Screaming dreams

[Hopemeanslife]

Recently I have had a lot is, nightmares where I’m screaming at others and expressing how I’m feeling but can barely speak because my voice is breaking along with the emotion of basically crying going with it all at once. It’s mainly directed at my family, I guess since being in therapy I realised that I don’t really like my family all that much it takes me back to childhood and it’s not where I need to be. Families are complicated at the best of times but at the moment I just don’t want to be a part of mine. I find them unbearable.

 

[stellar]

Every time I try to scream or yell in my dreams, it comes out very raspy or barely a whisper. It's so frustrating while I'm dreaming but is because I'm trying to scream/yell for real.

This is because during REM sleep our GABA and glycine transmissions become inhibited, which essentially disconnects our brain from our muscles. REM is also when we dream and so it likely occurs to prevent us from acting out our dreams and accidentally hurting ourselves.

Obviously, this mechanism is more efficient for people like us versus say, my son who moves a lot in his sleep and used to fall off his bed frequently until I got him a loft bed that has rails. The same mechanism is also responsible for sleep paralysis.

 

[deno]

I’ve had a couple of those screaming nightmares recently too. Both times, I woke up screaming so loudly that I startled my wife. My heart was pounding, and it took me a while to calm down. I almost never remember my dreams, so for this to happen twice in a short period made me take notice.

For me, I believe it’s connected to finally releasing things I’ve held onto for so long. It feels like my inner child, the part of me that never felt safe, is finally pushing to the surface. I’ve spent most of my life protecting him, but now he wants to be free.

It’s unsettling, but I don’t see it as a bad thing. If anything, I think it means something deep inside me is shifting. Maybe these dreams are part of that process.

 

[purplevanillaworld]

I can relate to this so much. One of my most common nightmare patterns ends with me screaming at someone, and sometimes I even wake myself up screaming in real life lol.

Something that’s helped me is to look back at why I was screaming in the dream and what feelings were underneath it. Then I try to give myself, in waking life, whatever my dream-self was so desperately crying out for.

For example, I’ve had nightmares where I’m screaming at my mom to stop doing something. When I wake up, I check in with myself—am I feeling like someone’s crossing my boundaries right now? Or could it even be me crossing my own boundaries (through self-sabotage, ignoring my needs, etc.)? Practicing this in waking life has actually given me more control in dream/nightmare life. I hope this helps!!