Honest Injun:
Ask Mark for validation: I have to carefully monitor what I watch on TV, what I see, do and talk about during the day, etc, because I WILL dream about it with the next night or so. It's not so much the things that I think about for a period of time, but images (such as commercials on TV, billboards, or any other object) that I might briefly GLANCE at during the day. Within the next couple nights, I will be revisiting those "flashes".
Besides the fact that a very active brain will have exponentially more dreams than a non-active brain, I have other factors that make me dream more than the average person. (Yes, there are *lots* of non-active brains out there! Many of those that don't suspect that they are non-active actually qualify for that category, too!)
Another factor would be early childhood trauma. I was born with severe clubbed foot that took years of extreme surgeries and physical therapy to marginally correct. People that experience early childhood trauma - whether it's physical or mental trauma (or both!), will have much earlier memories, and more dreams. As an example, I can remember the minister's wife rocking me in her arms, and rocking me in the cradle in the church nursery - when I was 18 MONTHS old. I remember it so well that I can draw detailed pictures of that scene.
I had nightly nightmares for MANY years. My mother threatened to kill me if I woke her up because I was crying as the result of having a nightmare.
(Trust me when I tell you that she really meant it. Her first cousin is a serial killer, her brother served 6 years in prison for armed robbery, and there are a LOT of legally-confirmed still-practicing thieves in my family, my current and still-living mother, GRANDMOTHER and uncle are not excluded from that number.)
There are several times that my mother would have honestly killed me when I was a child, but she knew that she doesn't have the mental wherewithal to do it and get away with it. (Translated into layman's terms: She's too stupid to get away with it!) At least she had enough sense to know that much!
(She also refused t0 buy me a chemistry set when I lived at home, because she told me that I would blow her AND the house up - and I would do it on purpose. Come, now! Why would a 'loving', doting mother say such a thing? Answer: 'Loving' and 'Doting' are words that nobody that has **EVER** met her would ever use to describe her! But - that's a different saga for another day.)
Leading up to the dreams:
Have I told you about my dreams? I do ''conscious dreaming' (also called 'Lucid dreams'), which means that I have conscious control about how I want to handle a dream if it 'gets too rough'. I can choose from several defense mechanisms:
1) I can wake up, go to the bathroom, and when I go back to bed, I can 'pick up' the dream right where I left off, without changing a single detail.
2) I can wake up / go to the bathroom, and when I go back to bed, I can select a different 'ending' to the dream than the original ending of that same old dream.
3) I can go 'into' or 'out of' the dream, and either watch it in the 3rd person (like I'm watching a movie), or I can enter the dream and play an active part.
4) I can 'play chess'. I can watch the dream in '3rd person', and if I keep getting lost in the same maze, for example, I can say, "Alright! I'm tired of this crap. You've had this dream MANY times. THIS is the way out of the maze. Then - like I'm playing a SIMS game, I can pick myself up by the collar, and plop myself outside the maze, for example.
5) If the dream gets too rough too quickly, I can terminate it right then and there, and not deal with another second of it.
(All those things come from the fact that I had nightmares as a child, and my mother honestly threatened to kill me if I woke her up at night because I was scared. Her first cousin is a famous serial killer. Trust me when I tell you that she wasn't joking. So.,.... in 'Sybil-fashion', I had to develop a defense mechanism that I still use to this day to help MYSELF through the problem.)
I have at least 3 - 5 dreams every night of my life. Now, because my poor little brain has nothing better to do when I sleep, I have been going back over the past 30 years and dreaming re-runs.
Re-run dreams are not at all new to me, but the way I am dreaming them IS new to me. I go back and pick up an old dream, but this time, there is exponentially more detail in each dream! I am now redecorating dreams! People that were once shadows, for example, how have faces and names. If something in a dream was plain concrete, it is now beautiful green marble, and the dream remodeling list continues!
My dreams - and the lack of sleep - occurs for the same reason that small children can have bad dreams if they watch TV before they go to bed (they are still actively learning. Their neurons are still growing and developing.)
Learning and maintaining new skills (reading music, knitting, using GIMP and Blender software, and much more) are keeping my poor little neurons developing at the same rate as a small child.
That, in itself, is probably a huge piece missing out of the puzzle, and it should explain a lot! :)
- Michael
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