Kelly Bulkeley Ph.D, studies dreams and is the director of an open-access dream database where people report dreams, giving scientists, and psychologists interesting information to study. He explores the question of how often we typically dream happy dreams in an article in Psychology Today, and offers some thoughts on connecting dream happiness to waking happiness.
First, when you have a happy dream, be grateful. It’s a rather rare phenomenon.
Second, consider what makes you happy in your dreams and how it relates to what makes you happy in waking life. Are they different, or in sync?
My happy dreams have consisted of flying a bush plane in Alaska (don’t ask about the landing, that’s another story :), falling in love, uh… falling in lust, being visited by a deceased loved one, and running through the forest with wild animals.
According to The Sleep and Dream Database, 8% of ordinary dreams include at least one reference to happiness, women’s dreams slightly more than men’s dreams, 9.1% vs. 6.3%.
What are your happy dreams about? Can you estimate what percentage of the time you dream happy and share it with Dream On dreamers?
Fascinating thought and I was shocked—I'd never considered this before. Of course, we'll never really know about most of our dreams since we remember very few. I find I usually just remember the dream I'm in the middle of when I wake, so we can only analyze the 'dreams we remember'. So, out of that category, I'd have to say 'actively happy' perhaps only 5%! Most are not terrible, but more confusing than happy. I will pay attention now! Thanks for the article.
I guess I never paid attention because I would have thought a much higher percentage of my dreams were happy. I would have said only 5-10% were UNhappy! I guess a lot are somewhat neutral or mildly stressful. I will start paying attention because that is an interesting statistic. Most of my happy dreams involve being in a beautiful wild place somewhere because nothing makes me happier than checking out new wild beautiful places. Although occasionally those happy dreams have to do with being with, or observing, people I love.
need to make time to dive deep here in 'dream on land'... i'm an aerobic dreamer... always have been and you are my people.
as far as the percentage of happy vs. not happy, i'd say it's 50/50 with my thumb on the scale towards 'happy' :-).
most of my dreams involve traveling and in both i'm somewhere familiar usually either near or on the ocean and 'returning' somewhere i've been and there's a place i'm leading the way back to.
but it's always the same 'place' and i feel amazing for having been there even though i know i was dreaming... again!
I'd say half or so happy. Long ago I remember reading a study about waking people up and asking what they were dreaming and more of those dreams were happy than the ones folks spontaneously woke from.
I would guess I'm at 30% for happy dreams. That fluctuates a bit, depending on stress levels and whatever may be going on in the world (2021 seems to be upping my happy dream percentage).
Fascinating thought and I was shocked—I'd never considered this before. Of course, we'll never really know about most of our dreams since we remember very few. I find I usually just remember the dream I'm in the middle of when I wake, so we can only analyze the 'dreams we remember'. So, out of that category, I'd have to say 'actively happy' perhaps only 5%! Most are not terrible, but more confusing than happy. I will pay attention now! Thanks for the article.
I guess I never paid attention because I would have thought a much higher percentage of my dreams were happy. I would have said only 5-10% were UNhappy! I guess a lot are somewhat neutral or mildly stressful. I will start paying attention because that is an interesting statistic. Most of my happy dreams involve being in a beautiful wild place somewhere because nothing makes me happier than checking out new wild beautiful places. Although occasionally those happy dreams have to do with being with, or observing, people I love.
Happy dreams that I remember are rare for me but they happen. So 1%?
HOLY. COW!
need to make time to dive deep here in 'dream on land'... i'm an aerobic dreamer... always have been and you are my people.
as far as the percentage of happy vs. not happy, i'd say it's 50/50 with my thumb on the scale towards 'happy' :-).
most of my dreams involve traveling and in both i'm somewhere familiar usually either near or on the ocean and 'returning' somewhere i've been and there's a place i'm leading the way back to.
but it's always the same 'place' and i feel amazing for having been there even though i know i was dreaming... again!
:-)
I'd say half or so happy. Long ago I remember reading a study about waking people up and asking what they were dreaming and more of those dreams were happy than the ones folks spontaneously woke from.
I would guess I'm at 30% for happy dreams. That fluctuates a bit, depending on stress levels and whatever may be going on in the world (2021 seems to be upping my happy dream percentage).