Memories in dreams

[TrenterPercenter]

I'm waking up, it's painful. I'm not sure how much I drank last night but based on having slept on the living room floor the answer is certainly too much.  Next to me on the floor I see two plastic shopping bags one partially ripped at its seam.  Inside there are various food items including a 5 pint container of milk. I open it.  It's off. Then I notice the folded clothes in amongst the other food.  I remember these clothes, they belong to Dee.  I've not seen her in 20 years, was she here last night? She went on and had a kid didn't she? There are even a set of children's clothes in the bag.  We used to go to university with each other, I instantly fell in love with her on that first day.  It was like something from one of those American films, she was so cool, so beautiful.  I remember the corridor in which we both met, how for seemingly no reason we started chatting, how we found ourselves moving towards what I thought was to be our first lecture together yet it turned out she was actually in the year above.  She had a boyfriend, later I found out this was in the literal sense, she had a boyfriend but they'd since split up, it made no difference that day, that smile was all I cared about and how I would get to experience it again.

But this doesn't make any sense, why is her shopping here? she was here? I think she was, it's coming back to me now, she was here last night, she came to see me, how she found out where I lived I don't understand.  Never mind I need to get her shopping back to her.  Outside my car has broken down for some reason so I decide to borrow my step dads car.  I get to his in what seems like seconds, he drives a pastel blue Citroen, he begins boring the living daylights out of me telling me all about it; doesn't he realise I've got 180 mile journey to get on with.....wait a minute, this is a fucking dream isn't it, none of this makes sense, this isn't even your step dad it's looks nothing like him and who puts 20 year old clothes in with their shopping? you mug. Fuck sake.

Anyone else have these dreams? Dreams in which you specifically remember, remembering something.  Dreams are considered mostly to be made up of fragmented memories so there is nothing unusual about memories but engaging with the process of recalling things seems completely bizarre.  I mean the person in the story isn't someone I have thought about for a long time; the events I recalled are true, I recalled them in my dreamt of mind in my dream and can still recall them now - the corridor is accurate for instance but I would never be able have recalled it without reminiscing about it in my dream.  I can't seem to find much information about this; closest I've come is something called a type 2 false awakening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening but it doesn't really account for the recall process.  Also whenever I have had such dreams recently I've felt incredibly emotive on waking; like I've taken drugs or something; it's quite exhilarating and not necessarily a bad thing. 

Anyone else have/had these?

[bgmnts]

I've remembered people from previous dreams if that counts.

[TrenterPercenter]

I've remembered people from previous dreams if that counts.

How did you remember them were they actual memories within your dream i.e. you are "conscious" of remembering them or do they just appear again?

[bgmnts]

How did you remember them were they actual memories within your dream i.e. you are "conscious" of remembering them or do they just appear again?

I remember meeting them in a previous dream, as if they were part of the same dream experience, but different nights.

Well weird.

Not lucid dreams or anything though, I'm not in control.

[Johnny Yesno]

I've had dreams where I've remembered having other dreams. For example:

Dream 1: I'm in the street and I see a five pound note on the ground. I pick it up, and then I see another. I pick that up, and then I see another. Then a ten pound note. And another. And another. All the time, the excitement of this unexpected wealth is building. I have pocketfuls of notes by now. And then I wake up feeling bitterly disappointed.

Dream 2: I'm in the street and I see a 2p coin on the ground. I pick it up, and then I see another. I pick that up, and then I see a penny. Another penny. A 5p coin. Another 2p. I pick them all up, and see more. Hang on a minute, I remember the disappointment of that dream about finding the fiver. Is this just another of those? They're just coins this time, though. I wouldn't dream of such a modest find. Must be real. Back to picking up the coins, 10p coins now, 20p coins, loads of them. 50p coins now. A pound! Just coins but pocketfuls of them and at this rate, I'll be rich! And then I wake up feeling bitterly disappointed and a bit stupid.

