Thinking In Sleep?

[BlackbirdSinging]

I was having so many nightmares I started staying up as late as 4am. That way I'd be so exhausted that if I had a nightmare I wouldn't remember it. But the lack of sleep was making my symptoms bad the next day. Lately staying up late hasn't been keeping me from remembering nightmares. Now I have them no matter what time I go to sleep or no matter how long I sleep.

Lately I've been having dreams that are long and very detailed. Not every night but sometimes and I wake up feeling like I was thinking all night. To the point that when I wake up I feel like I need a nap from whatever was just going on in my dream. Either that or I'm having disturbing and detailed dreams. The thing I don't like is sleep itself without any kind of bad dream feels good and I wish I could get more of it. Does anyone else ever feel like they wake up and have been thinking all night?

 

[Deleted member 20280]

Well then, this is exactly me. I have vivid dreams most nights. Never bad nightmares just vivid to the point I wake up feeling I've been watching a film and not actually slept at all.

I was in fact only thinking about last night disaster movie dream when I logged on and read this post.

 

[JustBe]

Yes. I do some of my best processing while asleep or in the shower! You're right though, it is exhausting!

 

[maddog]

Yes, can absolutely relate. Sadly, disturbed sleep is one of the most exhausting experiences, particularly when it becomes a chronic pattern, and for me I actually find very disrupted sleep to leave me far more wiped out the following day than having almost no sleep at all. Our brains are most definitely active while asleep, whether we are dreaming with awareness or not - it's why REM sleep is associated with a huge portion of the mental processing that takes place for all humans, whether traumatised or not.

But when the processing is manifested in distressing, or even just vivid and active, dreaming, we have increased emotional and physiological reactions and responses as well, which adds to the sense of having run a marathon the next morning.

Maddog

 

[ashdawn8287]

I often feel like I'm thinking in my dreams as well. It is exhausted. I often wake up in sweat and the scary feelings in my dreams carries over when I actually wake up. I think I subconsciously avoid sleep sometimes because of it and I feel unaware of the relation to avoiding sleep and dreams.

The thinking in dream happened to me earlier when I was cuddling with my fiancée and fell asleep. I woke up thinking/dreaming. It's hard to explain. I usually always remember my dreams and if not I always have the feelings telling me I was.

My dreams are hard to explain too. It is weird isn't it? I find sleep, the brain, and dreams so intruiging because of my own experiences with it. Hope this helps.

 

[Springer80]

Hi, I actually like my very vivid dreams, well I do now anyway! We need them.

Anyway what wanted to say was this....Are you aware of the (buddhist) idea of energy in your body constantly moving and rather than trying to pin it down or stop it, you can learn o feel it constantly in transition...this helps with fatigue...

Well I have a depersonalization disorder and I'd learned to do that with my body but at night I couldn't sleep and so I imagined a ball in my head (like a third eye but I'm not getting too trippy on ya)..and I'd imagine it constantly rotating on the spot and the pain in my head from being fixated on a particular negative thing would subside.

It helps me to think of pain/blockages (mental/physical) as shapes or structures...whatever works for you though, I studied design so I think in shapes but it could be anything really.

I really has helped me alot, cause my thoughts dont get stuck, I still have them but they roll around and off again.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

Wow! Thank you for all the input. I wondered if this is a PTSD thing or a GAD thing or what. It just seems to be happening more and more often. Last night for example. I woke up repeatedly. And every time I woke up I felt like I was mid sentence or something. I don't really remember any of my dreams. And I was tired all day as a result of waking up so much.

I don't have a problem of racing thoughts keeping me awake. In fact by the time I get to my bed I feel like I'm asleep before I get to my pillow. So I wonder if clearing my head before I go to sleep would even work. But I feel like I have to try something because this is exhausting.

I just think it I would LOVE to have one night where I went to bed at a decent time and slept all the way through the night and didn't have any problems with dreams or thinking while I was asleep. It would probably help me to physically be more calm too.

 

[Kintsugi]

Hi Blackbird, I can definitely relate to this. Recently I've been having dreams that I don't remember all of, but they felt like several days worth of time. Usually I just have detailed nightmares and dreams that have obvious subtext. I also often dream that I have gotten up and progressed several hours into my day, then I wake up for real and feel incredibly disoriented and tired. I have even gone so far in the past as to edit papers for school in my dreams accurately, which would be cool if it didn't feel exactly like the work it is.

What has helped me is pre-sleep visualization and being decent at lucid dreaming, which the visualization helps a ton with. If I'm having dreams that are bothering me, I imagine flying and feeling very serene while passing over landscapes until I'm asleep.

I don't know if you suffer from repetitive nightmares or disturbing dreams (with similar or consistent themes, people, places, etc. appearin repeatedly), but being able to lucid dream really helps me handle this using the above visualization. I can imagine a way out of the dream, changing the pattern.

Good luck and sweet dreams.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

I don't know if you suffer from repetitive nightmares or disturbing dreams (with similar or consistent themes, people, places, etc. appearin repeatedly), but being able to lucid dream really helps me handle this using the above visualization. I can imagine a way out of the dream, changing the pattern.
Good luck and sweet dreams.

Oh wow you've had some wild experiences too! I've had dreams where I was asleep and dreaming in my dreams. It's only happened a couple of times but both times I woke up wondering what that was all about!

I do suffer from nightmares and disturbing dreams. Usually they are graphic. Recently I had one that was brutally graphic and violent. Almost all of them follow a similar theme. And 99.95% of them are about past trauma. And they almost always include two different abusers. My trauma is complex. So I have many ex abusers. But there are two who I have the most nightmares about.

I've had occasion to have lucid dreams but it hasn't happened in quite awhile. The technique I had been using was staying up until almost 4am to be too exhausted to remember any dreams when I woke up. That seems to not be working anymore. And now this thinking in my sleep. It's happened before it's just happening a lot more now. I have to find some way to clear my mind or something before I go to sleep because sometimes sleep seems almost as exhausting as fighting with my symptoms all day.

 

[Kintsugi]

Oh wow you've had some wild experiences too! I've had dreams where I was asleep and dreaming in my dreams. It's only happened a couple of times but both times I woke up wondering what that was all about!

Holy cow me too. What a trip.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

What a trip.

It definitely is! I was trying to explain the dreams to someone and it was even weird to say. I wonder if there's a name for that? Or a cause or some kind of meaning. Watch me go search the internet now :p.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

I didn't read every article I found but dreaming about being asleep and dreaming in a dream seems like it can be a lucid dream or a pre lucid dream. That was said in one of the articles because while you're sleeping and dreaming you're asleep you're also waking up in the dream which makes it a bit like a lucid dream.

There is also something called false awakening that can occur. You might search that out. It sounds very much like what you were describing about waking up and doing normal daily activities while in fact you were still asleep.