Lingering nightmares

[Michele 1]

I had a nightmare I can recall vividly from many years ago. Sometimes, I have similar themed nightmares as well, but that one particular version (episode?) was really clear, "real", and quite difficult to handle.

Do any of you have nightmares which linger for years? I don't mean the typical scary dreams - as in, Wow, that was weird...glad it didn't happen! The ones which wake you up and you can't go back to sleep; the kind which you wonder if it was real or not; the kind which you wake from in a cold sweat?

I guess I'm just wondering if I'm a nutjob or if this is somewhat usual. I have one of those memories which can be a blessing or a curse - and this is a bit of a curse.

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[RoadRash 0]

Yes, I had one while I was recovering last year after surgery...I woke up in pain 'cause I tried to move in my sleep and jarred my leg. It was a scary dream of me being lost and running away...::shiver:: then it randomly moves from place to place and I can feel my breathing rapidly increasing. Trust me, you are not alone......Dreams like that are scary and tend to stick with ya...!!!! Just try to relax and even if you wake up from a nightmare like that, try to control your breathing and think about something pleasant (something you plan on doing, skydiving......whatever it takes to calm down...)


~R+R

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Fly the friendly skies...^_^...})ii({...^_~...

[VanillaSkyGirl 6]

Quote

I had a nightmare I can recall vividly from many years ago. Sometimes, I have similar themed nightmares as well, but that one particular version (episode?) was really clear, "real", and quite difficult to handle.

God yes, and it is awful. It's weird when you suddenly remember being in that world and realize that it's like part 2 or 3 of some horrific tale or sick theme that is being played out. I also have VERY, VERY beautiful, good, happy dreams, which have me in a Eutopia sometimes. Those happy dreams sometimes have interlaced themes, where I realize that I have been in this beautiful, happy place before. These vivid dreams (good or bad) are always like elaborate movies.

Michele, these nightmares may be lingering side effects of your anesthesia (or even your pain meds). I was having the worst nightmares after my last surgery, too, and I could NOT sleep at all. I would wake up every few minutes. It is horrible because I was soooo tired. The restless nights and problems sleeping are my worst side effects from the anesthesia. Ask your doctor if this is a possibility.

[Snowbird 0]

Yeah, I have several re-occuring dreams, and a couple of them are freaky. I'm not sure what triggers them, probably stress. The worst one is about being lost in a huge city like a maze or warren of buildings and rooms. I wake up in a cold sweat after that one.

So no, you're not a nutjob Or we both are!

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
-Robert A. Heinlein

[peacefuljeffrey 0]

Well, my sympathy to you if you're being tormented by nightmares.

Me, I've always sort of welcomed them. I like to wake from a nightmare and think of it as a really cool scary movie that my mind put on for me. Usually I find myself marveling at their content and direction.

I've had a few recurring kinds over my life, but most of them didn't start until I was in college. I occasionally have dreams in which I die. Yep, that's right. It's a myth (from the movie "Dreamscape") that if you die in a dream you really die. Pish-posh, as Mr. Burns would say.

Some of my deaths have been by nuclear bomb, snake-bite, self-inflicted gunshot (it was either that or I'd be killed by the Terminator), falling into a puddle of molten metal from a meteorite shower (the meteorites hit the ground and made puddles like mercury), and even ritual sacrifice. The nuke and snake-bite things have recurred, each time with variations. Once I was on a building top in Israel (never in reality; only in this dream) with a group of friends, and a terrorist nuke blew up a nearby building and we got hit by the shockwave.

The dying dreams are not traumatic, just really really fascinating. I love getting the feeling like I'm experiencing life after death -- the "other side." In most of them, I end up conscious and still alive in spirit form, standing right where my body had been moments before. Usually there's no pain involved, either. One recent dream death resulted in the dream becoming lucid.

