I love talking about dreams! LET'S DO THIS.
What's your MBTI type?
INFJ. (Actual stacking seems to be Ni > Se > Fe > Ti, though all are in good use.)
How often/well do you remember your dreams? Do you keep a dream journal, and if so, does it help?
I remember my dreams regularly, if not daily, though their vividness steadily increases or becomes magnified when I actually dedicate time to the upkeep of a dream journal. I do have one, because the dreams themselves are fun to write about and I find my symbols rather telling. Writing helps to flesh things out, allowing me to dig deeper or unlock memories I'd otherwise buried. The science of sleep is generally quite fascinating to me.
I don't keep the journal as devoutly as I would like to. I always kind of go at it in bursts of interest ("I'm totally doing this right now, this is my thing this week, it's gonna be AWESOME!") and then find that my daily demands and personal projects make it quite a challenge to manage. So I do what I can, and it does indeed help with dream recall/increases the frequency of lucid experiences.
How would you describe the typical sensory experiences of your dreams? ex: "I dream in full color, I can distinguish voices and music, sometimes I feel things like hot/cold, pain, etc."
My dreams are almost always in color; I think I had one dream in black and white, just once, and then another when I was really young that began in full color but transitioned to a kind of sepia tone after an event occurred. Other than that, it's full color.
I hear voices and music as if they were really there, though sometimes I feel as if thoughts are being intuited, becoming language in my mind before the character in my dream speaks them out loud, or sometimes in lieu of said character actually vocalizing their thoughts. Generally, sound is quite present; sometimes I'll wake up with full songs looping in my head, thanks to hearing them loudly in the dream like some kind of soundtrack presence.
I have physical sensations in my dreams, even the regular ones, but it's somewhat limited to things like feeling a center of gravity, being hungry, sensing objects in my hands, knowing that I have to pee, etc.
Once I become lucid, however, the doors are blown off and I can feel everything as if it were really happening to me. I also gain a sense of smell. I'll experience the wind through my hair, the sweat on my neck, the smell of rain, the cool air on my skin, etc. All of it becomes very, very sharp. One of the biggest kicks that happens after stepping through that lucid gateway is the color palette - a lot of primaries pop, and the whole scene takes on a vividness that feels like a hot, idealized travelogue. Basically, everything looks gorgeous and enticing, even though some scenes might contain unpleasant content.
If sex happens in a lucid dream - or even a regular dream, just before waking - then I will absolutely feel everything there, as well, which is pretty neat.
What are some recurring themes/symbols/scenarios in your dreams? How do they relate to the real world experiences going on around the time of the dream?
The biggest symbol for me is the presence of severe weather, specifically tornadoes. This is very common, ranging from about once a month to a couple times a week. Generally the more anxious and uncertain I am, in a suppressed kind of way, the more likely I am to get a tornado.
I don't fear them, exactly, even though they're a problem. It's like I'm sort of willfully embracing the chaos, even pursuing it, turning it into something pleasurable, like an adrenaline rush or the grim comfort of knowing in my guts what waits for me eventually. I get the same kind of jitters I get from boarding a plane at 5 am - a trip somewhere exciting while the rest of the world sleeps.
Trains, empty/desolate urban environments, hockey, airports, and sex are also quite common. Interpersonal interactions are big, too, with characters stepping into scenes at first absurd, then easily-interpreted, reflecting personal dilemmas and feelings I may have about complex problems.
Sometimes I'll come back to entire fictional maps in my head - places I forget about until I dream them again. There are very eerie sensations of deja vu with these, like an actual place has been built by my subconscious, a place that is maintained during my waking hours so that I can revisit it again later.
My dreams almost never leave the impression of being random or meaningless.
Can you recall how you normally feel in your dreams?
Yes. My dreams leave emotional residue, but I very rarely get the feeling of being in a nightmare. There's usually a sense of the unknown - something to be discovered, played with - that keeps everything interesting at the very least.
Once though, a few years ago now, I had a tornado dream that pretty much just dealt with the aftermath, and seemed little to do with myself. I dreamed that I was walking alone through a destroyed foundation - broken plumbing fixtures everywhere, shredded heaps of lumber tossed in piles, stains of water having flooded the cement walls of a basement. A couple flickering lights, hanging nonsensically by threads. From a pile of debris crawled a very small child, and I understood in a horrifically visceral sense that she was dead. It wasn't frightening at all - I just felt an overwhelming crash of sadness, and I knelt and hugged her and kept apologizing on behalf of the universe. I woke up with, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry this happened to you," ringing in my head.
Two weeks after that, there was the rash of tornadoes that slammed into Oklahoma - including the Moore beastie - and I just felt sick to my stomach all over again.
It will probably be a Pi/Pe focus.
