I write down my dreams for a variety of reasons.
It's fun to remember the crazy hijinks.
It's therapeutic to expel the nightmares.
But the biggest reason is to catch things which I've subconsciously marked as done. Merely seeing things in a dream often raises the mental familiarity and recency enough to make it feel resolved. And this effect persists afterwards even if I've forgotten the dream.
Sometimes this is helpful, like stress dreams about a deadline or test. Even the haziest memory of going through the worst case scenario makes the real life version pale in comparison. No matter what happens, it'll never be as bad as whatever my brain made up. After experiencing that, what's left to worry about?
Those are interesting, but not what I'm trying to catch.
You ever do something in a dream, then don't realize that you didn't actually do it for hours after waking up? Sometimes I retain a specific memory of doing it, but usually I just have the vague sense that it's been done. The mental loop is closed, so I don't have a reason to check that I actually have a memory of doing it.
Writing dreams down helps reveal the inconsistency.
There's a more extreme variant.
I sleep on major decisions and life questions often. It's common advice to sleep on things both because it gives you space to process and disentangle yourself, but also because your brain is physically processing things as you sleep. It's a good habit to maintain.
But when the things I'm thinking about creep into dreams, I find the dreams make up an extreme scenario which forces a decision. These aren't real scenarios or real decisions, but they keep the same feeling of resolution after waking.
Catching that feeling of "this thought is resolved and correct" and checking it's grounded in reality is invaluable. I want to know I'm making decisions based on real life. Writing it down forces another round of processing.
If your mental model of completion is incorrect, you'll never get anything done.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
I take back my previous statements, this has to be the most targeted post yet. Dreams are incredibly personal and near impossible to compare.
I know I'm being vague. Any useful example I could give is too personal to share.
I have had dreams which told me far more about who I am than any amount of conscious self-reflection could have. Nightmares where I know that how I reacted in the dream is exactly how I would react in real life. Dreams dragging up existential crises I never had the time to even realize were an issue before.
Is that normal?
I don't think so.
- Rew