Negative Dreams

[kal]

I seem to only have negative dreams when I sleep...except when I dream of math (when I overwork myself in my studies but I guess math is also a negative thing ^^). Anyways, when I finally manage to sleep, and remember the dream I am always lost, stuck, ashamed, or running away from something.

If I watch a scary movie or the news I wake up sweating and panicky from nightmares. I cannot watch action movies or read or hear disturbing things that have no effect on others! I hardly have any positive dreams, except again for math or study-related dreams.

Is this normal?

 

[p-no]

Hi kal,

I have very, very few good dreams myself (although non-math). Most times I don't dream (or don't remember), but I almost always have very strenuous nights, moving around, turning, waking up, going back to sleep, being in pain for rolling up like a little child and not moving a lot for a few hours, not only clutching a fist but a whole body, so to speak.

Anyway, I have found that there is no "normal". This is your reality and therefore it is normal for you. In the last two years I found that the most important thing for me to learn is accepting my own realities. Transferring this to you: If you have nightmares from those movies, you have nightmares from those movies. The consequence is not watching them. It does not really matter if others have nightmares from the same movies or are not affected by them. You are. You do not have to become like others.

Putting it on "paper" is so easy compared to actually doing it, accepting the self one is. One of my realities is that I can not accept certain treatments at the dentist's. I spent years and years trying to "get over it" or "suck it up" just because "normal people do not have any trouble with treatments such as this". It never worked. Later-on I had come to accept that I am me and not "normal people" or "others". Ever since then, a few years, I have been undergoing dental treatments every other year (twice so far, a third one ahead) under general anaesthesia. That way I have been getting my teeth done, I have limited my anxiety to about two hours before actually going into the dentist's practice, and have no pain whatsoever. I get to sleep through it, and love it. Now I have found my way of dealing with things here.

What I have never learned owing to traumatizing from the day I was born, was being me, my own person. I have learned a lot meanwhile and there certainly still is some to go. But now I find my own ways, and if there are movies that give me nightmares, I stop watching them.

It's difficult for me to find my own ways, but it is really the only way to live my own life. And I have never had as much peace of mind and soul as I have had since having started to travel this road. I wish the same for you.

prime

 

[kal]

Thank you for the good advice and I am glad you found your own way. We are all individuals at the end of the day.

I also wanted to add something: For the past for days my left earring started itching and I ignored it for 4 days, and today I took it off because it hurt and i had a major swollen infection on my left ear! It made me think that my body was signaling for me to take off the earring but instead of listening to the pain (our ally) I ignored it and it got worse.

This theory works with mental pain too. If we ignore it it gets worse and we need to listen and react to it.

 

[Hashi]

This theory works with mental pain too. If we ignore it it gets worse and we need to listen and react to it.

This is exactly how I feel about dreams. I think they're trying to reflect things back to us, bring things to our attention, help our understanding and awareness, and guide us. Have you ever kept a dream diary? I write my dreams down and journal about them. Before i did that, or if I don't do it for a while, I'd get the same theme over and over (like being chased), but when I started to acknowledge them they changed. Now they're sometimes positive, sometimes not so positive, sometimes exhausting, sometimes soothing.

I interpret my dreams and that helps me, but I don't think I have to be an expert or that there's one right answer that I have to get. I think anything that I feel or think while I'm writing about the dream is worth journalling about. I think it must have come into my mind for a reason, and even if I can't see how the dream made me think that, somehow it did so it's worth listening to.

 

[p-no]

I agree with Hashi. I used to keep a dream diary and learned a lot about myself by that. My now favorite dream is the nightmare I had frequently (several times a week as a young child and adolescent) and have not had for more than 14 years (I stopped counting from year 14 without it). :)

Listening to what body, mind, and soul have to say is so important. Then again, sometimes, it's overwhelming and I wish a day consisted of 36 hours: 12 for life, 12 for processing all experiences in life and 12 for sleep.