this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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?!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I do this all the time even when I am awake. I try to look at myself from a camera above me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I go back and forth within my dreams. Usually it's first person, but sometimes I seem to be floating just above watching myself

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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…

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

A variably disassociated first person … sometimes like a third person that’s about to snap back to first any moment.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

I switch between

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Can relate to the surrealism one, it gives me such strange vibes when I'm half waken up yet still dreaming

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Same, has only ever been first person

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

I don't recall ever being in third person in a dream. Though sometimes the camera changes. Like when I fell in the ice at the football game, there was a floating loading screen before the respawn. And once there was rolling credits with an unknown Rush song playing. Those weren't really my views.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Same, its rare for me

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

In my last vivid dream I was both. Initially it was first person, but then the scene changed and I was watching myself.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Both, usually 1st. Except when I'm in 3rd person, I usually morph back into first. Usually happens when I'm not "me" and following someone else. I may hop from multiple people in the same dream. It's the weirdest when they are different genders lol.

People mentioned not seeing in color - I usually don't have sound. Like people "talk" sure, but not really? Idk how to explain it. I only realized this when I had one dream with sound, a little music box, and it was wonderful.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

A mixture of both 1st and 3rd person when my mind decides to fashion me a body. When my mind forgets to give me a body and I'm just an orb, it's always 1st person.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Either. The third person ones tend to be long and involved eg murder mysteries and they don't have me in them at all. I just sort of watch it unfold.

In first person I'm not always me. I remember once in a dream I looked at my hands to see who I was and they were paws, the dream turned out to just be about trying to hunt antelope.

I also have lucid dreams sometimes.

And sometimes I dream I don't exist which is a hard one to explain. Nothing happens in those dreams except knowing that there is nothing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But that still sounds first person to me. If you're not in the events then "you" are still inside your singular consciousness as you watch events unfolding in from of you. It sounds more like you're an invisible observer, but you're still seeing these events from behind your own eyes (so to speak)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

For me, it changes a lot, sometimes multiple times in the same dream. Rarely I see dreams where I'm not involved at all and just watch other people do stuff.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I dream in 2nd person.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (6 children)

You mean like seeing the back of your head? I never understood how people can do that. I dream through the same eyes I see things with in the waking world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (5 children)

I see the back of my head and back just like 3 person video game and the camera can rotate so I see my self from the side.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

He dreams in third person.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Or else it gets the hose.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Both! And only very occasionally does the 3rd person view look anything like me

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Mostly, but not always first person. But I'm not always the same person - my age and sex isn't at all consistent in my dreams. I've been an old woman or a baby boy, and pretty much everything across those spectrums. In my dreams it's completely unremarkable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Same but when I was 13 I believe for some reason I was always a girl in my dreams. It just kept on happening until it just kinda stopped happening. I'm still wondering wtf was my brain doing then.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I dream mostly in 3rd and often my physical self is not in it.

For example I just dreamed about a being a worker in a warehouse. I never seen that dude before in my life but "camera" and I controlled him so that was me.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Both actually. It’s really weird when I think about it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Both. My vivid dreams tend to be in first person (one way to recognize the vividness) while a lot of my just weird ass dreams are in 3rd person.

The time I woke myself up by talking in my sleep, it was in first person and I walked down the street to a friend's house and when his mom answered the door I spoke in my sleep "can Shane play?" And my own voice woke me up.

But the dream I once had of riding a T-Rex through a McDonald's warehouse was in 3rd person.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

My dreams are what I can only describe as what it would look like for a 4th dimensional being looking into the 3rd dimensional world.

I can see every part of my body while also seeing from my personal perspective. It took me years to make sense of any of my dreams because of how confusing it all was.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

It varies. If I become lucid then shit's about to go down so my brain slips out of my body and I start doing sick moves like Neo. That requires 3rd person to see the full awesomeness of the stuff I do.

Calmer more dreamy-dreams it will be first person with occasional slip outs to close 3rd person to the side of my head.

Non-lucid nightmares tend to be first person.

But none of these really do the feelings justice. My sight can be 3rd person but my emotional state and how I feel is very first person. If that makes sense?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I have no idea what's happening in most of my dreams and never remember anything concrete.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

First person, but sometimes there's a soundtrack.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

The only times I've dreamt in 3rd person was when in 1st person I saw another me

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

First person.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Depends. I can be me, an invisible, incorporeal observer or someone else. My POV changes depending on the action.
I can dream in color, with nuances that cannot be expressed, or black and white. I can dream in pseudo-blindness where I don't see anything, but I know what's happening. I can dream in text where all I see are letters, well more like symbols... Full sentences aren't part of my repertoire, but I can catch a word or two before they squiggle and change into incomprehensible garble.
I can even simulate physics at times, but it's not pleasant.
I know it's all me because I can become anyone and anything. I was a rock, a bullet, a bird, a fish, a dragon, the abyss, a tree, even the enemies I was fighting against when the plot took that direction. Nothing is fixed.

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