Vivid Dream Meaning

If you had a really vivid dream it can be crazy. And no it is not random. It is not your brain going mad or being dramatic or making stuff up for no reason. That's a message. I do feel seeing a vivid dream can mean:

• You are moving between timelines
• This is an “important” message your guides want you to know
• There is real focus on what you need from life
• You visited the astral plane

What do vivid dreams really REALLY mean?

In my view a timeline shifted, this is my experience as a medium and years of waking up in dreams and writing about them too - some dreams like the one I had a few nights ago I just could not shake. In my dream I was building a house. So totally random I know. Your mind does not waste energy, I want to say. It does not make vivid, emotional traumatic dreams while you sleep to annoy you. Everything your brain shows you in HD is something it decided you needed to see. Something it decided was important enough to burn into your memory once you had no defences left to argue against.

I used to fight it. I would get out of these deep dreams and just try to forget them. But you can not run faster than what's inside you. You can not work outside your soul. You can not scroll past what your sleeping mind is trying to tell you despite all the distractions you throw at it.

Years ago I thought something was wrong with me because my dreams hit differently than other people's dreams seemed to. Others seemed to wake up and go about their day but I was haunted by people and places that do not exist. Things that never happened - getting grief. I was carrying emotions I could not explain to anyone because how do you tell someone you are devastated about a dream without sounding crazed?

You may already know what I mean. Maybe you've had the same feeling of waking up changed by something nobody else sees / validates / understands. But wait - nobody told me that till I figured it out for myself. Vivid dreams are not a malfunction. They aren't a curse. They are not signs you are broken or too sensitive or too much. They are proof that you feel something. Someone whose inner world is real and wants attention. Somebody whose soul has something to say and can not be ignored anymore.

Why do vivid dreams happen?

Vivid dreams happen while the brain processes something big and important that your waking mind was too busy or scared or stubborn to deal with properly. Consider how you spend your days, do you take care of responsibilities and messages and pretend everything is fine when it isn't. I often find these dreams happen when we put feelings away because you have no time for them. Remember that our brains don’t forget. I do find seeing a dream in bright colors or that it feels “real” is about keeping track of what it is you've been avoiding and when you sleep it gets to work. In a vivid dream your mind says hey you wouldn't listen when you were awake so now you are experiencing this if you want to or not.

I have dreams that were so real that I woke up angry at people for things they did in the dream. I've had dreams where I loved complete strangers and cried all day like I lost someone. In dreams I say things I've been meaning to say for years and then I think - well maybe I should say them aloud for the real people who needed to hear them.

It is not the dream that is the problem. What the dream is showing you is missing, this is showing you that you can feel deeply and connect fully, you just can not do it in your waking hours. Something is shutting down, some kind of protective wall got built and now you live behind it and your dreams are on the other side where everything still feels real.

This is your brain waking you up. You're already awake - not literally, but wake up. Stop sleepwalking through life. Be real when you are dying inside - stop pretending everything is fine. This is about making sure that you are “feeling” things again - even if feelings are scary, awkward, and might make you weep at your desk - but feelings are terrifying and inconvenient.

What do recurring vivid dreams mean?

And if that vivid dream comes back night after night or week after week, your brain is basically playing something on repeat until you get the message. I remember I kept having a dream about an egg. The egg just kept appearing. Now, recurring dreams remain stubborn because what they represent is persistent. Some thing in your life keeps happening the same way over and over again. Maybe something from your past that you never got a handle on just keeps popping up because unfinished business does not go away by itself no matter how much you wish it would.

I also had a recurring dream for years about going back to school and not going to class all semester, and now I had an exam I could not pass. For more than a decade I had not been in school but my brain would drag me back there to worry about something I had not prepared for. It was not about school. It was about feeling unprepared for life, about fearing that I would be found out as someone who didn't know what I was doing.

