why can't i dream? if i'm not alseep, i have no dreams at night.?

Question

i'm an insomniac. so i'm awake for many hours of the day and night. and once i finally fall asleep there's nothing, white noise practically. i usually remeber at least something from my dreams. since i somtimes write them down. i use to and i always had dreams, but now... there's nothing to remember to wirte down. i'm dreaming nothing.

what's the use of sleeping if you can't dream other than rest.

Answer 1

For lucid dreamers, sleep can be even better than reality.

Researchers at Stanford University are now developing software to help people become aware that they are having a dream so that they can then live out their fantasies during REM sleep.


Oneironauts, or lucid dreamers, are conscious when they are having a dream and can control how the dream develops. During lucid dreams, people are "awake" within their dreams, and can sometimes direct what happens next in the dream.

With enough practice you can fly, visit exotic places, experience vivid colors, or eat all the ice cream you want, all without taking your head off the pillow.

Being awake during a dream may seem like a contradiction, but to those involved in lucid dream research, it's all, well, crystal clear.

"Lucid dreaming lets you make use of the dream state that comes to you every night to have a stimulating reality," said Dr. Stephen LaBerge, founder of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University, a research lab that teaches people how to have a lucid dream.

LaBerge said that controlling dreams can also have therapeutic value. Potentially, he said, people can overcome nightmares that haunt them repeatedly. It may even help a person improve in sports, enhance self-confidence or confront problems that elude being solved in waking life.

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, a book co-authored by LaBerge and Howard Rheingold, is one of many books to help wannabe lucid dreamers get started. The Lucidity Institute offers a variety of tools for people set on taking charge of their subconscious life.

The Institute's SuperNovaDreamer kit includes a copy of LaBerge's book, and the kit recommends reading a few chapters before getting started. The book asks that you learn to recognize "dreamsigns," or signals within a dream that alert you to your altered state. One common dreamsign: elements within your dream are out of context. Objects are not where they belong within a room, or certain people are in locations they normally wouldn't be -- how often do your parents drop in at the office?

The NovaDreamer includes a mask that tracks eye movement to recognize when you're in REM as well as to determine the amount of time you take to get to sleep.

Depending on how you configure NovaDreamer (a determination made partially on the basis of how light or heavy a sleeper you are), the NovaDreamer flashes a series of red lights into your (hopefully closed) eyes, providing yet another signal that you are dreaming and can now do whatever you please in the dream.

LaBerge advises novice lucid dreamers to be patient, adding it can take as long as four months or more to regularly have lucid dreams.

LaBerge's research indicates that when a person does something in their dreams, the experience may be closer to reality than you'd think.

Early experiments show that lucid dreamers have a good comprehension of time while dreaming. Researchers that asked lucid dreamers to move their eyes in a specific pattern, and then repeat the pattern 10 seconds later, found they did so in about the correct amount of time.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,41478,00.html

Answer 2

It is my experience that dreams tend to go in cycles. Provided that you are maintaining a fairly natural state overall dreams will come and go like other organic cycles.

There are layers to the psyche. Dreams can and will reflect those layers in stages. Sometimes a quiet phase indicates that you are incubating or gestating a new phase. Patience is helpful.

Insomnia can also be a phase. To fertilize one's dream life it is best not to resort to medication. It is preferable to approach the insomnia naturally. I do think the insomnia can limit dreams. Dreams like a certain depth. Then they are born in the transition from sleep to wakefulness.

Pay close attention to everything going on in your mind when awake. There is a delicate relationship between the conscious and the unconscious. They influence each other. It's a bit like a dance.

There is also a collective dimension to dreams that is again cyclic and beyond the merely personal. That's why patience and good will are helpful. I think the subtle states of the planet affect dreams - their memorableness and their coherence - more than we think. Dreams require thresholds of energy, of order and also instability. The great dreams are the ones that offer order, illumination and foresight. But no one can force such dreams. They gestate on their own time.

You at least seem to appreciate dreams so in time they will probably return. Great patience is requisite.

B. Lyons

Answer 3

SInce dreams are derived from our subconcious you probably have some sort of chemical blocking the "dream receptors" (Parts of the brain that take memories and other parts of the sub concious and distorts them into the dreams we have). This should only be temporary. If it last more than a week or two I'd ask your doctor about it.

Answer 4

Well you either don't remember them when you wake up, or more likely, you aren't sleeping deep enough. REM (dream) sleep is the deepest sleep level, and you tend to yo-yo up and down through the diffrent levels, but if you aren't sleeping hard enough, you won't be able get to REM sleep and thus you can't have dreams. Check the links.

Answer 5

You dream, you just don't remember.

Dream is the action brains do at night. Remember it then it is called dream. Otherwise, you forget .

Answer 6

Too bad.