[Catalogue of ills]

I have this a lot - dreams featuring previously-forgotten events, places and feelings from as much as 30 years ago, as if my brain has been sorting out some old files and decided to take out one from 1989 and have a look at it before putting it back. I'm always conscious, though, that what feels like an accurate memory in the dream, as in real life, may be modified. It might be a dream memory of an unreliable and distorted waking memory, of a moment. Although I think the most important aspect of a memory is the feeling it evokes, not whether the mental picture is accurate or not. This is what Knausgaard understands and talks about in My Struggle, that first comes the feeling and after that comes the image, and the image may have been reshaped by the feeling in the intervening years.

I think that is something that writer Gerald Murnane understood even better - that we have certain memories of events and places, but when we try to look really clearly at these in our minds we cannot pin them down, that the best we can do in a lot of instances is a single snapshot and even then the details are quite sketchy, always shifting.

I am very interested in the link between memory and alpha brain states associated with waking and falling asleep. Recently, as I was falling asleep, I had a vivid memory of a tin of blue powder paint from my childhood. I had not thought about or remembered powder paints for decades. What's more, in my alpha state I could vividly remember the smell of the paint, and the way the powder clustered on the end of a brush. Although the mental image of the paint included no location, I associated it with when we lived in Gloucester - we moved from there in 1976. When I woke, I remembered the previous night's memory of the powder paint but not the smell. I still can't remember the smell. I have had this with a few other memories - accessing them when waking or falling asleep in a particularly vivid way. What were all that about, eh?

[Pranet]

I've had dreams where I've remembered having other dreams. For example:

Dream 1: I'm in the street and I see a five pound note on the ground. I pick it up, and then I see another. I pick that up, and then I see another. Then a ten pound note. And another. And another. All the time, the excitement of this unexpected wealth is building. I have pocketfuls of notes by now. And then I wake up feeling bitterly disappointed.

Dream 2: I'm in the street and I see a 2p coin on the ground. I pick it up, and then I see another. I pick that up, and then I see a penny. Another penny. A 5p coin. Another 2p. I pick them all up, and see more. Hang on a minute, I remember the disappointment of that dream about finding the fiver. Is this just another of those? They're just coins this time, though. I wouldn't dream of such a modest find. Must be real. Back to picking up the coins, 10p coins now, 20p coins, loads of them. 50p coins now. A pound! Just coins but pocketfuls of them and at this rate, I'll be rich! And then I wake up feeling bitterly disappointed and a bit stupid.

Ha. I have these dreams all the time. Saying to myself, I know I often dream about finding money, but this time I actually am.

I spend many many night hours wandering around the house I grew up in, and sometimes during the dream I realise it is a dream and I marvel at how accurately I am remembering the house. Whether I am is another matter.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I've had dreams where I can remember events that happened earlier in the dream, but I didn't dream those events, the memories were just dumped into my brain wholesale as part of the dream.

Sometimes I've had a dream and when I've woken up I've thought that I've had the same dream before, but then I realise that I haven't, and the suggestion that I'd had the dream before was part of the dream itself.  For this reason I believe that when people think they have a recurring dream that isn't always the case, it was just the one dream which contained the suggestion they'd had it before.

[TrenterPercenter]

Although I think the most important aspect of a memory is the feeling it evokes, not whether the mental picture is accurate or not. This is what Knausgaard understands and talks about in My Struggle, that first comes the feeling and after that comes the image, and the image may have been reshaped by the feeling in the intervening years.

Yep I think you are right and memory is completely based in emotion; I'm focusing on aspect of recall in the dream but the content is of course highly emotive and the driving force.  It doesn't surprise me of this moment of falling in love; I've had dreams about this person lot's of times in the past; possibly this ability to have to remember is representative of this fading or something.  It's weird though; being in a dream (akin to a hallucination in a way) but then having the experience of a real memory within that dream.  In that sense it is just a really convincing hallucination because of the mimicry of the conscious process of memory.