Of the unsettling, upsetting variety, though, are the ones in which my mom is still alive and suffering from cancer. She died (real life) in 2001 from colon/liver cancer. I've had recurring dreams in which she's still alive, very sick, and suffering. Needless to say, I don't enjoy those dreams. Sometimes I start to try to talk about her terminal illness with her. Other times, I spend the dream trying to keep myself from crying over it in front of her. That's the goal of the dream: I feel like "I mustn't let her see me sad or it'll make her sadder." I had one dream in which she appeared to me as a ghost, in a supermarket near the eggs. She came walking toward me in her fur coat and sunglasses, walking with the help of her nurse. She couldn't speak to me, because it was taking all of her spiritual energy to become visible to me. (This was something I just "knew" in the dream.) That dream was kinda reassuring. But I suppose I'll still have some of the sad ones.

-

-Jeffrey
"With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

[Guest]

Jah, but the freakiest thing I've EVER experienced in a dream is that when it was over, it faded out, and credits rolled up as though it was a movie screen......too weird...

mh

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[Michele 1]

I'm not having them right now, Rosa (thank goodness), so I don't think it's because of the anesthesia. But the one I'm referring to was violent, horrible, frightening, and absolutely real...and made me jumpy for days afterwards. And has lingered in my memory from then until now.

It's good to know others have had these kinds of dreams, too, because that means either we are all nutjobs, or it's "normal" - perhaps "usual" is better than normal....

Ciels-
Michele

~Do Angels keep the dreams we seek
While our hearts lie bleeding?~

[sunshine 2]

I have one. Don't feel like posting the details about it, but i've been having the dream for years. Kinda comforting to know i'm not the only one with the problem.

___________________________________________
meow

I get a Mike hug! I get a Mike hug!

[LuvToFly 0]

Michele -

VSG brings up a really good point. Drugs for certain kinds of pain can produce nightmares for a lot of folks -

Even something as benign as Vicodin has caused nightmares in several people I know - and one even tested it out. Went to bed without it - had no nightmare. Took it the next night, had nightmares, etc.

Things with narcotic components are suspect for some folks having nightmares.

As a kid, had recurring bad dreams which ceased when I realized I could have control over what I did end up dreaming about. What I exposed myself to and intensely thought about in the hour or so before I went to sleep had a great effect on the content of what I dreamed. Maybe that will work for you.

"The helicopter approaches closer than any other to fulfillment
of mankind's ancient dreams of a magic carpet" - Igor Sikorsky

[Sheenster303 0]

I have a pretty serious reoccuring dream that I posted about a couple of days ago. I end up throwing things around my room in my sleep. I guess it's sort of like sleep walking. I dream that there is a man in my house trying to come after me so I try to block the door with anything in my room.

I also have a reoccuring dream where a certain group of my friends die. The same group of friends and I always die with them, but the death is always different. It's really odd.

Someone said it is probably because I eat before going to bed and it jacks me up. Maybe I should be careful of that in the future.

I'm so funny I crack my head open!

P.M.S. #102

[dustin19d 0]

I tend to get shot alot im my dreams
At least it doesnt hurt.

[Viking 0]

I had one last week about getting attacked by a shark while i was in the water taking pictures of surfers. What kept me up is that this friday thats what i'm gonna be doing for a story in the school paper.

I had a dream about getting cought in a dust devil at 50 feet and getting slammed to the ground, next time i jumped i got cought in a dust devil that came in accross the grass, i was at 150-200 feet

I swear you must have footprints on the back of your helmet - chicagoskydiver
My God has a bigger dick than your god -George Carlin

[DickMcMahon 0]

It seems like I'm dreaming more than I used to.

The weirdest one happened a few weeks ago when
a big ugly Martian attacked me! I put up my best
fight and slugged him a few times.

Later, when my wife woke me up, I found out it was
HER that I was hitting.

If she ever takes this to court, I'm not sure the judge
will believe my story.

[Lizard 0]

For some reason, I rarely remember any of my dreams. I know we all dream, but when I wake up, I have no clue what I was dreaming about. I have been told I talk alot in my sleep, luckily it has not gotten me into trouble yet.

[Tonto 1]

I don't have nightmares. If I do - I don't recall them.

I only recall dreams once or twice a year.

t

It's the year of the Pig.

