Dreaming about instructions
Instructions in dreams cannot be followed, and the reason is mechanical rather than symbolic: a set of steps has to persist while being carried out, and dream content does not persist.
Also searched as: being told what to do, a list, directions i could not follow, a set of steps
Losing the sequence is the characteristic report. The dreamer is told what to do, begins, and cannot recall the next step.
A written list behaves the same way and worse, because it is also text: dreamers describe reading a list, looking away and finding it different or blank.
Being given instructions by somebody who then leaves is a distinct and frustrating version.
Instructions the dreamer knows are important and cannot hear properly connect to the voices and announcement material.
Common associations
- A sequence that will not hold.
- A list that will not stay written.
- Importance without content.
- Somebody who explains and goes.
Positive readings
Little in the dream. As a check it is excellent: try to follow a set of steps and the failure is immediate and unambiguous.
Difficult readings
Frustrating in a low, persistent way and it underlies a good deal of the task-dream material without being named.
Psychological perspectives
Working memory is substantially impaired during REM, and a sequence of steps is precisely what working memory holds. That is a better explanation than any reading about feeling directionless.
Combined with the text instability and the absence of persistent storage, an instruction has three separate reasons to fail in a dream, which is why it always does.
That makes this entry a companion to writing, counting and building: all four are about persistence rather than about obstruction.
Cultural and historical
Instruction received in dreams is a serious category in several traditions, sometimes as the primary purpose of a dream, and the prayer and temple entries touch on it.
What those accounts describe is usually a single clear directive rather than a sequence, which is interesting given that a single statement is the one thing a dream could hold.
What the sleep science says
Well documented: working memory is substantially impaired during REM sleep.
Well documented: text is unstable in dreams.
Reasonably supported: dream content is not stored, so sequences do not survive being begun.
Your own context
- Could you remember the next step?
- Was there a list, and did it stay the same?
- Did the person stay?
- Did you know it mattered?
If this recurs
Log with the writing, counting and building reports. All four are the persistence group and it is a genuinely useful category.
Emotions often reported
- frustration
- confusion
- urgency
- anxiety
- helplessness
- effort
Specific instructions dreams
Each of these is written separately, not generated from this page.
Questions for reflection
These are for your journal, not for us. Nothing you write is shared.
- Could I remember the next step?
- Did the list stay the same?
- Did whoever explained it stay?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
Sources and reviewed references
4 references. What these labels mean
- 1.Dreaming and the Brain: Toward a Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious StatesPeer-reviewed research
J. Allan Hobson, Edward Pace-Schott and Robert Stickgold (2000) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Cited for: A synthesis of the brain-state differences between waking, REM and non-REM, and what they predict about the character of dreaming in each.
- 2.Lucid Dreaming Verified by Volitional Communication During REM SleepPeer-reviewed research
Stephen LaBerge, Lynne Nagel, William Dement and Vincent Zarcone (1980) · Perceptual and Motor Skills
Cited for: The eye-signalling experiments that established lucid dreaming as a verifiable state rather than a self-report.
- 3.Dreaming: A Conceptual Framework for Philosophy of Mind and Empirical ResearchAcademic book
Jennifer M. Windt (2015) · MIT Press
Cited for: A modern philosophical treatment of what dreams are, including the immersive-spatiotemporal-hallucination account and the status of dream reports as evidence.
- 4.The Scientific Study of Dreams: Neural Networks, Cognitive Development and Content AnalysisAcademic book
G. William Domhoff (2003) · American Psychological Association
Cited for: The continuity hypothesis (that dream content largely reflects waking concerns) and a sustained critique of symbolic dream interpretation as an evidential method.
Dreamers’ accounts
How dreams of instructions have gone for other people, in their own words. Nothing here is an interpretation of anyone else's dream. It is a record of what happened and what it was like.
Nothing here yet. Be the first to say how this has gone for you.
Related records
- ActionWritingThe text finding from the other side. Dreamers can no more produce stable writing than read it: the words do not stay, the pen does not work, or the sentence is gone by the time the next one is written.
- ActionCountingDreams do not count, and once you know that a great deal of otherwise strange dream content becomes ordinary. A total recounted comes out differently, because there was never a fixed number of things.
- ActionA gameGames in dreams have rules the dreamer does not know and cannot ask about, and everybody else appears to know them. That structure is the clearest statement of something the first-day, examination and competition entries each describe in part.
- SymbolVoicesA voice with no speaker is one of the more common auditory reports, and where it happens at the edge of sleep it has a specific and well-documented explanation that has nothing to do with meaning.
- SymbolA crackCracks are one of the few things dreams reliably show growing, which is unusual: dreams produce states far more readily than transitions, and a spreading crack is a transition being watched.
- SymbolA holeA hole is an absence with edges, and dreams handle it the way they handle every absence: the edges are generated and what is beyond them is not. Dreamers report being unable to see in, and being certain about what is there.