For me it is always 3rd. Its almost like I’m an actor in my own dream. Few times I realize it, but then just wake up.
Wow this is so interesting. Always first person for me - maybe there were other times otherwise but I don’t remember. Wow I never imagined people would dream otherwise.
I shocked me when I read somewhere else that a lot of people don’t dream in color. What the hey?
Yeah this is blowing my brain! Literally 100% of my dreams are first person. I don’t even understand how you can dream in 3rd person. Like, you’re seeing yourself from a distance? But like, then there are two of you - the one you’re looking at, and also the floating you that’s doing the looking.
WHAT?!
I do this all the time even when I am awake. I try to look at myself from a camera above me.
Yup. I practically never dream in first person perspective and that’s about it. Think of it like watching a tv show or a movie and accepting uncritically that the character on the screen is you.
Funnily enough I have another weird aspect of dreaming that I have discovered is very common amongst other trans people. My dream self used to roughly 95% of the time used to be represented physically as my internalized gender…or sometimes would just be rendered as a featureless void capable of interacting with the world and recognized internally as me I suppose is the best way to explain it. Probably sounds a bit Magnus Archives. However post social transition the ratio has changed the opposite direction and now I am represented in dreams by my real world like appearance about 60% of the time… Which I am not the biggest fan of to be honest but my waking world comfort levels have increased so it’s not the worst.
I go back and forth within my dreams. Usually it’s first person, but sometimes I seem to be floating just above watching myself
Same; except I’m to the side, like another person watching.
Either I don’t remember my dreams or I don’t dream. Last dream I had was when I was like 8 and I still remember it 26 years later. Sleep for me is like sleep in Skyrim. Close eyes. Try not to think about anything, blackness then like a snap I’m awake again. Even my train of thought just picks pack up from before I fell asleep.
I will say that the one dream I remember was in 1st person.
Why was my dick a gas pump nozzle…Fill er up!
But for real though, I remember reading somewhere that even people who think they don’t dream are actually dreaming, they just can’t remember any of it. My wife is the same way but I’ve seen her say shit and act stuff out in her sleep so I know she’s dreaming but she doesn’t remember anything.
Sometimes not remebering dreams can happen due to medication, recreational drugs or alcohol consumption. Not getting aproper sleep and interrupting the sleep cycle makes it difficult to remember.
Anecdotally i “stopped dreaming” or at least remembering them when i started smoking weed. For years i didnt remember a dream. When i stopped smoking i suddenly started dreaming alot.
I like dreams.
I usualy don’t remember my dreams. But sometimes when I wake up suddenly in the middle of the night I can remember for a short time and forget after a few minutes.
Yeah, I can remember dreaming (waking up and knowing I had dreamt) only a half dozen times in my life. It sounds fun.
A variably disassociated first person … sometimes like a third person that’s about to snap back to first any moment.
I switch between
I’m not even in my dreams half the time. More often than not my dreams feel more like something I’m watching as opposed to something I’m in. Tho every now and again I’ll randomly be in the dream, and it’s usually 1st person. Otherwise… 3rd I guess?
A little of both. I remember sometimes being surprised while dreaming because it’s suddenly shifted to 3rd person. Usually when that happens I’m no longer physically present in the dream, just watching it like a movie.
first
Same, has only ever been first person
First person, and an interesting note. I was experimenting with lucid dreaming for awhile, with some very minor success. One thing that ALWAYS woke me up though, was doing something I had never done in real life. I was unable to breathe underwater. The mere attempt would wake me.
Then I got scuba certified in real life, and like magic, I was suddenly able to breathe underwater in my dreams.
It makes me wonder how you think about yourself in real life.
When I was a kid they were almost always like movies - I wasn’t involved at all, just watching things play out. Sometimes they would be first person though. In early adulthood it flipped, now they’re almost always first person.
Both, usually 1st. Except when I’m in 3rd person, I usually morph back into first. Usually happens when I’m not “me” and following someone else. I may hop from multiple people in the same dream. It’s the weirdest when they are different genders lol.
