Dreams are a funny thing. I remember dreaming "in a normal frequency" when I was a child, but that sort of stopped when I was a teenager; that is, dreams were a rare occurrence for me (less than once a month).

Way later during university, some weird dream caused me to start a dream journal on a small notebook. Apparently recalling the dream(s) immediately after waking up helps a lot with having dreams in general: During that period, I had a lot of dreams to the point where I ended up filling the whole notebook, after which I stopped. Nowadays, I dream on occasionally - once every week or two maybe?

For the most part, my dreams are largely "neutral" in nature. The contents are usually a series of random, uninteresting events, which aren't even related to any recent events, with zero impact on my mood or thoughts [0]. That's also the reason why I haven't started another dream journal.

One exception to the unremarkable dreams are rare nightmares. While still unrelated to my day-to-day life, a suspiciously large percentage of my nightmares are about some teeth issues. It's always either multiple teeth falling out, our a teeth being shattered, resulting in me panicking and trying to spit the remains out of my mouth. It's a disgusting, physical sensation.

Nightmares about teeth stuff are, apparently, really common. A quick search for "nightmare teeth" on Google Scholar had some interesting results [1]. First, I learned that there is a "DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Nightmare Disorder". Not relevant to me, but I never thought about such an disorder existing in the first place. Second, there is a study about trying to correlate teeth nightmares with either psychological distress or teeth tension. In their results, assuming I skimmed this correctly,

• teeth tension was only slightly correlated,
• psychological distress was uncorrelated (in contrast to some other study).

I would have expected a stronger correlation on at least one of these to be honest. I have neglected going to the dentist though, so I should probably address that sometime soon. Reading that the brain might also just fuck with you for no reason, even if you are doing fine otherwise, sure is ... something.

The other reoccurring nightmares I have are about school. It's so dumb - it's usually about a test I didn't learn for, or some homework I forgot to do. Like, brain, my brother in christ, IT'S BEEN OVER 5 YEARS. I HAVE A JOB NOW. I AM AN ADULT. I never struggled to just pass a school year either, but that doesn't stop my brain from randomly producing a dream in which I'm stressing out over passing a math class. Fuck, math class was one of my good subjects; at least come up with something plausible.

After waking up, these rare nightmares aren't really stressing me out or anything. In dreams, I "see" sequences (often less detailed in a snapshot fassion), there's "sound", but I almost never have a sense of touch. I do have one every single time that teeth dream appears, though. In contrast to all other "non-nightmare dreams", it's so rare that they always stick out for me, and I even remember a handful of them years later.

For example, there was one dream taking place in some weird city. I entered a room which was kind of like a bar, and then suddenly I was hugging someone. And everytime I hugged them, they hugged me back stronger. Even though that was a stranger, I felt incredibly safe(?) and comforted that moment, until it slowly faded into me waking up [2]. It's been years, but I don't think I will forget that one anytime soon.

Other senses like smell or some other lasting emotions rarely occur. I'll keep you posted in case something comes up.