What Would You Call This?

[Fadeaway]

I have my run of the mill fear based nightmares, and night terrors according to my husband but I don't remember those thankfully. Then I have these other types of dreams.

I generally categorise nightmares as being fear based, but these are based in other emotions. The dreams will have some elements of trauma but I have no emotional reaction to those parts. It is the other parts that get me, the parts that stir up sadness, grief, loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness or abandonment. Sometimes anger. These for me are worse than the fear based nightmares because the emotion is so intense and persists throughout a good portion of the day after I wake up.

Take for example, one dream I had recently. I was in a very lavish house finely decorated in a manner that I would personally choose if I had millions of dollars to spare. It started out with me being unable to keep the rooms of the children that I have lost clean. I wanted to decorate their rooms as lavishly as the rest of the house, but they kept falling into disrepair. Severe feelings of helplessness.

So I went outside and was riding horse back on a horse that had been beheaded. It was a horse that in actual life I saw beheaded as a child in front of the house I lived in after the trailer it was in had it's doors come open and the horse fell out and was struck by the truck behind it. It was distressing for me as a child seeing this happen before my eyes, but in my dream, I felt completely apathetic to the fact the horse was missing his head.

I then went in to learn that the house was haunted with the souls of people I have known that have died. The grief was tormenting, and I felt the same anguish I felt when I learned that they had passed. Only when i woke up, it didn't go away, it felt as raw and fresh as it had been even though the deaths occurred more than a decade ago. It took until 7pm before I was able to stop those feelings.

I used to have reoccurring dreams where I was being attacked and I would try and punch my attacker in the jaw, but I had no strength and my punch would feel like a feather touch to them and they would laugh at me for being so weak.

However, just the other night I had a had a dream that started off with past insecurities and stuff, then moved on to feeling apathetic about another actual distressing event I experienced when my town was evacuated due to a near by forest fire. But then, while we were standing outside in my dream waiting to see what the fire would do, I punched a friend of mine. For once in my dreams I actually did damage. The shame and self-hatred I felt afterwards took me a good two hours after I woke up get to dissipate.

Would you guys call these nightmares even though they are just intensely emotional based and not fearful?

I can't take my prazosin right now because my blood volume is too low and I can't get another transfusion until the 26th.

 

[Friday]

Probably least important first... Those feather touch dreams? Can't hit hard enough, can't run fast enough? Are usually -in my experience- sleep paralysis. Coming awake juuuuuust enough in real life to be aware of how no matter how fast you're trying to run in the dream, or how hard you're trying to hit, the sleep paralysis is keeping those motions in the dream only / showing up as twitching or rolling IRL. So you're trying to throw a punch with all of your weight behind it in dreamland, but while your arm connects (barely) in the dream, IRL you've just shrugged one shoulder. Kinda. Barely.

While I have dreams I can run/hit like the wind? It's the come half awake -usually out of a fear or anger response- that turns everything into quicksand. I've actually learned to like those dreams, because I've gone the other way, too. Sleep paralysis is gone, and I'm acting out the motherf*cking thing IRL, when I come awake. :banghead: In fact, that's how I learned that the sloooowness was part of my coming half awake. Because as I was waking up acting shit out? Sleep paralysis was kicking back IN. (I've come awake in full action -my body moving like it's the dream & that's what my eyes see, but my brain is registering the real world & interacting with it, and I've come awake in sleep paralysis, and both affect the quality of my dreams).

Did you talk to your husband by any chance? 9:10 if I feel HORRIBLE for hitting someone in dreamland... That I wanted to hit... It's because I hit someone I love, while asleep, in real life. ((Meanwhile if I hit a wall, all I feel are split knuckles. Later. The guilt & shame in my dream are actually the guilt and shame IRL overlaying.))

***
Thoughts on the bigger part of your Q in a bit. This got long :P

 

[Friday]

For myself I parse dreams into different categories.

- I have flashback dreams/nightmares... Actually reliving the event like a flashback while awake... Just mercifully laying down & not supposed to be doing anything. At least usually. These are the ones I tend to act out.

- I have 'Too much nightmare fuel' dreams/nightmares... These are blends of fiction & reality.

- I have pure nightmares.

- I have dreams... Of many different kinds.

Spoiler: A fairly pointless, and incomplete list

Terrible dreams, lovely dreams, strange dreams, dreams that linger, dreams that haunt, dreams that melt away into mist or shatter upon awakening, real life intruding into my dreams, dreams where I'm processing one or many things, in many different ways, dreams that show me what I need to know, dreams that give me what I want (the one upside of celibacy = a lot more flying dreams! Yay! Full body wheeeee!), dreams that chastise, dreams that try out different things, dreams that are -clearly- my brain being bored / cleaning out the dusty corners, dreams that show me my fears, my hopes, my desires, my regrets. Dreams that are in a language I haven't spoken for 20 or 30 years (that I understand in dream, but dammit! I'm not fluent, anymore! I have no idea what anyone was saying once I wake up without dragging out my dictionary). Blended dreams. Scattered dreams. Prophetic dreams. Mourning dreams. Recognition dreams. Silly dreams. Nonsense dreams. Meaningless dreams. Lucid dreams. Half dreams. Waking dreams. List goes one.

And, yeah. I categorize all of them :p

But while the categories are meaningful to me? They're not going to translate. They're my own system, and what makes one this and one that? Is just me. Knowing my own mind. Or learning it.

To me, the MansionDream, would fall under the category of visually processing my life. A visual representation, of concepts & words, made real & interactable. At a protective distance. Absolute reality... Seen through a different lens. Or not. Could be my hopes and fears with life breathed into them, instead. It would depend on how real/accurate they were. Or it could be a blend of the two. Absolute reality with an overlay of my hopes & fears also made real. Wishes & warnings. All 3 are still visually processing my life. Just in different ways.

But that would be my head & how it works in DreamLand. How yours does, could be very different.

 

[Fadeaway]

He says I hit him in my sleep a lot. Sometimes I wonder if he is just teasing or if he is serious and I actually did hit him in my sleep.

 

[Lola Nocheprieta]

I categorize my dreams, too, similar to @Friday, but not to such detail. To me, the regular dreams (good, neutral or just weird) are the ones I can split hairs on, but bad dreams? To me, anything that has to do with the actual traumas, anything about sexual violence or that leaves me with those feelings upon waking (and yes, sometimes throughout the whole rest of the day ... Or 2), anything about children being abused or exploited, or me trying to run away or fight off an attacker (not that I've ever actually been attacked by a stranger, but again, it's the feeling that it leaves me with) ... these are all nightmares. The feelings may be fear, grief, anger, longing, helplessness/hopelessness, horror, etc. ... But if the content is about sexual violence, violation, exploitation? That's a motherf*cking nightmare.

Other dreams that may also be fear-based or leave me feeling much the same emotions as above but are about something else entirely ... Those to me are bad dreams. Sometimes really bad dreams. And it can take me a day or 2 for my nervous system to return to baseline. I just personally reserve the term nightmare to indicate it is somehow connected to my own personal hell as opposed to some weird dreamland craziness.