Looking at those recurring dreams changes sometimes slightly. So maybe the location changes but the feeling stays. People come and treat you differently - maybe different people show up. Watch what stays consistent because that's the message. Your brain wants you to see the consistent elements. Some recurring dreams involve fears you have not faced. And you keep dreaming about failing an exam or turning up naked or being chased by something you can not see because those fears are still running your life whether you face them or not. This dream repeats because fear repeats. Your brain is processing the same situation that causes the same anxiety every time you encounter it again.

Other times your dreams involve grief or loss you never fully understand. You keep dreaming about someone who is gone because part of you has not accepted that they are gone. Or maybe you keep dreaming about a place you once lived or a time in your life that is over because you are holding on, even though you know moving forward means giving up something. The recurring dream will usually stop once you address what it is pointing at. It could be having a hard conversation, a scary decision, or sitting with painful feelings you've been avoiding. When that message is taken care of and acted upon, your brain need not keep sending it.

But if vivid dreams every night are disturbing your sleep and affecting your daily life, that's worth taking seriously. Your brain is working overtime - that is exhausting. Maybe talking with a therapist helps you - they may simply give you a safe place to process what your dreams are trying to tell you.

Why do vivid dreams seem more real than waking life?

When you awake from a vivid dream, real life seems flat and grey compared to the dream. The dream was so full of meaning that your real bedroom feels like a fake place and the dream like the truth. This is more common than most people admit - we all fear sounding crazy. In case your dreams seem more real than real it usually means one thing important is missing from your waking life. You do the motions but you are not present. You're surviving but not living. The dream is more real because you're experiencing things fully instead of just getting through another day. I've been there. Walking through my life as if I were watching myself outside of my body. Saying all the right things and doing all the right things and then feeling like nothing touched me. And then I'd sleep and it was all bright and colourful and meaningful and I'd wake up and be grieving for a place that does not exist because at least there I was alive.

We all try to numb ourselves - to get through the day not feeling too much - to just keep our heads down and move on. And we all know how that occurs - people get disconnected from their own life, get lost in motions that mean nothing, and wonder why they feel empty inside when everything appears fine outside.

What does it mean to remember every detail of a dream?

When you wake up remembering everything about a dream it means your brain is really keen on this one. Detail is not random, in my view, your sleeping brain could have made things look HD because those things matter. Wall colour, expression on someone's face, words spoken - everything is picked in crystal clear detail.

Ask yourself what impressed you most about this dream. What details come back to you now? Many people have contacted me about a dream about their childhood home that is kind of normal, and the reason it is so vivid is because you have been here before. I don’t think it is completely spiritual.

Sometimes remembering everything means you can face something you ran from. This can happen when things in life has changed and your brain is trying to make sense of it all - to file it away - in your story of who you are and what life means. The vivid dream of childhood is part of making sense of everything - and remembering it helps you heal consciously.

What makes dreams so vivid?

Very many things cause vivid dreams and sometimes many things combine to make something intense. Most likely the biggest is stress because stress makes your brain work even while you sleep. Your nervous system is on alert and your dream state is active and emotional as a result. Maybe if you have been worried about something or just overwhelmed by life in general your dreams reflect that chaos back at you in technicolour.

I think my dreams come alive when I avoid something hard. It's a conversation I need to have, or at times a decision I keep putting off. But apparently the brain has no patience for my avoidance tactics and just pushes the issue while I'm unconscious and can not fight back.

Big life changes can effect your inner psyche. Even good things like falling in love or getting promoted cause vivid dreams because your brain is adjusting to a new reality - and most of that happens while you sleep. You might be dreaming about the old life you leave behind or the new life you enter or some strange combination of both that kind of makes no sense but feels right.

Grief makes you have dreams too. The brain has to adjust to them missing - because of death or breakup or separation. That's an enormous thing to go through (and I am sorry) - vivid dreams are part of it. Maybe you dream about the person you lost and awaken thinking you saw them in person - and the grief comes flooding back.

