How many of you don't have problems with nightmares?

[Lexicon]

How many of you have problems with nightmares?

When people say that they have nightmeres I find it quite strange.
The reason for that is that I don't have nightmares at all.

Also I will expand the question to: About what do you have nightmares?

I know that I am asking quite personal question but if someone wants to share, thread is here.

Yeah.. I suppose it depends on how one defines a nightmare. I suppose they're simply dreams w/unpleasant themes, etc, that upset us to a degree when we wake.

My dreams in general are usually odd, and sort of epic. Most of them entail bizarre kinds of journeys.
However, I very rarely have dreams that I'd call nightmares.

I used to get recurring dreams a lot.
The recurring dreams were one of 3 themes, and sort of 'evolved' in this order:

- Tornadoes - usually involved seeking shelter/helping others seek shelter occasionally. Usually it was two children I'd never met. Boy and a girl. Most of the time I was by myself. I'd hear that familiar storm siren, and the skies were filled with funnel clouds, touching down at different places and points in time.

- The Zombie Apocalypse - This was a recurring sort of 'chase' dream. Also becoming a lucid dream at the end. I'd be trying to find different places to hide, building barricades, losing people, fighting, crouching in corners as they began to close in.. and.. always, at that moment, I'd realize I was dreaming, and moments later, I could wake up. I recall once, I realized it was all a dream, and kept thinking.. "I hope I wake up soon.." and got all freaked out because my friends got attacked/became the undead and were after me.. and I couldn't wake myself up right away. Thought, "well maybe I'm not dreaming.. AH FU---" and then. Awake.

- Attic - The last recurring dream was very brief, fewer details. I'd be in this huge old house, one I've never seen waking, but I was familiar with. Everything was covered in sheets and cobwebs. It was interesting to explore, until I reached the staircase leading to the attic. I felt compelled to climb these stairs, and as I ascended, I'd always get this overwhelming sense of impending.. well.. doom.. and I couldn't turn back to leave, and I couldn't continue fwd.

Those recurring dreams never really left me frightened upon waking. They had more of an underlying sense of urgency associated, rather than fear/distress. Tornado dreams happened when my life was chaotic. The zombie dreams occurred then as well. I felt out of control in waking life, and kept avoiding my own internal issues, which manifested outside myself. The attic dreams happened when I started dealing w/said problems, and was inthe process of making big decisions, doing something new. At times the tornado dreams returned as well. Meh. Such is life. I'm not bothered by unpleasant dreams. My subconscious wants me to analyze these themes when I'm awake, most likely. Cryin' about it is counterproductive.


Aside from nightmares, what's actually unpleasant are the Night Terrors I get on occasion. Rarely any images or scenarios associated with them. Usually just waking up in a state of intense panic/fear, with nothing to attach the fear to, and nothing in my waking life specifically seems to trigger them; I've suffered from night terrors since I was very young. Frustrating. They don't cause me any significant amt of distress once I'm fully awake though, and don't seem to impact my day. I'm just confused, usually. Sometimes I go right back to sleep and have no recollection of the incident. People I sleep next to, do, of course. And act all weird/concerned in the morning.
Yeah. I wake up screaming sometimes. I'm fine, dammit. Let's go make pancakes! :rolli:

 

[Lexicon]

Thinking a bit more on this.. I think the sort of dreams that impact me most upon waking aren't the wholly symbolic, urgent-disaster dreams.

They are sad/bittersweet ones.

Sometimes a tad fucked up.

They're the ones about my brother. Usually they take place in one of the houses we lived in. Sometimes he's seated on furniture I'm not familiar with. Like this brown corduroy armchair. I describe these details to my mother, and she gets freaked out because I'm describing furniture she owned when she lived in Navy housing in CT before I was born, and got rid of before I was even a year old.

But the dreams.. yeah.. my brother is usually at the house, on said furniture.
"Visiting."
He often looks decomposed. Increasingly so.
It does not bother me for some reason. I even ask him odd questions, like, if it hurts.
He's often dressed in the clothing I last saw him in alive. Not the uniform he wore at his wake.

At first I'd demand to know what happened. Sometimes I'd be angry because he wouldn't say. He just wanted to go out for a walk with me or something.
A few other times he'd say he was visiting. And he missed me. And I'd dissolve into tears and hug him for a long time. This is something I do not do in waking life.

Sometimes the dreams didn't have a clear endpoint.. things just became blurred and distorted and I'd melt into waking.
Other times, my brother would "need to leave," and often would tell me I couldn't be there when he did, and to go upstairs or something.
Once, I left the room, but changed my mind at the last second, and burst through the door.
He was nowhere to be found, but I'd see flickering in the corner of my eye, turn, and see him out in the backyard.
On fire. Not in pain, but just, burning.
My mother walked up beside me, eyes staring but sort of unseeing.
She said, "..that's the only way back."


Then of course, there are the bittersweet dreams. Simply reliving childhood memories with him. He was my best friend.

Or the dreams where we're in the present. And he returns, says he never died. What I saw at the wake wasn't a real person. He couldn't come back until now. And I'd be so, so happy. Cry for joy. I've never shed a tear for happiness IRL.
And we'd go on, have fun, just the way we used to. Catch up.
I had a dream like that about my dad once, too, about a year ago. Strange because I never dreamed of him before. He died when I was 9.

It's the latter of the above dreams that hurt the most, for one fleeting, intense moment, when I wake, and realize.
But I shut my eyes again.
Take a breath. Open my eyes and look out the window. Look at the sky; an endless constant that centers me in some way.
And I feel grateful to see it.
And that, for a time, they got to as well.
Brings me some sense of peace.

Ultimately, these dreams don't feel damaging. I know I have a lot of unresolved grief associated with these losses. And my brain's sorting through it.

...I'll let it do its thing.

 

[Sentura]

i have vivid and sometimes lucid nightmares. usually they're based around weird landscapes and geometrical shapes. they're mostly depicted as what could be parts of a city, but seeming completely desolate. sometimes there are exchanges or situations happening between people, sometimes not even that. i sort of think of each of those parts with their shapes as a personal hell.

sometimes while awake, when i see artwork or posters displaying something like those parts, my mind gets startled. it's like a negative inspiration; every second i think about it pains me, but my curiosity forces me to live it out. i love it for the inspiration i gain from it; i loathe it for the parts it takes from me.

 

[Cimarron]

Like placebo, I occasionally see frightening hypnagogic images as I'm falling to sleep. The worst one was a skull hovering in the air and chomping its jaws.

Good point. Those are actually the scariest, and the shortest, and usually when I'm not yet in a deep sleep.

 

[Typology]

I don't think I've really ever had a typical nightmare. Anytime I get something resembling a nightmare it's always some stimulus followed by an extremely weird feeling, I can't even explain it, it's just weird. They don't bother me though, kind of like a change of pace to the usual fairy tale.

Something else that happens to me, which is extremely strange, happens only when I fall asleep in school. I'll get right to the edge of complete sleep, rather than 'dream-land,' and I'll think/dream about something that scares the shit out of me causing me to jolt awake. For example, I was dreaming about driving down the road and all of a sudden something jumps out of a bush and crosses the road right in front of me...I think it was a rabbit.

 

[ThatsWhatHeSaid]

Nightmares are for pussies.

 

[MrME]

I don't really have nightmares, and I don't really remember my dreams too often. Instead, I get the occasional hypnagogic hallucination to traumatize me.