[damion75 0]

Something reall wierd affecting dreams? Larium - the anti malarial pills... they are wierd. Some other things may do this too but unlike the usual 'this is a dream' vague feeling (pinch yourself to wake up), I found (as did lots of my buddies in the Kenyan bush) that when you are on Larium - your dreams are real - even with feeling. This can be a good or a bad thing!!!!

One dream I was being mauled by a lion which had got into my tent, and I could feel the claws and teeth, but I couldn't wake up because I didnt know it was a dream... but another time I was flying - no rig, no plane just flying through the MOST beautiful place.

They have stopped issuing Larium now in the British Army because of possible psychological effects - I dont know whether I was lucky or not to be one of those who experienced that!!

***************

Not one shred of evidence supports the theory that life is serious - look at the platypus.

[sdgregory 0]

I have suffered from chronic nightmares since I was a child. Sometimes I wake up and have to grab my wife to make the images go away. And yes the affects linger for days. What I have noticed is that it is one of two themes or variations of the same theme maybe. I am either running from something and cannot get away or running to something and cannot catch it.

I had read something in a book when I a teen and I do not remember the book but I remember what it said.

It said that control of ones dreams can be learned through performing an exercise and so I tried it. Took well over a year but it worked to some extent.

I set an alarm to go off ever hour and wrote down my dreams that I had during that hour of sleep. At first I could not remember anything about the dream. But by the third time I could remember some details. AS I continued doing this for several weeks I began to notice that I was remembering more andmore details. I was also able to extend the time between alarms. Eventually you will go all night adn be able to remember most fo the dreams but they will seem like one dream with ever changing scenes.

What this seems, I am no expert here, to do is help you remember, as you are dreaming, that it is a dream and that therefore you have a certain amount of control over what is going on.

Sometimes it gets really weird though, Like you tell yourself you have a gun so you get a gun and it turns out to be a toy nerf gun and you change it in your dream to a real gun only to end up with a stun gun, or one of those vaccine air guns, and so you change it agin. Even this weird thing, however takes the focus off of the event going on and places it on your actions that are not so much scary as comical and by the time you can fix it your mind has shifted through sleep phases and you are on to another dream.

Point is, I still have my nightmares, but they are not so bad anymore and they do not have the same affect on me because I can actually tell myself that what I am seeing is not real and then I prove it by doing something totally impossible in real ife.

Maybe you should try it and see if it works. That is if your nightmares are as often as mine are.

[Tinkerbelle 5]

You wanna hear a funny one?...
Dav3e Ruckert (and yes, he has a subscript 3 in his name) and I were sitting at a restaurant at Friday Harbor, in the San Juan Islands just North West of Seattle, Washington, after skydiving into someone's backyard with about 40 other people. We asked our waiter what his name was, to which he replied, "I'm Dustin." I looked at Dav3e then back at the waiter and replied, "No you're not, you're pickin' up plates!" Everyone chuckled. Then Dav3e with his infinite wit chimed in, "He just thinks he's Dustin 'cause his Mother and Father swept together!" At this the whole restaurant burt out laughing!
Guess you had to be there....

Rehab is for quitters.

[JJohnson 0]

I have an ongoing nightmare.....it starts out like I'm waking up and I have to take a shower, get dressed and go to this strange place and be bored for 10 hours a day....when I wake up I'm back at home safe and sound with my wife and dog....it seems so real.....

My wife on the other hand has constant nightmares...she wakes up feeling tired and unrested. I started giving her melatonin and that has helped put her into a deep sleep and avoid much of the dreams.

JJ

"Call me Darth Balls"

[Lee03 0]

I had one like that many years ago, why I don't know. hadn't had it for years now. Probably perfectly normal, and nothing to worry about.

--------
To put your life in danger from time to time ... breeds a saneness in dealing with day-to-day trivialities.

--Nevil Shute, Slide Rule

[batbex 0]

Michele you're not weird at all, I don't have them very often, but when I do - I wake up screaming, in a cold sweat and can only eventually go back to sleep if the lights are on.
And they linger, there are only one or two which I remember clearly, but I get goosepimples, in a crowded, light filled room in the middle of the day! just thinking about them.