Physical factors also contribute, certain drugs increase dreaming. Alcohol and cannabis suppress dreaming at first then rebound so dreams are more vivid than usual. Fever makes dreams crazy. Even eating just before bedtime can make your dream life better because your body is working harder while you sleep. Sleep disturbance by itself may cause vivid dreams. Not enough sleep means your brain stuffs more dreaming into whatever sleep you get. Sometimes you wake up drained but with vivid dreams because your mind was racing to process time.

What does it mean to have disturbing or scary vivid dreams?

It is brutal to have disturbing vivid dreams - but not because your brain is cruel. You have your brain acting urgently. When something is important enough your mind will use fear and distress to make sure you don't forget. Nice dreams are easier to chuck out. Nightmares stick with you. They follow you around all day. They get you thinking about stuff you would rather ignore. And that is the point.

Sometimes I wake up from nightmares shaking and thinking for a split second that what happened in the dream was real. And then relief - it was a dream - but the feelings don't go away so easily. They linger. They colour all day. I stopped dismissing them and started asking what they were telling me.

Sometimes scary vivid dreams represent fears you do not even know about consciously. You are scared about something but you are putting that fear down during the day - telling yourself it's irrational - telling yourself be brave - telling yourself stop being dramatic. But the fear does not go away because you argue with it. It waits until you sleep and then it shows you how scared you are.

These are sometimes also nightmares about anger you are not feeling. Rage which has nowhere to go. You swallowed resentment. Sometimes the most frightening dreams are about hurting someone else. That does not make you a bad person. It makes you human. And it means some feelings you want to let go before they spill out in destructive ways.

Particularly disturbing dreams involve people you love. Dream about your partner cheating or your child hurt or your parent dying and feel guilty because it was a premonition or wish. It was neither. You were processing how much you love these people and how scared you are of losing them. Love is tied to fear and your dreams know it too even if your waking mind pretends otherwise.

What do vivid dreams mean if they involve people from your past?

Every person you know is in your brain, and we naturally think of this person when we dream. Usually if someone from your past shows up in a vivid dream it is not about them specifically. They're representing something. A feeling, a time in your life, a version of yourself you were once. Your brain chose their face out of the crowd because of something about what you're processing right now. Often, I found myself having vivid dreams about my ex and this is it... it's just a dream.

Of course.. I was confused and disturbed. But sitting with it I realized it was not about him at all. It was about what I was when I was with him - smaller, quieter, always doing what someone else wanted. My brain was wondering if I was getting back into that pattern with someone else now. A former partner in a dream rarely makes you want to get back together, I am sure you will agree! They might say what you were feeling in that relationship - free or trapped, loved or rejected, hopeful or cynical. Maybe they're a choice you made that you're questioning now. They could represent you as you were then - and how proud or ashamed you are of yourself now.

It may be old friends who drifted away who pop up when you're lonely or questioning your current friendships. Teachers from school show up when you learn something new or feel judged. Relatives who knew you before you were often present in dreams during times of transition.

Emotional tone tells you more than character identification in a dream. As I said above, it is about the feeling you had when you saw them and you need to focus what this "feeling" is in your own life. Did seeing this person make you happy or anxious? Wanna reach them or run away? Were you your age or did you feel like a child again? All these feelings are what makes a dream and the person is just a costume your brain made up.

What should you do when you wake up from a dream?

When I have a vivid dream I think about it, sit with it for a minute. Do not just start analysing or interpreting right away! Let the dream be in your awareness. Pay attention to how your body feels. Notice what emotions come up. Notice what areas of your dream it keeps coming back to even when you try to think about something else. Ask yourself some questions. So what was your dominant feeling in the dream? So what does that remind you of in your waking life? If this dream had a message what would it be? What has this dream been pointing to that I was avoiding?

Do not force an interpretation if one does not come. Some dream meaning takes time to reveal itself. You may not understand until days or weeks later when something happens in your waking life and the dream makes sense. Your brain makes its own timeline - not yours. Whether the dream was upsetting or not, be gentle with yourself.