – I didn’t make this clear in the OP, but I’m actually like you (Lia) in that I am usually pretty-much-myself in dreams.  Of course I think in dream logic and stuff, but at the time I feel like myself, and in retrospect the experiences feel like they happened to me, not someone else.  It’s just the level of impact that’s different.

Actually, now that I think about it, it’s almost exactly the way I feel about memories from a very long time ago.  Like, when I think about a bad dream I just woke up from, it feels like thinking about a memory of something very bad (but not lasting-trauma-bad) from my childhood, one I remember in a lot of detail.  I remember being me, and suffering, but I’m distant from it now, and it doesn’t rouse any emotions in me.  (Bad relationships with teachers are a good example – I can remember all the frustration, but I can’t rekindle it even a bit.  If I met those teachers on the street now, say, I wouldn’t feel angry at them.)

I was going to say that distant memories don’t raise the same ethical issues as dream memories (is it cruel to myself to make myself have nightmares?), but then it occurred to me that this might play a part in adult cruelty to children.  Adults who have suffered in childhood (as most have), but who don’t have lasting trauma from it, may be inclined to discount harm to children because they’re distant from their own experiences of it.  (“I was bullied and I turned out fine” – they say, no longer feeling the pain of the bullying, no longer fully qualified to express in first person how bad it was.)

On a more mundane level, I wonder how much the word “nightmare” may mean different things to different people.  (The other day I was watching a lecture by a neurologist and was startled when she said that “true” nightmares only happened in non-REM sleep – but it turned out that by “true” nightmares she meant night terrors.)  Some people describe nightmares about fear of physical injury, running away from things, waking up with their hearts pounding, etc., and I basically never have that kind of dream.  The dreams I call nightmares are more like psychological horror stories, with very strong negative emotions but not fear for my life itself.

(via aprilwitching-deactivated201808)

It’s pretty weird how we can remain so detached from the experiences of our dreaming selves.  I was just saying, half-jokingly, that I was enjoying having a series of nightmares, but I know if I was experiencing the same kind of nightmare emotions in waking life I’d be horrified and intent on stopping it however possible.

Sometimes, if I’m having a week of really bad or intense dreams, I’ll feel apprehensive about going to sleep.  Other than that, though, I’m pretty callous toward the suffering of my dreaming self – that is, I’m indifferent to it in a way that would be callous if I showed it toward another person, much less myself.  I’ll have experiences in a dream that would leave me shaken for months IRL, wake up, remember them, and nonetheless cheerfully go about my day as if nothing traumatic has happened.

We’re able to distance ourselves from what happened to us in dreams, even if we remember them.  The sense that “that didn’t really happen to me” is powerful, even though you have a memory of it happening to you (as far as you could tell), and just how bad it was.  It’s interesting that this can happen neurologically, I guess?

So maybe we are so indifferent to our dream selves for retrospective reasons – we have this natural tendency not to care about things that happen to them/us after those things have happened.  But what about the prospective effects of this indifference?  Is there something cruel about my casual willingness to give myself nightmares?  I don’t care about them now, and I won’t care afterwards, but the guy in them sure cares.  And that guy is me, or at least I will later remember being him.

Really curious if I’ll have a Twin Peaks nightmare after this episode, the way I did after both of the last two episodes

TBH I’m kinda enjoying this, it’s like David Lynch is hijacking my dreams to air Bonus Content

Another Twin Peaks-related nightmare, again the night after watching a new episode of the show.  The prophecy was true

Cool, v Lynchian dream last night

Part of the dream backstory was that I had been having recurring nightmares inspired by Twin Peaks, and wanted them to stop but liked the show too much to stop watching. The dream took place entirely inside a sequence of these “nightmares,” ostensibly taking place across multiple nights; I drifted in and out of a “lucid dreaming” state in which I “realized” I was “having one of my nightmares about Twin Peaks” (but never became lucid enough to realize that the recurring nightmares were themselves part of the dream plot).

