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How Did You Sleep Last Night?

Sorry to hear that.
I’m going to hit the hay really early, hoping to wake up at an obscenely early hour and get some things done around my place. Gonna take my OTC melatonin to knock myself out. Had so many crazy nightmares last night.....being stuck at an airport and lost, then some woman dyed her hair and lips and teeth blue, then couldn’t find my plane, couldn’t get to the right exit area because of construction ongoing with tools and debris all over....persistent and pervasive anxiety throughout the whole crazy dream/s.
 
Not so great. ......I keep having dreams in which I am struggling to appease other people for reasons that are beyond my understanding. These are stressful dreams that are seemingly unrelated to past traumas, but I suppose that they might be somehow, I just don't know!!
 
This is a great thread, BTW.

Ah, sleep. Should I laugh or cry?
Jesus.....just woke up from dreaming there was an axe-murderer prowling around in my home, then a Buddhist monk shaved my head....okay! The monk wasn’t a problem, but that axe-murderer did worry me a bit...
Then the dream segued into a date with lots of anxiety, had long and grey hair, cowboys showed up on horseback to kill somebody and I was frantically trying to keep them from accidentally killing me, trying to negotiate. Some other godawful thing happened and I can’t remember what it was. Woke up with anxiety/fear/panic/elevated heart rate, feeling suffocated.
Joy.
Cried.
But this shit is every night for decades. This kind of crap is “normal” for me.
Doctor - who is a combat vet and who has a pretty good understanding of these things - has me on a med he says helps “tone down the dreams.” Says he prescribes it for a lot of his combat vets.

Maybe I should cease taking it for a couple days and then start it again to up its potency.....been on it for years.
I hate my brain for doing this to me. The perps are dead - yay! Only got my brain to hate for this crap.
Now I remember.....the last part of the dream was about trying to protect someone from being killed. People were spying on him, following him, trying to make his death seem accidental. I was terrified for him and trying to get him to realize what was going on. He was nearly run over by a car, and seemed oblivious. I even hired a friend to look after him. Then....oh, hell. The crazy dreams just go on and on....same themes .....terrified of being killed or someone else I’m trying to save or protect. Waking up with panic.
No wonder I used to booze until I slept with no dreams.....I loved that kind of sleep.....called it, “the sleep of the dea.” But, ETOH only does a body good for a wee timeframe...LOL. Not a long term solution.
Might as well focus on self-suggestion whilst falling asleep. Seems to be the only thing that actually gets some positive results.
 
@Flip flop (really this goes for anyone I suppose) you could try to induce lucid dreaming, so you can recognize when you're in a dream and try to steer its direction. I don't know if it will help, or if it will work for you, but maybe it's worth a shot?

There are many different reality checks you can perform in dreams. If you plug your nose in a dream, you can still breathe through it. In a dream, you can poke your finger through your hand. In a dream, if you swiftly spin around 180 degrees, you tend to be in a different location all together, rather than in the same place but facing the other direction.

The key is just knowing to even test reality, while dreaming. If you think something's bizarre or unrealistic, reality check. You can throw reality checks into your waking daily life, so you potentially habitually do them in dreams.

Just food for thought.
 
It's also fun to try to conjure up objects. One time I tried to make a gun appear in my hand, and instead of a springfield XD (what I carried at the time) like I was thinking of, I had this strange, shiny, silvery, alien-ray-gun looking thing, that had absolutely no controls or visible moving parts, holes, or anything. Just like it was made of hematite or something. It was also really light. I wish I had tried using it, but I was more like "woah... dang wish I got a real gun, this thing has no controls." In retrospect, thinking of it, it probably would have worked, since I was in a dream, lmao. Who knows what it would have done.

I really like the random aspect things take when I try to manipulate my lucid dreams. I try to make one thing happen, and a similar but definitely-not-what-I-was-trying-to-do thing happens.
 
It's also fun to try to conjure up objects. One time I tried to make a gun appear in my hand, and ins...
He, he, he....whenever I try to use weapons in dreams/nightmares, they turn into water guns or knives of rubber....oh, well.
Been listening to hypnosis to fall asleep...things have been getting better. Stuff like “meet spirit guides” and “meet your sacred self,” ...that type of thing. I don’t even believe in those things BUT if the hypnosis helps me then that’s the result.

Hope you are well!
 
He, he, he....whenever I try to use weapons in dreams/nightmares, they turn into water guns or knives of rubber....oh, well.
Oh yeah, that's a big one.
Because I carried concealed all the time when I left the house, and even open carried at work for a long time, I started to have my guns be in my dreams, because I was so used to them being there on my person. So, danger would happen in my dreams, and I'd automatically go "oh f*ck good thing I have my gun" and then pull it out. Often, it would be a revolver even though I always carried semi-autos. Or, it'd be fairly normal, and what I was using at the time.

However, almost every single time, this is what would happen if I tried using guns in dreams:
They would fire, and everything. It would function as normal, however, the bullets would do -nothing- to their targets, even if they hit. So it's like they work, but they do nothing at all.

I have gotten rid of all my guns and stopped carrying for a while now, so I have stopped having them come up in dreams, because they're no longer a part of my life. But, when I had one, sometimes the gun not being normal would tip me off that I was in a dream, and I'd do the plugged nose trick, and find out it was a dream. Interesting stuff.

Glad you're having less trouble with sleep lately :)
I am hanging on, myself. I have had an easier time sleeping lately, at least.
 
I had therapy yesterday which usually means an active dream night. Last night I had a dream that my mom and my sister were making fun of me for crying about my coworkers death that happened two years ago. They said I should be over it by now and were making fun of me that I was sad. I think I am my own worst enemy because I don't think my mom or my sister would ever do that.
 
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