Ask Lemmy

0%

Significant as in "useful for everyday life"? Zero.

.. or as in "useful for anything else"? Then maybe 20% or so. I'm an avid roleplayer and sometimes, a particular dream can be the inspiration for a plot, character or story.

But mostly I feel that dreams are the IRL equivalent of animated screensavers. They don't have to make sense as long as there is something on the screen while the CPU is idle.

Dreams are just a reflection of your past experiences, your memories, what you've been through.

Today I dream that I meet my wife in a sex shop called Peg that was run by a couple of lesbians. Not sure if is a sign, but is giving me courage.

Zero have meaning.

0% are significant, but some are fucking annoying, I'll tell you that.

I don't dream.

I'm going to say 0% because my dreams are fucked up and I hope they are meaningless.

From a biological perspective, your dreams are part of the process of moving short term memories from the hippocampus to the neocortex. This will involve perceiving symbolic representations of your experiences, feelings, memories, predictions, etc. As far as being "meaningful," that's relative to the implications you're interested in. If you're looking for meaning, look for the common psychological underpinnings of certain symbols (e.g. teeth falling out, not wearing pants, etc.) and see what that might expose about the things your brain is processing. Just remember that specific archetypes are often offered by people based on tradition and superstition; Make sure you're looking at reliable sources, especially considering that your brain is going to process a lot more than people have worked out, and not every archetype is likely to carry information you find meaningful.

Less than 1%. I've had stress dreams about work and school, which is probably a sign that my life is out of balance.

As someone going through trauma therapy stuff, every dream has some sort of significance to my life.

But it's mostly about how the dreams make me feel vs any type of symbolism. I usually feel overwhelmed, stressed, terrified and like I'm failing my son. Which all matches with what I'm working on in therapy

Maybe a few a year, so one percent.

Mine are 50/50! Sometimes I’ll have the most dull dreams that are so realistic I’ll wake up and not be able to tell if it really happened or it was just a dream e.g. I decided to buy avocados instead of broccoli at the supermarket. And then I’m like hmmm wait so are there avocados or broccoli in my kitchen now? Turns out there’s neither. Then I’ll have really impactful, emotional or fantastical dreams that leave me feeling a certain way. I do find it interesting whether it’s the boring dreams or the intense ones, that that is what was important for my brain to process that day

Loaded question. Metaphysically, dreams are 0% meaningful.

Epistemically though? Dreams might alert you to things going on in your own brain you didn't know were there.

Not meaningful, but can be impactful. First time I asked out a girl was because I dreamed about her, and suddenly had a crush. Definitely paved the way for me being able to ask out girls in the future

So, it depends how we're counting. I don't usually think of a dream again unless I've had it at least twice; so do we count recurring dreams as one dream or do we count every iteration of a recurring dream separately?

If the former, something like 10%; if the latter, something like 60%.

100% of my dreams have about as much meaning as any other biological process.