So there was a “dream real world,” in which I was watching Twin Peaks and having recurring nightmares, and a “dream dream world,” i.e. the nightmares themselves. I only experienced the latter directly, but “remembered” the former while “lucid.”

The dream-real-world version of the new Twin Peaks was somewhat different: it had the good and evil Dale Coopers, but rather than being in separate bodies, they were one person who would unpredictably switch between normal (seasons 1-2) Cooper and evil Cooper. The plot centered around a relationship between him and a woman, who didn’t know the two Coopers were different people/minds, and saw him as a man she loved with a dark side she didn’t understand. When he switched to evil Coop, he would often possess her (like Bob does) and cause her to do horrible things she didn’t clearly remember later, which made her life increasingly nightmarish (!).

My nightmares followed this plot structure faithfully, with me in the role of the female lead; I had only partial control over her actions, and dreaded encounters with evil Coop but couldn’t stop her/myself from going to see him. Whenever he started to possess me, I would feel this intense awful discomfort in my hands, causing them to shake. Eventually I “remembered” figuring out that this was due to some physical thing like sleeping in a position that hurt my hand, and that it wouldn’t hurt if I could stop it from shaking, so I tried to do that when the possession started (I think this caused me to actually wake up).

The dream – and the dream-real-world’s version of Twin Peaks – were set in this grandiose, creepy Art Deco hotel, where Cooper, who in the plot had become a high-powered businessman, hobnobbed with shadowy contacts. (In one scene, I was invited to a social gathering with Cooper’s friends, which turned out to be evil Coop talking conspiratorially, in chilling Lynchian gibberish, to a bunch of businessmen.) There were very long elevator rides from the ground floor to my room and vice versa, and I spent these dreading a run-in with Cooper or one of his creepy business friends (the latter were primally scary in some way even though I knew little about them).

nostalgebraist:

Counting last night, I have now had at least two dreams about a bad, disappointing sequel to The Instructions, my favorite novel.  It was the same sequel, too – everything I remember about it was consistent between the two dreams.

I’m glad this book doesn’t exist in reality, but apparently it exists now in my dreamscape (along with the endlessly recurring postulate that I decide to take time off grad school to re-enroll in either college or high school and am humiliatingly unable to explain this decision at the time any given dream narrative begins).

Incidentally, the re-enrollment thing has happened so much that its frequency in my dreams is now sometimes a feature of the dreams themselves – I’ll think “goddammit, I’ve had so many dreams about this stupid situation but this time it’s actually the case, isn’t life funny like that,” and then later I’ll wake up.

Counting last night, I have now had at least two dreams about a bad, disappointing sequel to The Instructions, my favorite novel.  It was the same sequel, too – everything I remember about it was consistent between the two dreams.

I’m glad this book doesn’t exist in reality, but apparently it exists now in my dreamscape (along with the endlessly recurring postulate that I decide to take time off grad school to re-enroll in either college or high school and am humiliatingly unable to explain this decision at the time any given dream narrative begins).

On an entirely different note:

In a pleasant break from the usual mundane anxiety dreams (failed transportation logistics, that sort of thing), last night I dreamed that i was visiting a “History of Sex Museum,” designed by Michel Foucault … 

… where the tour guide was Michel Foucault … 

… and where the full tour, if you chose to undertake it, involved having sex with Michel Foucault, for the purpose of illustrating the various exhibits

My memories of the dream are very fragmentary, so I can’t say for sure whether I actually had sex with Foucault.  I do remember Foucault being very charismatic and interesting (which stands to reason, since he had a bit of a personality cult IRL).

Esther, after I described this dream to her: “once again, you are so bad at being a straight boy”

In an anxiety dream last night, I happened to walk by a formidable professor in my department as he derided me to a colleague: “I wouldn’t call [nostalgebraist] a Ph.D student, he’s more of a Ph.D wannabe.”  In the dream this seemed like not only a clever diss but a cutting expression of a harsh truth, and I stopped right there to interrupt and tell him he was completely correct