Poll What Kind Of Nightmares Do You Have?

[Fadeaway]

I have multiple types of nightmares. Sadly I tend to over analyze certain ones. Of course there are the ones I won't touch and I fear sleep for having those again.

If I miss any one this list people choose other and post it so I can add it to the poll later. You have unlimited choices.

 

[Sammyiam]

I've had nightmares since about 7 years old. I sleep walk, and talk in my sleep. When I first meet my husband I was about 18, I think maybe 17, and the first times we slept together I would get up and smash things and turn on the lights but they wouldn't turn on so I would wake up in the morning with wires hanging out the wall, pot plants across the room, I'd get up and serve customers in my sleep,watch TV when it wasn't even on ..... I was so bad. 28 years of marriage later I'm sleep talking, walking not throwing anything lucky ! Only did that a couple of times ! He even went through a stage a while ago he would lock the doors to keep me in.

My nightmares are always very graphic, rape torture body parts getting shot off, knives at my throat, tied up and left for dead. It is a huge part of my life which I just carn't get under control. Tomorrow I'm going to see my psychaitrist and he is going to try a different med to try and stop my nightly hell that I go through. The others haven't worked :(

 

[Mallaky]

Fantastic thread, thank you.

I mostly have the unrelated and vague nightmares. The horror ones, one you could make a good movie out of, have become rare. Instead my dreams are just about always very emotionally charged and awfull. Lonelyness, blame, anger, sadness, stress, argueing, crying and yelling, abondement. No fun.
But sometimes I get hardcore horror too, they are nearly refreshing. When I wake up I can be like "Well. That was ridicoulous. Jeeez. Screaming spiders? Come on." but the emotionaly charged one are so depressing and draining.

 

[Sandstone]

The horror ones stay with me for days or weeks and I get flashbacks to them. There is so much gore and torture. I've recently started to get distorted reliving nightmares - the sensation is there, but accounted for in other ways or with different people. Apparently this is a good sign, or so my T says,

 

[jaccat]

It's not the horror ones that bother me so much as the ones where I seem to be back in the past, with the same emotions and the same kind of issues going on. Those ones can upset me for anything up to days. One I had when I was a teenager still freaks me out now, and I had it 15-odd years ago.

 

[ihateusernames]

My nightmares are usually the first type. Unrelated to things I experienced personally, but horrible and graphic. I don't know, there could be some symbolism I'm missing. They are also typically recurrent. I'll go several weeks or months waking up from the same nightmare every couple of days. The second most common are the last type- dreams about strong emotions. Both types bleed into my days and I feel like they really happened.

I sometimes have sleep paralysis, but I also talk in my sleep, was a sleepwalker until a few years ago, and still often wake my husband up frantically trying to do some thing or other in my sleep and then don't remember it in the morning. The other night he says I was trying to pull something off the wall behind the bed. I have been a sleepwalker and had recurrent nightmares since childhood. I can remember these things from around 5 years old. I don't know if they are trauma related. I always assume that they are not. It seems like the things that would have caused them, if they were, happened later than that.

 

[Senecia]

Most of mine are unrelated, through I'd say a portion, now that I'm thinking about it, definitely are. When my stress cup tips over, like it has right now, I frequently have dreams where my teeth are falling out. I've had those dreams probably since I was 7 or so, the first of which being where I was 'curbstomped'. A lot of mine are about public shootings, though I never have experienced one personally.. It's all so strange. I wish I could understand them. They're all so symbolic of my fears and feelings, being alone, and taken away from the world too early.

 

[Care Bear]

I'm glad someone has started a thread on this. I was wondering if I was the only one who had very emotionally charged nightmares. Do any of you think that these nightmares are a healthy release of energy? I ask because sometimes I get them after having meditated a lot or having bodywork. Part of me worries that it's a sign I am doing things wrong. I would love to hear back from anyone on this.

On a lighter note, my sleep paralysis was VERY scary at first, but how it's not after searching online and discovering that it is normal and it's not ghosts or demons (as my mother and grandmother tried to tell me). However, I now understand why people say they've been probed by aliens, raped by angels and all that weird stuff because I've had very, very, strange and lifelike experiences while in sleep paralysis.

 

[Friday]

I have 5 basic kinds of nightmares

- Pure fiction

- Blend of fiction & reality (too much nightmare fuel!)

- Flashback-Style. Sometimes with modern emotions overlaid, sometimes what I felt back when.

- Reality altered... Not a flashback-style one, because I'm dragging people who don't belong in them into them, or they're in the wrong place, or the wrong people are dying, or whatever.

- Single Sense. Pain. Or blood in my mouth. Or a smell. Just a single sense, or occasionally 2 or 3 senses (taste, texture, pain) repeating over & over.

 

[Born to Run]

I never had a nightmare, am I the only one?

 

[Fadeaway]

@Sammyiam I a so sorry you have such graphic nightmares. I know they suck. Hopefully the Dr. can find something that works for you.

@Mallaky The emotionally charged ones are the ones I have the most difficult time coping with . Occasionally, I have very gruesome nightmares but without emotion in the dream. I would rather have those than the emotionally charged ones.

@stenni, That sounds awful to to deal with , even if it is a good sign. I remember my dreams too well sometimes., but I can't say I have ever had a flashback to a nightmare.

@jaccat Amazing how they can stay with you like that. I have a few from child hood that I can recall better than most actual memories.

@ihateusernames They are exhausting aren't they! That is amazing that you can recall them from age 5. My earliest dream recall is from age 8.

@Senecia Do you have certain things that frequently repeat in your dreams? Have you ever looked up dream meanings online?

@Care Bear My dreams or horribly emotionally charged. It does help with sleep parayisis when you have a better understanding of whats going on. My grandmother would talk to me about how demons would try and rape here, so when it started happening to me I was extra horrified (I was also religious at that point). Knowledge makes them so much easier to deal with.

@FridayJones Well put. I don't think I have have every had the single sense ones before. I have had nightmares where I felt pain, but there was more going on in the dream.

@Born to Run It is very likely that you just don't remember them. Many people never remember their dreams and nightmares. Hopefully, you never do.

 

[Chava]

Mine are very similar in form and content: all symbolic. All with strangers representing my family, a strange little girl representing me, "me" (adult current self) watching the dream scene through a window but not aware I'm dreaming, or turning away to not see, lots of blood and murder. I checked a bunch of those. But I'd say mainly highly symbolic and highly charged versions of the emotions (threat, powerlessness, lack of control, not even wanting to be aware)