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Dreams can feel like a movie—vivid, intense, and hard to forget. But what makes them so vivid?
6 Min Read | By Nicholas Barber
Last Modified 13 February 2025 First Added 31 October 2022
Vivid dreams can be so lifelike that you wake up questioning whether they actually happened. In this article, we explore expert insights into why vivid dreams occur and what they might reveal about your mind and body.
Vivid dreams are highly detailed and lifelike experiences that feel incredibly real to the dreamer. Unlike typical dreams, which can be hazy or fragmented, vivid dreams are often intense, featuring clear visuals, strong emotions, and a heightened sense of realism that can make them hard to distinguish from waking life. You may experience sensations such as touch, taste, smell, and sound with striking intensity. The imagery is exceptionally clear, and dream scenarios may unfold in a way that closely mirrors real-life events.
As with all dreams, vivid dreams happen during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. These cycles start about an hour and a half after you fall asleep, and they tend to be longer and deeper toward morning. That’s why you may be more likely to experience vivid dreams just before your alarm rings—and why we’re more likely to remember them.
Although we don’t completely understand the specific function of dreams, it’s believed that they’re a natural part of our emotional processing and memory formation. This is especially believed to be the case for vivid dreams, which are thought to point to unresolved feelings of stress or intense emotions that need addressing in your waking life.
Spiritually, vivid dreams are sometimes seen as messages from your higher self or the universe. They may symbolise personal growth, transformation, or insights guiding you toward a deeper understanding.
The meaning of a vivid dream depends on its content—whether it was positive or negative, who was in it, and what you were doing and feeling. To uncover what your vivid dream might mean, read our article on the most common dreams and their meanings.
Vivid dreams feel incredibly lifelike, intense, and emotionally charged. But what do they mean? These dreams can be linked to various factors, from stress and sleep deprivation to emotional or physiological changes. They may reflect your mental state, physical health, or even lifestyle habits.
Have you been experiencing prolonged sleep deprivation? Gone through a major emotional event, like a breakup or a stressful life change? Have you started a new medication, or are you dealing with hormonal shifts? These factors, among others, can contribute to vivid dreams.
Let’s explore some of the most common causes of vivid dreams and what they might mean.
If you’re experiencing stress, emotional trauma or a mental illness like anxiety or depression, you may be more prone to vivid bad dreams. Evidence suggests that if you suffer anxiety symptoms during the day, you’ll be more likely to experience vivid and upsetting dreams at night.
Some prescription drugs can affect the vividness of dreams. For example, SSRIs (a category of antidepressant) can decrease how often patients remember their dreams, according to one study that also suggested the drugs increase the vividness of dreams.
Vivid dreams may be upsetting or disturbing and may even stop you from getting enough good quality sleep. A study found that participants deprived of REM sleep one night then went through longer periods of REM sleep with higher dream intensity the next evening.
Nightmares are vivid dreams that are frightening or unsettling and can lead to nightmare disorder. This sleep disorder prevents you from getting enough sleep. If you’re experiencing sleep deprivation due to chronic nightmares, it’s time to speak to your doctor.
Because vivid dreams usually happen during REM sleep, waking up during or right after REM sleep increases the chances that you will remember your dream more vividly.
Physical and hormonal changes during pregnancy can cause insomnia and sleep disturbances. A research study found that women in the third trimester of pregnancy experienced more upsetting dream imagery compared with non-pregnant women. So, if you’re expecting, hormonal changes or the stress of growing and eventually delivering a tiny human could cause your vivid dreams.
Dreams play a key role in helping us process emotions, which is why they can become more frequent and vivid during emotionally intense times, like grieving.
Studies show that when someone is grieving, their dreams often feel more realistic, with the deceased appearing frequently. These dreams may help reorganise the strong emotions tied to loss, acting as a natural coping mechanism to ease the grieving process.
Unlike most dreams, sometimes vivid dreams can feel so intense that they may harm your mental health and well-being. Vivid dreams will usually eventually go away on their own, but there are some ways you can reduce your chances of having them. These include:
A vivid dream is defined as being very similar to waking life; you often don’t realise that you are dreaming when the dream is happening, and unfortunately, there’s not always a guarantee that you’ll remember once you wake up.
Whereas, a lucid dream can be scary, as you know you are dreaming but can potentially become paralyzed. Even if you want to wake up, it can be difficult to do anything to remove yourself from the situation except wait it out.
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