Introduction

A person who experiences a vivid dream that feels indistinguishable from reality..

How can we distinguish between reality and illusion? Is there an objective reality, or is reality subjective?

It is in human consciousness where the dreaming starts merging with the wakeful, turning out to be
experiences that feel vivid and even very real. This phenomenon is generally termed vivid dreaming, and
it will, of course, capture the imagination and pose some of the deepest questions about the nature of
reality, perception, and the psyche. A person with a vivid dream, because it cannot be distinguished from
reality, often struggles with emotion and thought processes and even the communication of insights that
challenge the conventional understanding of sleep and consciousness.

This thesis will deliberate the psychological, neurological, and philosophical questions arising from vivid
dreaming experiences. The study explores the nature and role of dreams that tend to blur the line
between what is only imagined and what is real, then examines how such seemingly unbelievable
experiences shape self-perception, affect emotional processing, and even creative thought. An
interdisciplinary approach combining psychology, neuroscience, and cultural studies hopes to illuminate
the complexities of the human experience. It will certainly shed light on the profoundly emotive
experiences that dreams with vivid pictures give us regarding the reality we live in. Ultimately, this
becomes a search into the publication of insights in the continuous discourse on consciousness and the
intricate workings of the mind and its revelation, with respect to the transformation potential of our
nighttime narratives.

Methodology
This research design will be based on the qualitative nature to explore philosophical as well as
psychological aspects of distinguishing between reality and illusion and nightmares. The study seeks to
discuss and analyze perceptions from participants about objective and subjective realities in depth.

The survey we will use is a survey done by Raven's Eye, which consisted of 2 questions, "In your own
words, please describe your most recent nightmare." and "In your own words, please tell us what most
worries you in your daily life.". During October 15th-19th, 2019, Raven's Eye conducted an online survey
about common nightmares and worries of people located in the United States. They utilized Amazon's
Mechanical Turk to conduct our poll. A total of 1,003 responses were received. After they eliminated
non-compliant responses, 994 were deemed eligible for inclusive.
The interviews were set down and thematic analysis was conducted. This involves of closely examining
the type of language used and the mood of the participant when submitting in the survey.

We used quantitative research, because we know that in order to properly solve the question, we need
to go in depth of the responses that the participants submitted. The research problem suggest to
conduct not a quantitative research but a qualitative research. This survey cannot just be generalized by
a large group of people, but they provide a more in-depth understanding of participants’ perceptions,
motivations, and emotions.

While it could also count as a mixed research, with the help of quantitative research, but the context of
the answers and the answer itself is the most important, not the quantity of respondents

Skrzypińska, Dagna, and Barbara Dorota Szmigielska. “Dream-reality Confusion in Borderline Personality
Disorder: A Theoretical Analysis.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 6, Sept. 2015,
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01393.

Case Presentation
When people get asked the question "how often do you experience a nightmare" and "What kind of
nightmare do you experience" they all seem to agree that nightmares don't appear daily. They tend to
believe that nightmare correlate to their experience, which is the results of our research, problem's,
trauma's, and anxiety, and fear is related to us getting nightmares. Here are Some respondents noted
the experience they had in nightmares. (Raven's Eye survey)

"In my most recent nightmare, someone was in my house and I was trying to get out."

"In a recent nightmare, I was being chased by people and I couldn't get away from them."

"In a recent dream, I was driving in my car and I lost control and got into an accident."

(October 15th-19th, 2019)

Those that are bolded words in the quotations meant that they are getting away from something or
something happened badly. It is implying that they are trying something. The concept trying is most
frequently immediately preceded by the three words: was, kept, and were. The most frequent 5-word
phrase in all the responses is: I was trying to get. Various permutations include: it was trying to kill, they
were trying to find, I kept trying to get, we were trying to find.

But the most notable about these quotes is all fo them ended with something like "and then I woke up."
which implies that they woke up after it and remember it clearly. Most normal dreams we cannot clearly
remember but somehow we always remember a nightmare we had, which is really interesting.
 Analysis and Discussion
How can we distinguish between reality and illusion? Is there an objective reality, or is reality subjective?

This result indicate that nightmares or vivid dreams in general can be experienced by a person atleast
once a week. In the survey conducted by Raven's Eye the result of the question "on a scale of 1-7 (with 1
being "never" and 7 being "all the time") how often in your daily life are you concerned about the main
fear expressed in your nightmare? The mean response on this item was 3.36, while the median was 3
and the modal response was 2, indicating a non-normal distribution of responses that tended toward not
being very often concerned about the main fear expressed in their nightmare during their daily lives.

These vivid dreams often occur during REM sleep, which is characterized by rapid eye movement and
heightened brain activity. Nightmares, a type of vivid dream, can provoke strong negative emotions like
fear or anxiety. REM sleep plays a crucial role in memory processing and consolidation, making dreams,
both pleasant and unpleasant, more likely to be recalled.

However in lucid dreaming, another type of vivid dreams is what we can say is the only way to
distinguish that you are inside a dream/dreaming. But lucid dreaming is very rare phenomena. Although
many people may have been briefly lucid during dreaming, for most people lucidity happens only very
rarely, if ever. In dream samples, lucidity occurs on average only in one or a few dream reports out of a
hundred. Only about 20% of people report having lucid dreams at least once per month.

These results build on existing evidence of nightmares being the probable result of anxiety, and fear. And
the evidence suggest that lucid dreaming is a way to distinguish reality from not. There are only a few
handful of research study about dreams in reason of studying about dreams are very hard and difficult
due to the subjective nature of it, it always depends on the person's experience, perspective, and
lifestyle. The significance of this study is it expand the study pool of this natural phenomenon.

Conclusion
This research aimed to understand what vivid dreams is and how does it feels so real and you're in that
dream. Based on the qualitative analysis that we had conducted, we have no actuall way to distinguish
reality and illusion inside a dream, but unless you can manually lucid dream, and actually have controll
over it, i see no way to clearly distinguish if you're in a dream or not, reality is not subjective, its
objective for the vivid dream only happens for you and not for others, so that makes the reality when
vivid dreaming is an illusion. But we still live in an objective reality and experience it subjectively.

This research clearly illustrates the nature of vivid dreams and how can it correlate to memories,
problems, trauma, fears. But it also raises the question of how can we make up a new
scenario/situation if dreams are based on memories, etc... To better understand the implications of
these results, future studies could address how to manually lucid dream, how to be aware inside a
dream.

Further research is needed to establish in dreams.

Some ideas for future research:

"How do we distinguish reality and illusion outside of the person or without the help of lucid dreams?"

"How come when we dream normally we barely remember it, but when we had a nightmare we
remember it clearly?"

"Why do people dream?"