Dreaming and Schizophrenia

A Dream Life that was Incredibly Skewed by Psychosis and Mental Illness

Photo by Thaddaeus Lim on Unsplash

My dream life became very important to me when I was in psychosis from my schizophrenia.

I had never had such vivid dreams before. The dreams seemed to portend the future. Reality check - I didn’t have a good gauge for testing this salience.

Salience is the quality of being noteworthy. With those on the schizo-spectrum, one theory that doctors believe is that there is too much dopamine in the brain and as a consequence everything has salience.

I only wish I could remember some of those examples of my dreams portending reality.

If I can describe it best, I would have a dream the night before. The next day I might see some facet of my dream. For instance, I might dream of red car; then the next day, I might see a red car driving by.

As I’ve said, when I am in psychosis, I do not have a good judge of events being noteworthy. Everyday events and non-events have salience because I am ill. My disease tells me to note things that aren’t noteworthy.

This blog post is not just about dreams; it is about lucid dreams. Lucid dreams are the type of dream where you know you are dreaming inside the dream. For me and others, lucid dreams feel like I am controlling what happened in the dream.

While lucid dreaming isn’t exclusive to those with mental illness, lucid dreaming has only happened to me while I’m ill with psychosis.

When I am medicated, I actually am unable to replicate the quality or ability to have a lucid dream. It just doesn’t happen to me when I am well.

When I’m not well… all bets are off the table. My dreams are so vivid and they feel like they’re an important part of how I see the world.

I was convinced that someone was sending the dreams to me. Even today, I hold the delusion that science and modern methods have contrived a way to send dreams.

It’s off topic, but I will divulge that I sometimes think that schizophrenics are being manipulated by modern day magicians. I know it’s ridiculous. My thoughts are that people with mental illness have been known to do radical things and I’m almost convinced that someone is manipulating “us” to affect those events.

By us, I refer to those on the schizo-spectrum whether schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia later schizoaffective disorder since the late 2000s.

Is it something to worry about that I have experienced such vivid dreams the past couple nights? I would be more worried had they been lucid dreams. Instead of lucid dreams, they were just very vivid dreams.

According to WebMD, “In people who have certain ongoing mental health issues, lucid dreams may blur the line between what’s real and what’s imagined.”

That is a good summation of how lucid dreams interacted with my illness. There was blurring between my reality and what I was conjuring while sleeping.

I will admit, I was ill enough in my psychosis that I would often go to sleep seeking out guidance from my dream life. My dreams were so very vivid and prophetic. The prophetic piece being largely from aberrant salience.

To summarize, I don’t miss having such vivid lucid dreams. With medications, I am largely well today and my schizoaffective disorder is in a form of remission. I am grateful today that I am able to function and keep my thoughts and actions in line with societal norms.