People mentioned not seeing in color - I usually don’t have sound. Like people “talk” sure, but not really? Idk how to explain it. I only realized this when I had one dream with sound, a little music box, and it was wonderful.
In my last vivid dream I was both. Initially it was first person, but then the scene changed and I was watching myself.
I used to dream all the time when I was a kid (mostly in 3rd person from what I can recall), but for quite a few years now, I just don’t even feel like I dream at all. It’s not even that I don’t remember what the dreams were (when I dreamt before, I could tell when I had a dream, even if it was just a vague notion that I couldn’t recall), I just don’t even have a sense that any dreams are happening period. Not sure if it was from all the drug & alcohol use during my teen/early 20s, but sleep for me now is like time travel. It just happens and suddenly I wake up a few hours in the future, assuming I’m able to actually get a good amount of sleep.
Try some fat before bed. I used to do a pea size amount of coconut oil, or an egg at supper.
I’m almost exactly the same way, except I never dreamed in my youth either. As far I’m concerned I don’t dream, and sleep is far and away the fastest way to pass time.
Not sure if it was from all the drug & alcohol use during my teen/early 20s
Most likely. When I was on psych drugs I had no dreams. But things improved when I quit them. You may have some long-lasting brain damage. I have anhedonia due to the drugs
You mean like seeing the back of your head? I never understood how people can do that. I dream through the same eyes I see things with in the waking world.
I see the back of my head and back just like 3 person video game and the camera can rotate so I see my self from the side.
When you’re looking at the back of yourself, is it 2D or 3D? Stylized or realistic? Up to date? Different clothing-wise each time?
It is like a real camera filming so 3d realistic. It never deviates in quality except that the camera can be a super 8ish.
From 1990 to today. Yes a big variation in cloths races, genders and group size but never bigger then 4.
I dream in 3rd person primarily and the sort of video game-ish angle you’re thinking of isn’t my experience. It’s more like watching a tv show of yourself with you as the main character. You are in control of your actions in the dream and accept that wholly as you but it’s like your veiw point changes like a series of fixed camera angles… But still seems fluid.
When you do that, does it involve a depiction of how you look from behind the back of your head (or from any other angle) that is true to how you look in the waking world, or are there differences? One thing that comes to mind is how people with DID say they dream, and I am intrigued to what’s going on.
I would say over the shoulder is a veiw point I know but the back of my head as in a video game veiwpoint is kind of a rarity. More of a side on situation is the norm but sometimes the focus can frame me out as well.
I would say that maybe my film career might be relevant because it has the conventions of camera work but it’s been that way since I was a child.
But my physicality is usually not “me” in the sense if what I see in the mirror every morning but a way more comfortable conception of me basically like you swapped a body type in a video game but things like skin, eye color and hair color are all basically the same… Most of the time anyway. I have definitely had some odd presentations of dream me.
So then you see yourself to a degree where you always notice what you’re wearing?
Definitely. For the most part head to foot.
Either. The third person ones tend to be long and involved eg murder mysteries and they don’t have me in them at all. I just sort of watch it unfold.
In first person I’m not always me. I remember once in a dream I looked at my hands to see who I was and they were paws, the dream turned out to just be about trying to hunt antelope.
I also have lucid dreams sometimes.
And sometimes I dream I don’t exist which is a hard one to explain. Nothing happens in those dreams except knowing that there is nothing.
But that still sounds first person to me. If you’re not in the events then “you” are still inside your singular consciousness as you watch events unfolding in from of you. It sounds more like you’re an invisible observer, but you’re still seeing these events from behind your own eyes (so to speak)
@LanternEverywhere Not really because it’s more like reading a book insfar as there’s a lot of stuff I “know” instead of see.
It’s hard to explain but I’m one of those people who doesn’t have an interior monologue and a lot of my thoughts are more like spatial/kinetic maps. So when I’m dreaming there can be things I’m looking at and other things I just know are happening without seeing them.
So that’s like 3rd person in a book. First person is where there’s a “me” of some kind that has consciousness.
