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?!
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 do this all the time even when I am awake. I try to look at myself from a camera above me.
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?
Both and neither?
Hell sometimes I’m not even the focus of my dreams. It’s sometimes like watching a movie without me in it, or in a third person omniscient point of view, and sometimes it’s like watching surrealism folding in on itself without any sense of form or even reasoning.
My dreams are all over the place, hell and sometimes my dreams will be like a continuous story or theme over multiple nights.
I do have to say though my dreams are way more intense (and memorable) on days when I focus hard on my cardio a few hours before bed. Like yesterday where I pushed my heart rate to about 180bmp (over double (about 2.5x) my resting rate) for 30min. Absolutely insanely vivid dreams and I slept like a stone.
Can relate to the surrealism one, it gives me such strange vibes when I’m half waken up yet still dreaming
My dreams sometimes seem like a well choreographed movie. happens both in 1st person and 3rd person at times and often I’m also aware it’s a dream.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Try some fat before bed. I used to do a pea size amount of coconut oil, or an egg at supper.
Always first-person. But my dreams are like movies with no special effects. There’s no fire, no gunshot, no blood, etc. It’s weird
Same, its rare for me
Funny you ask. Most of the time I dream in the first person but I recently had one where it was in the third person. It was strange - almost felt like watching a movie. I tried to analyze or read more deeply into the dream to think if I could connect myself to it but nope. Just a random mind-movie.
I get these often and I wouldn’t define them as third person but more “non-person”. To me first person dreams are where I’m watching it through my eyes and Thurs person would be watching myself as I do things (like third person video games). Not even being in the dream, just a mind movie as you called it, seems like another level removed.
I wonder how much the amount of movies and video games around these days has changed this - whether dreams in the past would have only been first person because that’s the only thing people had experienced.
